Aron Tendler

Rabbi Aron Tendler (born 1955) is a prominent rabbi and Jewish community leader from Los Angeles. He is the brother of Rabbi Mordechai Tendler, and the grandson of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. He was forced to resign as a community rabbi after rumors of sexual impropriety were reported in the press.

Tendler became senior rabbi of "Congregation Shaarey Zedek" in Valley Village in July 2000, having served in the capacity of rabbi, assistant principal and principal of "Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles" for 20 years. He worked as a marriage counselor. Tendler was an executive at the Rabbinical Council of California, where he was chairman of Kosher certification.

He was involved in a controversy in Israel in early 2006 after he and a group of 50 congregants were refused entry to the Temple Mount. Tendler claimed that this was discriminatory, while the police defended their actions saying that the tourist s had failed to produce IDs. Tendler claimed that a non-Jewish group ahead of them were not asked to display ID.

As the director of a Jewish School in the Los Angeles area he was an active proponent of school voucher system which would enable parents to redeem government issued vouchers at private and religious schools.

He was the rabbi of Yakov Aminov who was killed in the LAX shootings, and spoke to the media about the victim and acted as the primary spokesman for the family.

He was active in a campaign to prevent the imposition of a system of bus lanes on a Jewish area of Los Angeles. Indeed, he was active in similar campaigns to stop trolley-buses in LA as early as 1986 He was also instrumental in the installation of a system that enable orhtodox Jews to cross roads on the Sabbath.

He spoke regularly about physical and sexual abuse within the Jewish community and was active in treating victims of such abuse. In 1998 he argued that: "Abuse has nothing to do with one's moral upbringing, but with the cycle of violence."

Resignation
He was forced to resign six months before the end of contract after references to alleged sexual misconduct emerged in the press in relation to his brother's problems. Both the New York Post and the Jewish Week

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