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(JTA) — Calls for the resignation of France’s chief rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, are increasing over revelations that he allegedly committed plagiarism and used unearned academic titles.<\/p>\n
The French daily Le Figaro on Tuesday reported that “there was heavy pressure” on the part of unnamed officials from the Jewish community for Bernheim to resign.<\/p>\n
Bernard Guigui, vice president of the Marseille branch of the Consistoire, which is responsible for religious Jewish services, told JTA that while \u201cwe do not demand Bernheim resign, everybody is talking about it. I think when you have such a huge responsibility and commit such an error, it\u2019s better not to embarrass and hurt the Jewish community but step back and resign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Le Monde reported that it obtained a letter on Tuesday calling for Bernheim’s resignation that was signed by an obscure entity called the “Collective Consistoire Community.”<\/p>\n
Yael Hirschhorn, a spokeswoman for Bernheim, told JTA that her office would not comment on calls for Bernheim’s resignation.<\/p>\n
Bernheim is scheduled to speak on Tuesday evening on Radio Shalom and address new charges of plagiarism and falsifying his academic credentials, according to Jewpop, a French Jewish news site.<\/p>\n
Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF, France\u2019s umbrella organization of Jewish communities, urged Bernheim, to \u201cexplain\u201d allegations that he committed plagiarism and used unearned academic titles.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect and we all expect a clear and complete explanation,\u201d Prasquier wrote Tuesday on the CRIF website.<\/p>\n
Bernheim said last week that his 2011 book \u201c40 Jewish Meditations\u201d contained one passage that his ghostwriter plagiarized without Bernheim\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n
Since then, he has since been accused of at least three additional cases of plagiarism in the same book and in two earlier publications. Also, the French media reported that several of Bernheim\u2019s biographies said he passed a competitive test in philosophy for civil servants known in France as agregation while there was in fact no record of Bernheim ever passing the test.<\/p>\n
Bernheim has made no public comment on the later charges.<\/p>\n
Jean-Noel Darde, a senior lecturer at Paris 8 University, wrote on his blog Monday that Bernheim plagiarized another text in his essay against gay marriage titled \u201cHomosexual Marriage, Gay Parenting and Adoption: What We Forgot to Say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight lines of the essay, which then-Pope Benedict quoted during a speech at the Vatican in December, were copied \u201cword for word\u201d without credit from a book titled \u201cThe Ideology of Gender: Chosen or Transmitted Identity\u201d published seven months before Bernheim\u2019s 50-page essay, Darde said.<\/p>\n
Darde wrote he found another instance of plagiarism in Bernheim\u2019s 2002 book \u201cCaring for Others: At the Foundation of Jewish Law,” which allegedly contains passages lifted from \u201cThe Eloquence of Tears,” a book published two years earlier.<\/p>\n
Other critics said they found additional plagiarized passages in the 2011 book from Jean-Francois Lyotard, Elie Wiesel and Jean-Marie Domenach.<\/p>\n