Chief Rabbi of France under attack for plagiarism & deception

JPost   Gilles Bernheim, the grand rabbi of France, refused to quit on Tuesday despite admitting to several counts of plagiarism and to deception about his academic credentials.

The revelations have shocked France's 600,000-strong Jewish community and he has come under pressure to quit, but Bernheim said that resigning would be a "desertion" as he came clean on one of the faithful's main radio stations in the country.

Gilles Bernheim, the grand rabbi of France, refused to quit on Tuesday despite admitting to several counts of plagiarism and to deception about his academic credentials.

The revelations have shocked France's 600,000-strong Jewish community and he has come under pressure to quit, but Bernheim said that resigning would be a "desertion" as he came clean on one of the faithful's main radio stations in the country. 

"It would be an act of pride and against the collegial structure that presides over decisions. I assume my functions fully," Bernheim, 60, a modern Orthodox Jew who was elected grand rabbi in 2008, told Radio Shalom.[...]

Bernheim's troubles began last month when a blogger accused him of copying a 1996 text by the late French post-modernist philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard to use in his 2011 book Forty Jewish Meditations.[...]

Last week, another blogger accused Bernheim of plagiarism in a 2002 book and L'Express magazine revealed he had not earned the prestigious rank of philosophy professor that was often attached to his name.[...]