The Chief Rabbi of France Gilles Bernheim announced his resignation from office Thursday before a specially-convened meeting of the Central Consistoire of France. Reports suggest his resignation came at his own instigation, without the Consistoire members having called for it or having any previous warning.
Bernheim’s announcement came amid escalating furore over his admission of having inadvertently committed plagiarism with his 2011 book Forty Jewish Meditations, which he subsequently requested be removed from circulation. After website Stress de la Philosophie first claimed in March of this year to have discovered marked similarities between the work and ideas espoused by philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard in an interview with Elizabeth Weber published in her own 1996 book Questioning Judaism, Bernheim initially refuting the allegations.
Last Wednesday, however, he issued a partial admission, insisting whilst the facts had been misrepresented by the site, he had inadvertently committed plagiarism in delegating much of the research and writing of the book to a student. However, he maintained his insistence that the original ideas had been his and were copied by Lyotard in the first place based on transcripts distributed to his students during lectures he gave in the 1980s.
Only two days prior to his eventual resignation, he had rejected calls for such a course of action, telling French Jewish radio station Shalom Tuesday night it would constitution a “desertion” of his public position.
Having been appointed to the high profile post in 2009, his mandate was due to expire in 2016. Chief Rabbi of Paris Michel Guggenheim and Chief Rabbi Olivier Kaufman director of Rabbinic Seminary and Rabbi of the Place des Vosges Synagogue in the Le Marais district, will assume interim responsibility for the role while a replacement for rabbi Bernheim is selected.