Rabbi resigns after inquiry testimony

The rabbi who told a child abuse royal commission there should be more leniency for repentant pedophiles has resigned from an organisation that runs Jewish schools.

Rabbi Yosef Feldman has issued an apology for comments during the Melbourne hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Rabbi Feldman told the commission that, about the time he was informed of a child abuse allegation in 2002, he "did not know ... as a fact" that an adult touching a child's genitals could be a crime.

In a later exchange, Rabbi Feldman told the hearings pedophiles who can show they had not offended in decades deserved more leniency before the courts.

He had now resigned as a director of The Yeshiva Centre, including his administrative responsibilities, he said in a statement to Jewish news service J-Wire on Wednesday.

"I apologise to anyone in the Rabbinate, the Jewish community and the wider Australian community who may have been embarrassed or ashamed by my views, words, understandings, recordings or emails about child sexual abuse or any other matter," Rabbi Feldman said.

He said he was sorry his views had increased the hurt for child abuse victims, and he would undertake training on how to identify and report child abuse.

There are Yeshiva schools in Melbourne and Sydney, and the royal commission is investigating their response to sexual abuse of several students in the 1980s and 1990s.