D.C. Rabbi Pleads Guilty to Secretly Videotaping Women

By Keith L. Alexander and Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post
February 19, 2015

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/prosecutors-could-discuss-plea-deal-with-rabbi-barry-freundel/2015/02/18/08e43b56-b79d-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html

Rabbi Barry Freundel leaves the District Superior Court courthouse after his hearing was postponed. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Barry Freundel, a once-prominent D.C. Orthodox rabbi, admitted in court Thursday that he had secretly videotaped dozens of nude women as they prepared for a ritual bath.

In a hearing in D.C. Superior Court, Freundel pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism.

Prior to the hearing, D.C. prosecutors sent a note to victims saying that they wanted to “assure everyone that if this plea goes through, as victims of crime, you will have the right to submit a written as well as an oral victim impact statement at a sentencing hearing, expressing how this crime has impacted you.” Freundel’s sentencing hearing is set for May 15.

Freundel, 63, was arrested in October on charges that he videotaped six women in the nude while he was at Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown.

At a meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s Office last week, prosecutors said there may be as many as 150 women allegedly videotaped by the rabbi as they prepared for a private bath known as a mikvah, according to three people briefed on the investigation.

Rabbi Barry Freundel leaves the District Superior Court courthouse with his lawyer, Jeffrey Harris, after his hearing was postponed until the afternoon on Thursday. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

A mikvah is used most frequently as part of a purification ritual by people converting to Judaism and by observant Jewish women seven days after the end of their menstrual cycle. Prosecutors have alleged Freundel hid a camera in a clock radio in an area where the women changed for the baths.

The allegations against Freundel made news across global modern Orthodoxy — the more open part of Orthodox Judaism. He had for decades led Kesher Israel, one of the D.C. region’s most prominent Orthodox synagogues, spiritual home to well-known figures including Joseph Lieberman, Jack Lew and Leon Wieseltier.

In a statement, the Kesher Israel Board of Directors wrote that the “scope and duration of these horrible crimes are still hard to completely comprehend” and said therapists were available to those who wished to connect with them.

“Despite this great betrayal by Rabbi Freundel and our communal pain, we have seen a community that has come together and whose members have leaned on one another for support. As we move forward, we will continue to grow stronger and are committed to ensuring that our community remains a warm, welcoming, and safe place to gather, worship, and learn,” the board wrote.

Freundel was also a major figure in the bigger world of Orthodox conversions and was known among the Israeli rabbinate as a go-between in the sensitive realm of whom Israel considers legitimately “Jewish.” Freundel converted many dozens of people and, more than any other figure, had been the decider over who in the D.C. region could legitimately become an Orthodox Jew.

His arrest brought about a dramatic plunge from power. He lost key national and regional positions — as well as teaching gigs at places including Georgetown and Towson universities — and became a pariah in a community where he towered for decades.

The case also spotlighted fissures within modern Orthodoxy about topics including the role of women in places such as the mikvah — which is used regularly by observant women but governed largely by men — and the lack of accountability in a non-hierarchical faith. It also spurred debate about the treatment of converts in Judaism, some of whom spoke out after his arrest about their outsider status — very different from evangelistic faiths such as Islam and Christianity that are much more welcoming of converts.

The Rabbinical Council of America, the world’s largest modern Orthodox body and one in which Freundel once played a leadership role, announced after his arrest the creation of a new body to review the conversion system. Many advocates for gender equality wrote and spoke and held events about reforming the mikvah to give more authority to women, and some Orthodox rabbis pushed for reforms such as allowing women — not men — to oversee the dunking in the bath that is part of the conversion process.

Since Freundel’s arrest, prosecutors have twice asked a D.C. Superior Court judge for extensions at previous hearings as they continued to investigate the case. During earlier hearings, some people displayed signs outside of the courtroom urging District prosecutors not to offer Freundel a plea.

Freundel served as the rabbi at Kesher Israel for 25 years. The synagogue’s board fired Freundel in November and told him to leave the synagogue-owned home by Jan. 1, which he hasn’t, leading to another dispute.