NEW YORK
The Jewish Week
11/05/14
Hannah Dreyfus
Staff Writer
Last Thursday night, a meeting at Drisha Institute, a local program of advanced Jewish textual study for women, attracted an eclectic crowd of 45 community members, clergymen and women rabbinical students. The topic du jour was boundaries on rabbinic authority, and the mood was upbeat.
“There’s been an implosion in our community thanks to one bad egg,” said one attendee, referring to Rabbi Barry Freundel, the Orthodox rabbi from Washington, D.C., who allegedly planted video cameras in the local mikvah to watch women bathe in the nude. He asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.
The scandal has prompted a whirlwind of responses and already led to what some are calling unprecedented changes. The most significant one is a decision by the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), the largest council of Orthodox rabbis worldwide, which has established a committee to review its conversion process. It consists of six men and five women whose professions include an attorney, educator, psychotherapist and a Yoetzet Halacha, who advises women on family purity laws.
The change represents the largest appointment of women to an RCA committee in the group’s 80-year history, according to Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, a former RCA president and rabbi in Englewood, N.J., who will chair the committee. The group will review the Beit Din of America’s Geirus Protocol and Standards (GPS), which Rabbi Freundel played a key role in creating, and will suggest safeguards against possible future abuses.
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