WASHINGTON (DC)
The Daily Beast
Ben Jacobs
At one of the most influential synagogues in Washington, a rabbi secretly taped dozens of women as they undressed for a ritual bath. Now he’s on trial, and his victims are speaking.
Converting to Judaism is a long, difficult process but for hundreds of would-be converts Rabbi Bernard “Barry” Freundel helped ease the path. Freundel was a leading rabbi who presided over Kesher Israel, one of the most influential synagogues in Washington, D.C. with congregants like Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and former Senator Joe Lieberman. He helped draft conversion policies followed by rabbis across the United States. But Freundel wasn’t just ministering to many of those he converted. He was victimizing them too.
On Thursday, Freundel pled guilty to 52 misdemeanor counts of voyeurism in D.C. Superior Court for videotaping young women when they were about to complete the conversion process by immersing themselves in a Jewish ritual bath known as a mikvah. Court documents describe how Freundel victimized well over a hundred women by using different video cameras hidden in an adjacent bathroom to tape women from multiple angles as they showered and undressed before the ceremony. One camera had even been hidden inside a clock radio. Each individual count of voyeurism carries a possible sentence of up to a year in jail. As a result, the 63-year-old rabbi could face imprisonment for the rest of his life.
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