WASHINGTON (DC)
The Jewish Daily Forward
By Bethany Mandel
Not unsurprisingly, given that I’m a victim, I’ve read almost everything printed about the Barry Freundel case since it first broke back in October. I have made myself available for interviews not because I want to be known as the woman whose rabbi taped her naked, but because I think it’s important for reporters to understand the nuances of Orthodox Judaism, of conversion, of the community in Washington D.C.
Stories like these are “bad news for the Jews,” and it’s important to for the Jewish community to be clear that things like this happen not because of inherent issues with Judaism, but due to the flaws of some human beings who practice it.
It was with extreme frustration that I read Jay Michaelson’s latest column in this very paper on the case. Michaelson seems to believe that prominent members in the Kesher community should have seen Freundel’s recently exposed flaws more clearly.
He asks, “How can some of our community’s leading (if self-appointed) cultural sages lionize and valorize someone who, in fact, they didn’t really know that well?”
Juxtapose this question with a statement from Michaelson’s last column on Freundel (in which he blamed “burnout” for Freundel’s transgressions) “Those of us who knew, or thought we knew, Rabbi Barry Freundel — recently arrested for spying on women in the mikveh, with a mountain of evidence suggesting his guilt — are still in shock. As much as I disagreed with many of his halachic positions, I always thought he was one of the good rabbis, the ethical ones.”
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