Rabbi Barry Freundel during morning prayers at Kesher Israel in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 10, 2014. Photo by Lloyd Wolf
WASHINGTON (RNS) A D.C. Superior Court judge on Friday (May 15) sentenced a prominent Orthodox rabbi to nearly 6 1/2 years in prison for secretly videotaping dozens of naked women in a mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath.
Rabbi Barry Freundel pleaded guilty in February to 52 counts of voyeurism, one for each of the 52 women who prosecutors said were the victims of Freundel’s spying with a hidden camera during the three years for which the statute of limitations applies.
“The defendant repeatedly and seriously violated the trust and abused his power,” Judge Geoffrey Alprin said Friday, according to news reports. “The conduct is despicable. There is no justification. The defendant lured victims to the mikvah and secretly recorded them undressed without their knowledge or permission.”
Freundel’s attorney had asked for a sentence of community service, saying that the rabbi’s career and reputation had been destroyed and that he was in intensive therapy to combat his voyeurism. Prosecutors, meanwhile, had asked for 17 years behind bars.
Before his sentencing, more than a dozen victims excoriated Freundel in the courtroom for taking advantage of their trust to spy on them as they prepared for immersion in the mikvah affiliated with Kesher Israel, the Georgetown synagogue Freundel led for 25 years. It is a spiritual home for Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and former Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.
Freundel said he was “sorry,” “horrified” and “disgraced” at the hearing. He has lost his position both at Kesher Israel and also with rabbinic organizations.
Freundel, 63, had enjoyed a reputation for brilliant scholarship and tireless advocacy for converts to Judaism. News of his transgressions rocked the Jewish world last year and led to formal and informal discussions about the treatment of women within Orthodox Judaism — the most traditional stream of Judaism — though Kesher was known for its modernist take on Orthodoxy.
Many within the community also asked whether their leadership was more interested in protecting the rabbi’s reputation than following up on reports of Freundel’s inappropriate behavior.
After synagogue staff discovered the hidden camera and called police last fall, news of Freundel’s secret videos prompted dozens of women, including non-Jewish students of Freundel’s at several D.C.-area universities, to speak about how he had encouraged them to use his synagogue’s mikvah for nontraditional reasons.
Jewish women who converted under Freundel’s supervision talked about how he had advised them to do “practice” dunks before their conversions. And non-Jewish students learning about mikvah in his classes at local university revealed in recent months that Freundel had brought them to the mikvah and encouraged them to give it a try.
Far more than 52 women had been recorded by Freundel as they prepared to immerse in the mikvah, but incidents involving about 100 more women fell outside the statute of limitations.
KRE/MG END MARKOE