WASHINGTON (RNS) New allegations against a prominent Washington rabbi involve him bringing students from his class at a Maryland university to his synagogue’s ritual bath, the same place where prosecutors say he spied on naked congregants.
An ancient mikvah in Israel.
Prosecutors charged Rabbi Barry Freundel on Oct. 14 with spying on six women at Kesher Israel synagogue, which he has led since 1989. Now, students at Towson University near Baltimore say Freundel presented a field trip to a synagogue as a rare opportunity to experience a ritual bath, or mikvah.
School officials worry that the students had been brought there so he could watch them undress through a hidden camera.
“He is not allowed on campus,” Towson University spokesman Ray Feldmann said of Freundel.
Freundel has pleaded not guilty and has been suspended without pay from his Georgetown congregation.
There is nothing wrong with a religious studies professor inviting his students to visit his synagogue, Feldmann continued. “But if there was more than that to that trip, including the offer of a mikvah bath, then of course that’s not appropriate.”
The Washington Post on Wednesday (Oct. 22) first reported the student trips to the mikvah and said police had searched Freundel’s Towson office. Freundel also taught at Georgetown University School of Law and the University of Maryland, among other universities. He is considered an expert on medical ethics.
Freundel, 62, has been suspended from Towson, where he is a tenured professor in the department of philosophy and religious studies and has taught since 2009.
Kesher Israel (center), located at 2801 N St. NW, in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. The synagogue is a contributing property to the Georgetown Historic District, a National Historic Landmark.
Freundel’s Modern Orthodox congregation is the spiritual home of former Sen. Joseph Lieberman and U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, among a number of other prominent Jewish figures in the nation’s capital.
Freundel has also been suspended from the Rabbinical Council of America, the nation’s largest group of Orthodox rabbis, where he served on the conversions committee. In almost all streams of Judaism, conversions are completed with an immersion in the mikvah.
At the mikvah at Kesher Israel last week, D.C. police say they found a camera hidden in the room where women shower before they enter the ritual bath, which is like a small pool and is supposed to be a private, sacred space. Typically, a woman is alone as she prepares for the mikvah and is accompanied by a female witness when she enters the mikvah.
In Orthodox Judaism, immersion in a mikvah is most commonly the practice of married women, who immerse themselves seven days after the end of their menstrual periods to mark a transition into a different spiritual state.
It is “very unusual” for non-Jews to use a mikvah, said Rabbi Leonard Matanky, head of the Rabbinical Council. “But it doesn’t change the status of the mikvah and it doesn’t change the status of the non-Jew,” he said.
Before Freundel’s arrest last week, Matanky’s group had investigated Freundel on accusations of improprieties involving women seeking conversion to Judaism, a process that can take more than a year. But the RCA determined at the time that it did not have enough evidence to remove Freundel from the RCA or from his position on the conversions committee.
KRE END MARKOE