The Washington Jewish community has been rocked by allegations against leading Rabbi Barry Freundel of the Kesher Israel Congregation in Georgetown. Freundel is accused of using a secret camera to film Jewish woman engaged in the ritual bath known as a Mikva.
Freundel (shown above from a YouTube clip), is now criminally charged. He is viewed as one of the leading experts on Jewish law and ethics and “an intellectual giant” in the Jewish intellectual circles. Freundel heads the conversion committee of the Rabbinical Council of America and is vice president of the region’s Vaad, overseeing kosher dietary laws at Jewish institutions. He has a law degree and a doctorate and is affiliated with several area universities, including Georgetown University’s law school, the University of Maryland and Towson University, north of the Baltimore.
Ironically, the synagogue is part of Judaism’s modern Orthodox movement that has tried to accommodate the rise of women in leadership. His wife, Sharon Freundel is the leader of Kesher’s monthly women’s study and prayer group as well as the director of Hebrew and Judaic studies at the Jewish Primary Day School. She was in the courtroom with one of their three children for the arraignment.
His congregation includes U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and longtime U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman.
One alleged victim, Emma Shulevitz, 27, said that she was warned by Freundel not to move the digital clock setting on a sink — a curious concern but she said that Freundel was worried that it would be moved in any way. She said that Freundel said that Shulevitz should not hesitate to “take as many practice dunks as I needed.” However, a convert to Judaism, Shulevitz was not concerned until she read that congregants had accused Shulevitz of having a hidden camera in the clock.
The Mikva requires women to be naked and fully submerge under the water while reciting a blessing: “…asher kideshanu bemitzvotav vetzivanu al hatevilah, ….who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us on immersion.” Only one attending woman can be present who by Jewish law is charged with making sure that the woman is totally submerged.
Prosecutors say that a witness contacted police when Freundel was seen plugging in the clock in the shower area of the ritual bath. The witness said that Freundel said it was for ventilation. They identify the clock radio as the “Dream Machine” with a motion activated camera as well as a storage component. It is described as a “self-contained surveillance device.”
Freundel is charged with six counts of voyeurism and faces up to six years in prison. My guess is that we will see a superseding indictment with more charges to try to force a plea deal, which would seem likely. The greatest risk for his defense is that the prosecutors are still looking into whether some of the pictures showed girls. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Marcus Kurn stressed that “He violated the laws up in the heavens and down.”
The synagogue posted the following statement:
This is a painful moment for Kesher Israel Congregation and the entire Jewish community. At this challenging time, we draw strength from our faith, our tradition, and our fellow congregants.
Upon receiving information regarding potentially inappropriate activity, the Board of Directors quickly alerted the appropriate officials.
Throughout the investigation, we cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so.
After today’s arrest of Rabbi Dr. Barry Freundel, the Board of Directors suspended him without pay. As always, Kesher Israel will remain open as a place of learning, prayer, and community, including throughout the remainder of the Sukkot holiday.
This is a very difficult time for all of us. We respectfully request that our community be granted privacy. Any further questions should be directed to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Source: Washington Post
What exactly is a “Homosexual Agenda?” I have never heard of this before.
It is well known that family members are the biggest child sexual abusers.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water….
po:
“Mespo, what dogmatically repressed sexual feelings? He is a married man, and am sure he gets it a home as much as he might want.
What does being a peeping tom have to do with religion?
Are you saying that were he not a man of the cloth, he would be able to indulge himself?”
*********************
I have no idea what happens at his house, but I am saying that religion purports to improve and change the man. If it doesn’t among its most prominent and pious adherents, what is its utility? I believe like Reinhold Niebuhr that religion is good for good people and bad for bad people. Thus it adds very little to the analysis of “Why.” More likely his malady is a psychological dysfunction which as the article I cited notes derives from sexual repression. This really isn’t that hard to fathom once you put down the religious blinders and look to the basic psychology underpinning most sexual disorders.
mespo – Neibuhr also said governments could be amoral and immoral, but never moral. As for gay hedonism you missed out on the gay bathhouses of San Francisco. Ask your gay friends about them if they are old enough and if they enjoyed the pleasures there. I had two gay professors of mine who made an annual pilgrimage to the SF bathhouses.
Exactly Mespo, what would be so bad about a homosexual agenda? Are homosexuals bad, or hedonistic, sinful? I’m not understanding the negative attitude toward homosexuals. How would they influence a non homosexual to be homosexual? Why such worry about homosexuals?
I wonder how one can know who has a “skeptical eye” as opposed to someone who is simply suspicious of any information that may go against their own preconceived ideas? Is there a place that one goes that teaches them how to have a “skeptical eye”? Is this taught in church or school? What about if the information is accepted knowledge proven by evidence based knowledge? I am at a loss in understanding how it is due to having a “skeptical eye” when considering the comment Mespo quoted to be part of a “homosexual agenda”.
Annie – a skeptical eye is one that comes in the light of experience. Just because someone else accepts it as God’s truth does not mean you have to as well.
davidm:
What is the homosexual agenda exactly and why is it bad? Even the RCC is accepting of the lifestyle while more conservatives — like you — are not. What exactly about homosexuality threatens you?
Pogo:
“Pederasty and pedophilia are much more common among US public school teachers. ”
******************
I have no idea what “much more common” means to you, but we know that:
“Nearly all the offenders in sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were male (96%).”
– Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement, 7/00, NCJ 182990, U.S. Department of Justice
and
“In 2007–08, some 76 percent of public school teachers were female, 44 percent were under age 40, and 52 percent had a master’s or higher degree.”
-National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
That leaves a population of about 900.000 male teachers based on the entire 3.7 million public school teachers in the US. There are about 40,000 priests in the RCC.
So if you mean there are more instances of sexual abuse among the population of male teachers versus Catholic priests you’re probably right in raw number terms but I have no stats to back that up. If you mean as percentage of the population, I’ll bet you dinner you’re not right. I bet the percentage is about the same.
The facts are that child sexual abuse of the reported variety exists at about the same rate throughout most institutions though no comparative study hasever been done between them and the RCC. As for unreported abuse, no one knows since it is unreported.
The infamy of the RCC is the vast cover-up and stonewalling of allegations and of actual instances of abuse. There is no doubt the church engaged in the worst form of “protecting the perp at the expense of the victim” as the current and previous Popes have admitted.
IT’S ANTISEMITISM!
first…
Mespo:
“The real issue is how those dogmatically repressed sexual feelings manifest themselves in real life. I suspect our rabbi is a perfectly likable guy outside of his sexual dysfunction but his actions — which can be explained psychologically — are beyond the pale and require jail time.
Hitchens may have been onto something when he said “religion poisons everything.” Even the psyches of the most pious adherents, it seems.”
Mespo, what dogmatically repressed sexual feelings? He is a married man, and am sure he gets it a home as much as he might want.
What does being a peeping tom have to do with religion?
Are you saying that were he not a man of the cloth, he would be able to indulge himself?
He is a man with deviant sexual urges, like most men, and some do a better job controlling those urges than others. His religion plays a role solely in the fact that he is a leader in his church, and as such is expected to exert a higher level of control over his urges, but not to feel them.
Hitchens may be right, but not in this case. Take the man out of the religious and come back at me. If he were impotent or gay, his deviancy (clinical) might not reveal itself at all, or it would be in a different form. Were he a woman, she might be spying on boy, and were he a fetishist, he might be spying on amputees or dominatrixes.
Squeeky – you’ll need to collect your Irish Poems over time and collate them into a book. It’ll sell (or at least be downloaded illegally) like wildfire!
Annie:
if you see ghosts (holy and otherwise) wherever you look can seeing invisible agenda’s be so different? The bottom line is that repressed sexual urges do directly contribute to sexual dysfunction. I didn’t think there was really any controversy in that statement. Here’s some pretty basic horn-book stuff on the topic. The piece, written by psychologist Christopher Ryan starts like this:
Nothing inspires murderous mayhem in human beings more reliably than sexual repression. Denied food, water, or freedom of movement, people will get desperate and some may lash out at what they perceive as the source of their problems, albeit in a weakened state. But if expression of sexuality is thwarted, the human psyche tends to grow twisted into grotesque, enraged perversions of desire.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-dawn/201004/sexual-repression-the-malady-considers-itself-the-remedy
mespo wrote: “I didn’t think there was really any controversy in that statement.”
It is standard psychology rhetoric, but it is one of those things often repeated and accepted without a skeptical eye. The literature of those promoting the homosexual agenda have latched onto the sexual repression explanation and made it even more popular. All I ask is, where is the evidence that sexual repression leads to these crimes.
It makes much more sense that hedonistic propaganda, especially one that says that even homosexual behavior is sexually moral, is more likely the culprit. This is the reason many religions warn against watching television and exposing oneself to temptation because if you feed your mind all this sexual hedonism, eventually you come to accept it as normal and good.
dbq:
I agree! KD does a great version. Have you ever heard the Jeff Buckley version??? I like that one, too.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl reporter
Paul Schulte, you have had a comment deleted for the same reasons stated in the other thread involving personal comments and our civility rule.
I don’t see anything resembling a “homosexual agenda” in Mespo’s comment you quoted David.
@ Sqeeky
One of my very favorite Leonard Cohen songs. K.D. Lang does a fabulous rendition of this.
What led you to the conclusion that the statement you quoted above leads to the homosexual agenda? Your logic is fatally flawed if that’s your conclusion.
I do artwork and some of the best in the business have an agenda, just because some of them live an alternative lifestyle does not mean they have an agenda.
Oh my goodness! The world is just full of a bunch of dirty old men. Well, that is why God made Irish Poems!
Bath Shiva???
An Irish Poem by Squeeky Fromm
There once was a Peeping Tom Jew,
Who had him a room with a view.
Via digital clock,
He digit-ed his c–k,
Oy vey!, What a storm did he brew!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Note 1.Note 1. Since most people are Biblically illiterate nowadays, I thought I should maybe do a footnote.The title is a pun on Bathsheba, about who wiki says:
Shiva, is the Jewish 7 day mourning period.
FWIW, if you like Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah, the story of Bathsheba is found in the second verse, mixed in with a little Delilah, for effect:
Even with the huge pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church that wen on for years and years, someone can actually assert that public schools have had or have a higher degree of pederasty and pedophilia? Any citations on that with statistics?
Annie wrote: “… someone can actually assert that public schools have had or have a higher degree of pederasty and pedophilia? Any citations on that with statistics?”
“The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
“As the National Catholic Register’s reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state’s entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.”
“Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government’s discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/has-media-ignored-sex-abuse-in-school/