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
po
Yes. We are not very far removed from Saudi Arabia. Stock up on your birth control now. They’re working on getting rid of that.
Except as SWM points out – if you’ve received the HPV vax.
Live and let live, especially in this society that claims to be the epitome of personal freedom AND the epitome of freedom from religiously driven politics.
Are we becoming Saudi Arabia now?
Sqeeky reminded me about the rise in oropharyngeal cancers. No more fellatio boys and girls!
docmadison – didn’t some actor claim his throat cancer came from having oral sex with his wife. Seems to cut both ways.
David, homosexual agenda is one of the right’s talking points, and it is always meant with condemnation. Actually, the words homosexual and the word agenda are usually uttered by people on the right, and the combination of those two generally precedes a frown and a suggestion that they (the homosexuals) are trying to force themselves upon us (the agenda).
po wrote: “David, homosexual agenda is one of the right’s talking points, and it is always meant with condemnation.”
I don’t see it that way at all. Did I use the phrase “homosexual agenda” in a pejorative sense when I used it in this thread?
Some activists have a reason not to “own” their agenda. They want society to just accept what they are advocating for without anyone pointing out that they are pushing it.
Do you acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr.’s Civil Rights’ agenda? If I talk about it, is it automatically going to be considered a pejorative phrase?
I’ve sat in meetings with homosexual activists talking about their agenda. How can they get all the bathrooms in the city to become unisex. Let’s have a gay pride parade, who is going to help. How can we get the city to accept the posters we want to put up. What lawsuits can we file? What plays and movies can we bring to change the way people think about us.
Then when I talk to others about THEIR agenda, out come the liberals… how dare you! What agenda? There is no homosexual agenda. All the homosexuals I know just want to be left alone. Some even claim that the change in society over the last few decades was natural and not the result of any propaganda campaign. Nobody wants to consider that they have been led to their beliefs by a group of people strategizing about how to change society in a way that advances their beliefs and practices. They have no problem talking about the Christian right’s agenda, or about the Koch brother’s agenda, but a homosexual agenda? No way. One must be a homophobe for even suggesting such foolishness. And to use the phrase is so pejorative. It is like using the N word for a black person.
Did you notice the recent fiasco in Houston where the openly gay mayor’s lawyers subpoenaed sermons from preachers to see what they were preaching about Houston’s bathroom bill law that allows members of the opposite sex into each other bathrooms? No agenda there either, right? If I mention the mayor’s gay agenda, that would be pejorative and always pejorative no matter how I talked about it. Is that really what you think?
One can get the HPV vaccine now and avoid those cancers including cervical cancer which is transmitted through heterosexual sex.
Mespo:
“No, I’m saying that religion purports to make one less susceptible to this deviancy through its teachings. if so, why isn’t one of its more prominent members, a presumed expert on the topic, positively affected by the experience. If he’s not, one explanation is that his religion has no affect at all on his behavior and hence its central claim that it is a good thing is undermined.
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That, Mespo, is the fallacy that you keep bringing in. Religion is only valuable based on how successful it is in making one stop doing bad? Okay, what about those who stopped doing bad spurred by religion? In your view, they just do not exist? And how do you know religion has no effect on his behavior? Can you tell us what the extent of his deviancy would be if his religious beliefs did not keep him in check?
Do you know how many people stopped committing crimes when they found faith? I know a few, do you know none?
To blame religion for its failings in making one fully moral is to thereby acknowledge that religion does indeed have the exclusivity on morality. If we agree that one can be moral while irreligious, shouldn’t it be possible one be immoral while religious?
Human beings are not fully anything, so being the pastor, the rabbi or the imam, the president, the lawyer or the congressman means only that one has an increased burden of moral behavior. This man may be the most moral person on earth when it comes to lying, stealing, cheating even…but his issue is voyeurism, and he is less equipped to fight it, or the urges are too strong to override his moral convictions.
And…God has nothing to do with this, and neither you who deny Him or those of us who affirm Him are equipped to deal with the issue of His Wisdom. At least those of us who feel Him, know something about Him that you, who doesn’t, well, doesn’t. To explain God to you is to explain motherhood to a teenage man. No matter how well she can explain it, he is not equipped to understand her.
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Mespo:
“These examples aren’t sexual repression. They are modes of sexual expression. Sexual repression is defined as a constriction of sexual desires that leads to sometimes undesirable consequences. Your examples are not undesirable in all circumstances or even any circumstances depending on the participants’ characteristics and their particular manner of expression.”
The general consensus is that all deviant sexual behavior is due to trauma or sexual repression, not necessarily religious, most of it non-religious, most of it from childhood before one is formed morally or psychologically. The rabbi’s voyeurism started in his youth, and became a fetish he never could shake, in spite of his faith and the practice of it. Your mother doesn’t have to tell you to stop masturbating because otherwise God would be angry with you, she can say that you would go blind otherwise.
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Mespo:
My logical premise is manifest that religion leads to undesirable outcomes when it intrudes on basic human psychology. In this instance, I suspect (and that’s the operative word) that our pious rabbi is manifesting the type of unacceptable behavior described herein based on a sexual dysfunction. One possible reason is his adherence to a faith that I understand (based on my conversations with its adherents) has many components of sexual repression. Based on that assumption, I postulated that his religious affiliation at last contributes to his predicament. Your argument which I’ve deconstructed here revolves not around logic but around your unshakable belief that religious beliefs are uniformly good and it’s just the weakness of the follower that makes them fail. This rabbi is no lukewarm follower. He’s an acknowledged expert. if we can’t deduce from the actions of experts, what can we deduce from?
Nope! You assumed from the start, because the man is a religious leader, that therefore he is defined fully by his religious position. You made the leap, which you do every single time religion is brought up, that whatever it is happened happened because of religion,not alongside, not in spite of.
The problem with deducing is that we tend to do it for the sake of our biases. Whatever deduction we come up with therefore is one that tends to confirm our biases. .And that was accentuated quite well by your Hitchens quote that religion poisons everything.
If i am blinded by religion, you surely are blinded by your anti-religious stance. So either we both see that and can discuss religion in terms of our acknowledged blindness, or you keep discussing it as if you were objective and I, fully subjective.
on 1, October 17, 2014 at 7:02 pmdavidm2575
Government policy should discourage heterosexual promiscuity, just like it should discourage homosexual behavior. This is one of many reasons that government originally became involved in marriage, but it has now lost its way because of the homosexual agenda.
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I’m curious, wouldn’t that make government expand yet more? What about small government principles? Also, just how would these government anti promiscuity policies be manifested, would they be laws? Would there be morality police to enforce these laws? What would the punishment be? Reeducation in a morality school?
Like facts matter at all to some people, but anyway:
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=119373
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
No danger of herpes, David?
Anal sex is to be discouraged, I suppose. Is oral sex aberrant?
Sqeeky doesn’t have children so we don’t have much to worry about there. But good lord. David has children.
David,
I read what you wrote, and are you suggesting that the person you quoted as being a Homosexual Activist?
You really have me confused. The question was, how did you come to the conclusion, based upon what he said that he was promoting the homosexual agenda. Is there some code that is spoken that I should be knowable about?
Linda L wrote: “are you suggesting that the person you quoted as being a Homosexual Activist?”
No. He parroted one of their talking points.
@DocMad
You said, “Useless to counter all your other homophobic craziness.”
Here, let me translate that for you!
You’re welcome!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky, Thanks a lot for your answer. I always appreciate you as one of the most forthright people here. There’s not an ounce of phony or pretense in you, kid.
Squeeky, Thank you for your thoughtful answer but we will have to disagree on this. You are kind of a rare young person with regards to this issue. Most young people of varying political persuasions seem to believe as I do that being gay is entirely normal.
Squeek
Check out Truvada.
Useless to counter all your other homophobic craziness.
@swm
I am not sure what the therapeutic guidelines should be. There hasn’t been a lot of study into the issue because the Gaystapo is dead set against anybody figuring out what went wrong with them, or figuring out how to fix it.
I am not aware that anybody other than a few psychologists have reported success in the area, and those seem to be the result of analysis into family dynamics and takes a while. I am more devoted to keeping alive the notion that homosexuality is not necessarily a binary choice, and that if sexuality exists on a continuum, that a person does have a lot of control and choice over where on that continuum they wish to reside.
The Gaystapo, OTOH, wishes to argue for a discreet choice. One is either gay,or straight, and there is no conversion possible. I suspect that some of this is to obtain unwarranted social benefits and preferential treatment IMHO.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@NickS
Porn is porn, and all of it is trash as far as I am concerned. Gay porn is worse if it leads people to have gay sex because gay sex tends to kill and sicken a lot more people. I mean, if your pool of possible sexual hookups contains 20% who have HIV, that is worse than playing Russian Roulette as far as the odds go. Worse, about half of those with HIV don’t know they have it. Even worser some of those that do have it and know it, don’t bother to tell their partners.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Squeeky Are you in favor of gay conversion therapy? It is part of your state’s republican platform.
SWM – I am in favor of whatever the psychiatric community was in favor of in 1960.
Squeeky, Do you hate gay porn more than hetero porn? This is not a ball busting question. I’m just curious. I always want to understand people’s views.