Rabbinical Council to Add a Role for Women in Wake of Voyeurism Scandal

By Michael Paulson
New York Times
October 20, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/us/rabbinical-council-to-add-a-role-for-women-in-wake-of-voyeurism-scandal.html?_r=1

A week after a Washington rabbi was charged with videotaping women converting to Judaism as they disrobed for ritual baths, the national association of modern Orthodox rabbis said Monday that it would require the appointment of ombudswomen to handle any concerns from women about the conversion process.

The association, the Rabbinical Council of America, is eager to contain the damage from the arrest of Rabbi Barry Freundel, a prominent modern Orthodox rabbi who served on the council’s executive committee and, from 2006 to 2013, presided over its committee on conversions. Rabbi Freundel had been considered an advocate for women’s rights in Orthodox Judaism. The local United States attorney’s office has charged him with using a camera concealed in a clock radio to film women as they showered or changed for immersion in the ritual bath, called a mikvah.

Continue reading the main story

RELATED COVERAGE

Prominent Rabbi Arrested on a Charge of VoyeurismOCT. 14, 2014

The rabbinical council said Monday that it would not only appoint ombudswomen for each regional tribunal of rabbis overseeing conversions, but would also name a commission, that would include women as members, to recommend ways to prevent abuses of the conversion process.

Women converting to Judaism are required to immerse themselves in a mikvah; Rabbi Freundel, in an unusual step, apparently persuaded some women to take “practice dunks” in the mikvah before the formal immersion.

After some commentators had questioned whether conversions performed by Rabbi Freundel were still valid, the rabbinical council said Monday that they were. But Israeli media reported that the chief rabbinate there was conducting its own review of that question.

Rabbi Freundel was arrested last Tuesday, and charged with six counts of voyeurism, which is a misdemeanor; he pleaded not guilty at a court appearance the next day. He has been suspended by the rabbinical council from membership, leadership and “all activities related to conversion.”

The rabbinical council said that, although it had been unaware of allegations about mikvah misconduct, it had twice previously received allegations of other concerns about Rabbi Freundel. In a statement Monday, the council said that in 2012 some candidates for conversion to Judaism alleged that Rabbi Freundel required them to perform clerical work for him and to donate money. The council said it had determined that conduct to be inappropriate, and that the rabbi had informed his synagogue leadership of the issue.

Then, in 2013, the council said, an anonymous caller had accused Rabbi Freundel of sharing a sleeper car on a train trip to Chicago with a woman who was not his wife. Rabbi Freundel denied the allegation, and the council did not inform the synagogue because it determined the allegation to be “unsubstantiated innuendo.”

Rabbi Freundel has since 1989 been the spiritual leader of Kesher Israel, a synagogue in Washington with several prominent members. He is now suspended without pay. Over the weekend, the synagogue released a speech by its president, Elanit Jakabovics, who said, “There are no words to describe the shock, devastation and heartbreak we are all feeling at this moment.”

Continue reading the main story

“Mikvah is an intensely sacred, private ritual space,” she added. “It is also supposed to be a sanctuary — a space of inviolable intimacy and privacy, where we go to cleanse ourselves and reckon with ourselves and our aspirations to a right Jewish life. But these sacred spaces — our shul and our mikvah — have now been tarnished. Our inviolability has been violated. I am a woman: I know it could have been me.”

The allegations against Rabbi Freundel have already prompted a broader discussion about security at mikvahs around the country, according to Sharon Weiss-Greenberg, the executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance?. Dr. Weiss-Greenberg said her organization was encouraged by the steps taken by the rabbinical council, but that “a mikvah is a place where many people already feel very vulnerable” and that women “want to make sure they can get back to that place where there’s trust.”

“The positive coming out of this is that all mikvahs are re-evaluating safety procedures,” she said. “We need to make sure bad apples cannot hold such power and be granted access.”

Kesher Israel scheduled a community meeting Monday night with law enforcement and social services to talk about the investigation.