WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
Alarm grows over news that rabbi accused of voyeurism took students to ritual bath
By Peter Hermann October 21
Police searched a D.C. rabbi’s office at Towson University on Tuesday as students and campus officials expressed growing alarm over news that the rabbi, who was a professor there, took students on field trips to his Georgetown synagogue and invited them to use a ritual bath where he is now accused of secretly recording women.
Students in two of Barry Freundel’s religious classes said on Tuesday that the professor who replaced the suspended rabbi let students vent and that in back-to-back sessions, several said they either had been invited to shed their clothes and use the bath, called a mikvah, and had declined, or knew classmates who had participated.
“It was very emotional, confusing, frustrating,” said Jenna Taylor, a 22-year-old majoring in health-care management, describing her class on faith perspectives in medical history now being taught by Avram Reisner, a rabbi and theologian from the Baltimore area. Freundel began teaching at the school in 1989.
A woman who had helped Freundel with the ritual bath from late 2013 through May said she assisted at least a half-dozen Towson University students as they showered and immersed themselves in the mikvah as part of the field trips. The woman said she is in contact with D.C. police.
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