WASHINGTON (DC)
Washingtonian
By Harry Jaffe on June 21, 2016
Barry Freundel, the former rabbi of Georgetown’s Kesher Israel synagogue who pleaded guilty last year to secretly filming a women’s changing room at a ritual Jewish bath, was back in court Tuesday appealing his jail sentence. Freundel argued in DC’s Court of Appeals that the six-and-a-half year sentence he received last year on a slew of voyeurism charges was illegal and should be reduced to less than a year.
Freundel was sentenced in May 2015 on 52 counts, one each for the 52 women he admitted to videotaping without their permission before and after they prepared for the mikvah, a dunk in a bath that Orthodox Jewish women use for ritual cleansing and conversion. Freundel argued that the judge should have sentenced him for a single count of voyeurism, which would carry a one-year jail term.
Freundel’s lawyers made the same argument last May before DC Superior Court Judge Geoffrey Alprin, who heard the case and delivered the sentence. Alprin denied the motion to reduce the sentence. Freundel appealed.
The rabbi’s downfall, which will continue into next year as his victims pursue a civil case against him, has shattered DC’s Orthodox Jewish community. From humble origins in Brooklyn, Freundel, 65, became an authority in modern orthodoxy and rabbi to Kesher Israel, one of the most prominent synagogues in the District. He taught at Georgetown and Towson Universities, advised the White House on spiritual matters and became the country’s chief authority on Orthodox conversion.
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