Barry Freundel
Bernard "Barry" Freundel is an American former rabbi. The leader of Kesher Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., from 1989 until 2014, Freundel was regarded as "a brilliant scholar," a "profound" orator and an authority in several areas of halakha, including eruvim, which he assisted in constructing in a number of cities, including Washington.
Freundel's career came to a sudden end in October 2014 when he was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia and charged with committing voyeurism of several women in a mikveh. Kesher Israel immediately suspended him without pay and later notified the congregants that he had been fired. Similarly, he was also suspended from membership in the Vaad and the Rabbinical Council of America, the main professional association for Modern Orthodox rabbis in the United States. He also was suspended from his multiple academic positions. He was assistant professor of rabbinics at Baltimore Hebrew University, where he was the rabbinic studies graduate program adviser, associate professor at Towson University and adjunct lecturer at the Georgetown University Law Center. Towson University immediately opened its own administrative review of Freundel's conduct with students, while Georgetown University began its own investigation as well.
Freundel ultimately pleaded guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism and was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison and fined $13,000. On August 28, 2018, the $100 million class action lawsuit which had been brought on behalf of the victims against Freundel and the organizations he was associated with was dropped in lieu of a settlement of $14.25 million, to be paid by the insurance of the parties named in the suit. He was expected to be released on August 21, 2020, but was released early on April 1, 2020, due to COVID-19.
Education
Freundel earned a Bachelor of Science at Yeshiva College with a double major in chemistry and physics, along with a concurrent B.S. from the Erna Michael College of Hebraic Studies. He received a master's degree in Talmudic studies from the Bernard Revel Graduate School and his semikhah from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, part of Yeshiva University. He earned his Ph.D. at the Baltimore Hebrew University.Career
Freundel served congregations in Great Neck, New York, Norwalk, Connecticut and Yonkers, New York before assuming the pulpit at Kesher Israel, a prestigious Washington synagogue located in the capital's exclusive Georgetown neighborhood, whose members have included Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress.Freundel had been an adjunct at a number of universities in the past, including American University and the University of Maryland, College Park.
As a writer and lecturer, Freundel addressed topics ranging from environmentalism to Jewish medical ethics. He had served as a visiting scholar at Princeton, Yale and Cornell and guest lecturer at Columbia and the University of Chicago. Due to his congregation's proximity to Georgetown University, he lectured at that institution with particular frequency. Similarly, his proximity to Capitol Hill had facilitated his participation in governmental affairs as a consultant and commentator.
Freundel served as consultant to the Ethics Review Board of the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health and consultant to the United States Presidential Commission on Cloning.
In the past, he had served as pre-rabbinics advisor and assistant director of synagogue services at Yeshiva University, as a member of Yeshiva University's Rabbinic Alumni Association Executive Committee, and as a vice-president of the RCA, whose conversion committee he headed.
Freundel appeared on the episode of Da Ali G Show entitled "War."
Voyeurism charges and conviction
Arrest, arraignment and investigation
On October 14, 2014, police took Freundel from his synagogue-owned residence in handcuffs and, pursuant to a search warrant, removed computers and other items from the premises. One day later, Freundel was arraigned and charged with six counts of voyeurism, a misdemeanor, for allegedly filming women while they were undressing before immersing themselves in the National Capital Mikvah, an independent facility that Freundel was instrumental in founding in 2005. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Marcus Kurn told the judge that Freundel "violated the laws up in the heavens and down," but he pleaded not guilty to these initial charges and was released on his own recognizance under condition that he stay away from and have no contact with the synagogue and the mikvah, which are located in adjacent buildings.The police acted after the National Capital Mikvah's lay leadership handed them a suspicious clock radio the rabbi had placed in the shower room at the mikvah, a ritual bath that is used as part of the conversion ritual, by married Orthodox women following menstruation and childbirth and by some Orthodox men before the onset of the Sabbath and major Jewish holidays. "Upon receiving information regarding potentially inappropriate activity, the Board of Directors quickly alerted the appropriate officials," it noted in a statement published upon Freundel's arrest and suspension. "Throughout the investigation, we cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so." A witness told the police that Freundel was observed placing the clock radio in the mikvah shower room and, when he was discovered doing so, he claimed that he was repairing the ventilation. A police inspection of the clock radio found that it contained a video camera whose memory revealed surreptitious recordings of six different women changing — and moving images of Freundel himself setting up the camera. Detectives said that as many as 200 women could have been recorded without their knowledge. A forensic examination determined that several media storage devices found in Freundel's home contained copies of videos backed up from the camera's memory card.
According to a search warrant, Freundel may not only have set up spying and recording devices at his synagogue and at the mikvah, but also at Towson University. A search of Freundel's Towson office revealed several small cameras hidden in everyday items, multiple computer storage devices, and a list of handwritten names.
On November 12, district prosecutors told a D.C. Superior Court judge they needed more time to investigate and determine if there were additional victims. The court was informed that a web site was being created in order to reach other victims. On January 16, 2015, the prosecution requested another one-month delay to complete their review of all the video evidence obtained from computers seized by police in the hope to identify additional victims.
Reactions
"We are appalled by the accusations against Rabbi Barry Freundel and wish to stress that the acts attributed to him are atrocious and strictly against Jewish law," a spokesman for the Chief Rabbinate of Israel stated.The day Freundel was arrested, the president of the RCA, Rabbi Leonard Matanky, revealed that the Council investigated allegations earlier in the year that related to "ethical issues that came up regarding an issue with a woman," but no action was taken. That may have been a reference to overnight train rides Freundel booked in May 2013 to and from Chicago, where he supposedly was to "conduct research." It later transpired that he had traveled on both legs of the round-trip journey with a woman who was not his wife, with whom he shared a private sleeping berth.
On October 20, the RCA issued a press release stating that it discovered in 2012 that Freundel had coerced conversion candidates into performing clerical work at his home and contributing money to his rabbinic court. The RCA also was able to confirm that he shared a checking account with a conversion candidate. At the time the RCA did not view these activities as rising to the level that would require Freundel's suspension, but did suspend him once he was arrested and, together with its affiliated Beth Din of America, launched its own investigation led by Allen Fagin, the chief professional at the Orthodox Union, and Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA-Federation of New York.
Under the leadership of the synagogue's president, Elanit Jakobovic, the synagogue directed all its attention to the victims of his actions by arranging a support group led by a licensed psychologist and consultations with therapists, as well as organizing a closed-to-the-media community meeting with Cathy L. Lanier, Washington's chief of police. Two days after Freundel's arrest and suspension, Jakabovics addressed a packed synagogue at Shemini Atzeret services, declaring: "These sacred spaces — our shul and our mikvah — have now been tarnished. Our inviolability has been violated. Kesher and the mikvah will be a safe place again."
Freundel's arrest also sparked widespread debate about how mikvaot should be supervised, administered and protected from predators. Bethany Mandel, a writer who was converted by Freundel proposed a ten-point "Bill of Rights" for converts. She was soon named, together with another female convert, to a new RCA committee charged with reviewing the entire conversion process, and was later chosen as one of The Forward 50 in recognition of her initiative. Rabbanit Chana Henkin, the founder and head of Nishmat, the Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies for Women in Jerusalem, called for a new generation of religiously educated women to take control of the mikvaot.
Lawsuits
On December 2, 2014, a student at Georgetown University Law Center, where Freundel taught a seminar on Jewish law, filed a lawsuit against Kesher Israel Congregation, Georgetown University and the National Capital Mikvah. The unnamed student had written a term paper on the mikvah, which received an "A" from Freundel, who had convinced her to immerse herself at the mikvah on two occasions, both of which she presumes he filmed. She sought class action status and claimed that the defendants turned a blind eye and failed in their responsibility to protect students from the rabbi, whose behavior she claimed was becoming ever more bizarre, and who was mistreating women subjected to his authority. On December 18, a student at Towson University identified only as "Stephanie" added her name to the lawsuit, claiming that Freundel encouraged her to take a "practice dunk" in the mikvah as part of her studies, even though she was not Jewish and had no interest in converting. She was joined by Emma Shulevitz, a woman who had been converting to Judaism under Freundel's auspices and who had likewise been encouraged by him to take a "practice dunk," an anomaly that he said would help prevent any misstep on the day of the conversion. They added the RCA as a defendant as well.The plaintiffs claimed that the RCA and Freundel's synagogue were aware of his inappropriate conduct before the cameras were discovered in the ritual bath he supervised. They charged that the RCA and Kesher Israel should have removed Freundel from his positions of authority and that his alarming actions included inviting non-Jewish women to use the mikvah and inventing and encouraging the use of "practice dunks." In response, RCA issued the following statement: "The RCA has conducted itself appropriately and is taking important steps to improve its conversion protocols. We will defend ourselves vigorously in this matter." Kesher Israel responded with this statement: "Kesher Israel's leadership is deeply concerned about the harm caused by Rabbi Freundel's actions — of which we did not and could not have known — and for the personal welfare of all those individuals who may have been violated. The lawsuits that were recently filed are completely without merit. Our energies remain focused on working towards healing our community and building a vibrant future for Kesher Israel."
In 2015, a congregant brought lawsuit against Freundel for allegedly transferring tens of thousands of dollars from her personal bank account into accounts of his own and in name of some of his children. She claimed she gave Freundel power of attorney when she traveled abroad and asked him to ensure should anything happen to her, she would have a Jewish burial. She also believed he used her apartment as a safehouse where he filmed at least one victim of domestic violence. While she was preparing an appeal in this litigation, she died and there was no one to continue the litigation on behalf of her estate. Right before her death, she was distraught that the rabbi's wife claimed in a deposition that she barely knew her, when she viewed the Freundels as her closest family.
Lawsuits against Freundel and defendants began to gain steam in June 2016, when the Superior Court of the District of Columbia issued an order outlining the consolidation of claims against Freundel. Sanford Heisler, LLP was appointed interim class counsel by the court, and co-counseled with the D.C. law firm of Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel, P.C., which filed one of the first class action lawsuits against Freundel, Kesher Israel, the National Capital Mikvah, and the Rabbinical Council of America in December 2014. On August 16, 2016, the lawsuit was amended to add an additional defendant, the Beth Din of America.
On October 22, 2018, the D.C. Superior Court approved a $14.25 million class action settlement. According to the terms of the finalized settlement, women identified as having been videotaped by Freundel were entitled a base payment of $25,000. A $2,500 base payment was available to women who used the mikvah but were not confirmed as having been videotaped, and who suffered emotional distress after learning of Freundel's actions. Class members were also entitled to supplemental payment based on their individual experiences.