More on Rabbi Barry Freundel

[Karl Radl]

More on Rabbi Barry Freundel

I note with interest that since I last wrote about him: the plot in relation to Rabbi Barry Freundel's sex abuse scandal has thickened to the point where I think it necessary to point out some of the latest developments.

I argued in my recent article on Freundel (1) that the most interesting thing about his particular case is how close he was to the centre of the jewish establishment (and more particularly several movers and shakers in the Israel Lobby in the United States [indicated by the fact that the Rabbinical Council of America took no notice of several allegations of serious misconduct made against him]) as well as the fact that Freundel seems to have focused his sexual attentions on gentile converts to Judaism in particular (i.e. he believed non-jewish women were more sexually available than their jewish counterparts and also more easily manipulated to fulfill his sexual fantasies).

Additional evidence for this has been provided by the revelation from Haaretz that numerous female converts (not male ones mind) felt unable to continue the conversion process with Freundel and instead went to another local rabbi: one Joshua Maroof. (2)

In additional to the accounts of Freundel using converts as de facto sex slaves: it turns out that Freundel was also blackmailing and forcing them into semi-slavery by requiring them to do long-hours of unpaid labour (usually secretarial work) for him. (3)

Freundel's weapon of choice to ensure their cooperation?

The fact that he, as their rabbi (and until recently a very highly regarded one as well), was the person who alone could decide when they were ready to go through the conversion ritual and if they didn't obey: well then they couldn't possibly be ready to undergo the ritual. (4)

Other revelations regarding Freundel have also appeared in that he asked converts to have special 'practice runs' at performing ritual immersion (which is a central part of the conversion process [especially for women]) in the ritual pool (the Mikvah) in his presence, while he watched and filmed them for his own masturbatory amusement. (5)

Indeed tiny cameras and high capacity digital storage devices have since been discovered in significant quantities in Freundel's office in the Kesher Israel Synagogue, (6) which all goes to show that there are far more objections than just intellectual ones against women converting to Judaism.

After all: do you know what might be lurking in the Mikvah?

References

(1) http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot...bbi-barry.html
(2) http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/routine...emium-1.622952
(3) Ibid; http://www.jta.org/2014/10/21/news-o...kvah-peeping-1
(4) http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/routine...emium-1.622952
(5) http://www.jta.org/2014/10/21/news-o...kvah-peeping-1
(6) http://forward.com/articles/207947/t...l-s-towson-un/

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This was originally published at the following address: semiticcontroversies.blogspot.com/2014/10/more-on-rabbi-barry-freundel.html