Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Ultra-Orthodox British Mayoral Candidate In Reported Kinky Tryst

An Orthodox Jew running for mayor of the English city of Manchester met up for kinky sex with a woman he met on an online bondage website, the Daily Mail reported Saturday.

Shneur Odze, a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic group, is a member of the nationalist UK Independence Party. A rabbi, he is vocal about his religious beliefs, and has previously drawn press attention for refusing to shake hands with women.

Yet those beliefs did not keep the married rabbi from meeting a stranger for sex. According to the lurid account in the Daily Mail, Odze posted a dating profile on a social networking site for fetishists in which he posed as a priest.

“He had lied to me, by telling me he wasn’t married and he’s lying to the people he wants to represent by pretending to be something he’s not,” the woman he met on the site told the Daily Mail.

When confronted by the Mail at his home on Saturday morning, Odze said: “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

In mid-April, Odze apologized for burning a New Testament and posting a photo on Twitter.

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.