New Jersey Rabbi Arrested In Teen Prostitution Sting

Rabbi Aryeh Goodman posing with police officers in an undated photograph. Image by Failed Messiah

By Ari Feldman February 21, 2018

Rabbi Aryeh Goodman Image by Jewish Community Watch

A New Jersey rabbi who reportedly once worked a Chabad center turned himself in on charges that he had sex with a minor who was forced into prostitution, the New York Post reported.

Rabbi Ayreh Goodman, 35, paid to have sex with the 17-year-old girl, who was held at a motel in East Brunswick, New Jersey. Goodman was reportedly at one time the director of Chabad East Brunswick. A statement released Monday by the Rabbinical College of America indicated that Goodman has no current affiliation with Chabad.

“The Chabad House of Rutgers has not affiliation with the individual charged nor any knowledge of the incident in question,” a spokesperson for Chabad House of Rutgers told MyCentralNewJersey.com.

On Monday, the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office released a statement saying that Goodman has no current affiliation with Chabad.

Police said that Goodman was one of some 30 men who paid two Bronx residents to have sex with the minor, both of whom were arrested. Goodman turned himself in to authorities earlier this month.

Goodman is registered as a Tier 3 sex offender, a designation he received in 2015 after he was convicted on two counts of indecent assault against minors. Goodman sexually assaulted two 13-year-old boys at Camp Menachem, an ultra-Orthodox summer camp where he was a counselor. The assaults reportedly occurred in 2001.

Update, February 21 — This article has been updated to reflect statements from RCA and Chabad House of Rutgers that Goodman has no affiliation with Goodman.

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

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.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO