Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Jewish Frat Leader Charged With Attempted Rape, Arrested On Way To Birthright

A former president of a Jewish fraternity at Temple University in Philadelphia was charged with attempting to commit rape and was arrested at the airport on his way to Israel for a Birthright trip, the Jewish Exponent reported.

Ari Goldstein, 21, was reportedly taken into custody on May 13 at Boston Logan International Airport and also charged with indecent assault, simple assault, unlawful restraint and false imprisonment.

Goldstein is accused of trying to force a 19-year-old woman to perform sex acts as he pinned her down in his bedroom at the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house. He allegedly told her to “shush” as she was crying, according to court documents obtained by the Philly Inquirer. She was reportedly able to escape.

Temple suspended the AEPi chapter in April amid the investigation into the alleged sexual assault.

Goldstein’s lawyer Perry de Marco told the Jewish Exponent that Goldstein had asked if he could still go on his planned Israel trip despite the investigation. The attorney advised him to go and told him that these kinds of cases often don’t progress past the initial stages. At the time, there were no open charges against Goldstein.

“He was never trying to flee,” de Marco said. “He was leaving on his lawyer’s advice.”

De Marco added that Goldstein “absolutely, wholeheartedly” denies the allegations and will fight the charges.

Goldstein was reportedly freed on May 17 after posting $200,000 of the $2 million bail. He is due in court on May 31 for a preliminary hearing.

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

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. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

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 comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag 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.