A Washington, D.C. synagogue has reached a settlement with people who filed a class action lawsuit after the synagogue’s former rabbi secretly videotaped women in the mikvah ritual bath. If the court approves the settlement, the cases would be resolved on a class-wide basis for $14.25 million, rather than the $100 million originally sought, according…
When Donald Trump began his ascent toward Republican leadership, Leon Wieseltier offered an antidote. “The only proper response to his success is shame, anger and resistance,” the Jewish intellectual told The Washington Post. “We must not accustom ourselves to this. Trump is not a new normal.” Now Wieseltier, at the center of a multiple allegations…
(JTA) — Kesher Israel has hired a successor to Rabbi Barry Freundel, who was arrested 2 1/2 years ago for secretly videotaping women in the mikvah ritual bath of the Washington, D.C., synagogue, and is now in prison. Rabbi Hyim Shafner, a congregational rabbi in St. Louis since 2004, will serve as the senior rabbi…
First daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are in the midst of the timeless Jewish tradition of “shul shopping” – the painful process of finding the right synagogue when moving to a new town. And for the Modern Orthodox couple about to relocate soon from New York to Washington D.C., there aren’t that…
(JTA) – Though it’s been more than a year since Rabbi Barry Freundel was hauled away in handcuffs for installing secret cameras at his synagogue’s mikvah, his crime still casts a shadow over his longtime Orthodox congregation, Kesher Israel. Three civil lawsuits are pending against Kesher by women who presumably used the ritual bath adjacent…
The Washington, D.C., synagogue whose longtime rabbi was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for voyeurism has hired a part-time replacement on an interim basis. Rabbi Avidan Milevsky will begin work on July 27, Kesher Israel’s president announced in an email to congregants Thursday. The Orthodox congregation has been without a paid spiritual leader…
The estranged wife of Rabbi Barry Freundel, who pleaded guilty to secretly videotaping women in his Orthodox synagogue’s mikvah, spoke publicly for the first time since his arrest in October. Sharon Freundel delivered a lecture last week at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School study center in Rockville, Md., titled “Post-Traumatic Stress Responses in…
Now that Rabbi Barry Freundel has pleaded guilty to peeping at 52 women while they went to the mikveh — prosecutors say he spied on 100 more women, but outside the statute of limitations — we finally can take off the qualifiers and accept that he is guilty. And that means we can begin some…
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NPR Legal Correspondent Nina Totenberg in conversation with Editor-in-Chief Jodi Rudoren. To benefit the Forward.
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