Rabbi accused of voyeurism

WASHINGTON >> If Barry Freundel secretly violated sexual ethics, in public he pored over them.

Allegations that the local rabbi hid a camera in a ritual bathing area have astonished people fromWashington to Israel, in part because Freundel had positioned himself as an ethical beacon. The internationally known Orthodox rabbi served as spiritual guide to the likes of former U.S. senator Joe Lieberman and Supreme Court expert Linda Greenhouse and proffered wisdom on a wide range of moral matters.

Freundel’s writings, interviews and sermons, however, reveal that he appeared deeply worried about the dangerous overlap between sex and ethics, especially where it concerns technology.

Technology, he told a 1999 congressional bioethics panel, is “value-neutral. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad; the concern is how you use it. Every technology is a tool given to us by God to improve the world, if we use it the right way.” Samewith knowledge, he said. Jews “style ourselves the ‘People of the Book’ becausewe think knowledge is valuable. But are you using it ethically?”

“The lack of sexual morality that pervades this society is all over the place, and the Orthodox community, no matter how traditional, is not immune from this,” he told Washington Jewish Week in a story last month about divorce among the Orthodox. “Pornography and its accessibility iswrecking marriages. It’s two keystrokes away. You get on the computer, youhit thebutton twice and you’re there.”

Police this week charged the prominent rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregationwith voyeurism, saying he used a hidden camera to videotape women using a neighborhood mikvah. The mikvah is a large bath that observant Jews, mostly women, are required to immerse in at certain ritual times, such as conversion or marriage and after the menstrual cycle. On Thursday, police said they were expanding the investigation after finding additional computers and storage devices, including one with more than 100 deleted files — some labeled with women’s first names.

Freundel’s community was silent fromlateWednesday until Saturday sundown because of the back-to-back Jewish holidays of Shmini Atzeret, Simchat Torah and then the weekly Sabbath. Orthodox Jews don’t use phones or computers or write on holy days.

But much can be gleaned about Freundel’s approach to ethics fromhis sermons and articles. Approaching the subject like one might a scientific problem, he looked to the Jewish scriptures for references and to clear answers about right and wrong.