Mikvah-Peeping Rabbi Barry Freundel to Receive Early Release from Jail

(JTA) —Rabbi Bernard “Barry” Freundel, former spiritual leader of Kesher Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C., and a former Towson University associate professor, will reportedly be released from prison in August. He was incarcerated in May of 2015 for secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s mikvah, or ritual bath.

Two of Freundel’s victims said they received notices that he will be released more than three years before the end of his sentence. In a tweet dated April 25, Bethany Mandel called the automated email from the Washington Corrections Department “a nice punch in the gut.”

“He got 6.5 years three years ago, and we were promised repeatedly there was no possibility of early release,” Mandel posted. “This is not how I expected to be using my mental energy today. Nor do I appreciate this being thrown at victims via an automated notification system.”

Freundel’s lawyer, Jeffrey Harris, and the Washington Corrections Department did not immediately return requests for comment from JTA.

Lauren Landau posted a screenshot of the automated email, which states that Freundel will be released on Aug. 21. “Barry Freundel was supposed to get out in 2021. … So anyway, how’s your Wednesday going,” she tweeted.

She also tweeted: “The nice thing about knowing your abuser is in jail, is every time you ‘think’ you see him, you can shake it off. That peace of mind ends when his sentence does.”

Freundel, 66, was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in jail after pleading guilty to 52 counts of voyeurism, a charge that carries up to a year’s incarceration.The sentencing judge had ordered Freundel to serve 45 days on each count, with the sentences to be served consecutively.

Prior to his arrest in 2014, the New York-born Freundel was the longtime rabbi of Kesher Israel, an historic modern Orthodox synagogue in the Georgetown section of Washington, and an active member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox rabbinic group. He received his doctorate from Baltimore Hebrew University, and served as an assistant professor of rabbinics there. In addition, he was the rabbinic studies graduate program adviser.

Freundel is believed to have violated the privacy of at least 150 women, whom he filmed while they undressed and showered at the mikvah, including members of his synagogue, candidates for conversion to Judaism and students at Towson University, where Freundel taught classes on religion and ethics.

In September of 2015, Freundel issued a public apology for his “heinous behavior” and “perverse mindset” shortly before the start of Rosh Hashanah.

Last July, “Constructive Fictions,” a morality play about the Freundel scandal written by Takoma Park-based playwright A.J. Campbell, ran at Gallaudet University’s Eastman Studio Theatre in Washington.