Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Rabbi Barry Freundel Appeals 6-Year Prison Sentence in Mikveh Peeping

— An attorney for Rabbi Barry Freundel argued in a Washington, D.C., appeals court that the rabbi’s prison term for secretly videotaping women in his synagogue’s mikvah was too long.

The attorney argued Tuesday that the 6 1/2-year sentence handed down last year was illegal, The Associated Press reported. Freundel, a once-prominent modern Orthodox rabbi in Washington, had pleaded guilty.

According to the AP, the court “seemed likely to reject” the attorney’s argument that the sentence should have been limited to one year in prison. The website of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia said it “will likely take several weeks to several months after the argument for the Court of Appeals to issue its decision.”

Freundel, 64, began serving his sentence in a Washington jail in May 2015. However, at his request the following month, the Superior Court of the District of Columbia recommended that he be transferred to a federal correctional facility either in Otisville, New York, or Miami.

Before his arrest in 2014, Freundel was the longtime rabbi of Kesher Israel in the Georgetown section of Washington and an active member of the Rabbinical Council of America, an Orthodox rabbinic group.

Freundel is believed to have violated the privacy of at least 150 women he filmed while they undressed and showered at the mikvah, or ritual bath, including members of his Orthodox synagogue, candidates for conversion to Judaism and students at Towson University in Maryland, where Freundel taught classes on religion and ethics. The rabbi also secretly filmed a domestic violence abuse victim in a safe house he had set up for her.

In September, shortly before the High Holidays, he issued a letter of apology.

“My preference would be to apologize individually to each person I have hurt,” Freundel wrote in his letter, which was first published in the Washington Jewish Week. “However, I recognize that reaching out to convey my regret could cause further harm to some and that such contact would be unwelcome. Therefore, I thought that the only solution would be to apologize publicly.”

RELATED:

Barry Freundel’s former DC synagogue trying to move past mikvah trauma

Freundel apologizes for mikvah-peeping, but must Jews forgive?

A message from our Publisher & CEO 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.

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

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.