The voyeurism case against Rabbi Barry Freundel prompted calls for reform in his Modern Orthodox community this week, with a key rabbinical group creating a committee to improve the conversion process and other leaders calling for women to have a more prominent role in the use of the mikvah, or ritual bath.
Freundel, the longtime rabbi of the Georgetown synagogue Kesher Israel, was arrested and charged with six counts of voyeurism this month after allegedly planting video cameras in the mikvah he oversaw. The case intensified debates within Modern Orthodoxy — the more liberal part of Orthodox Judaism — over the place of women in the spiritual and legal leadership.
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