The shocking revelations last fall that a respected Orthodox rabbi spied on and exploited women studying for conversion led to two concrete outcomes: The rabbi, Barry Freundel, is serving more than six years in prison, and the Orthodox rabbinical group that should have stopped his shameful behavior is trying to reform itself.
In a report issued on July 6, the Rabbinical Council of America recommended that would-be converts be given a clear sense from the outset of the timeline and requirements for conversion, and that the conversion curriculum be standardized. In doing so, the RCA affirmed its 2007 decision to centralize the Orthodox conversion process — a decision championed at the time by Freundel himself.
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