Jewish porn: still kosher if a rabbi does it?

[CountDeMoney]

Oy vey!

Police find 'micro cameras' in search of rabbi's Towson University office
By Peter Hermann October 24 at 1:13 PM
Washington Post

Police searching the Towson University office of a prominent Georgetown rabbi accused of secretly recording women in a ritual bath found a backpack with an assortment of tiny cameras hidden in everyday household objects, including ones embedded in a computer charger, a clock and a tissue box, according to a search warrant filed in a Maryland court.

Authorities said they also seized an empty box for a "micro camera" hidden in a key chain, along with flash drives and memory cards — some in freezer bags — capable of holding more than 200,000 images and 25,000 hours of video. In addition, police found a picture of a nude woman and "hand written lists of names."

The items listed in the search warrant obtained by The Washington Post indicate that devices that could have been used to spy were kept not only in the home of Rabbi Barry Freundel and the bath adjacent to the Northwest Washington synagogue he led but also on the campus where he taught . Police said Freundel used a camera hidden in a clock-radio to record at least six women in the bath, called a mikvah.

The latest discovery raised further questions about the rabbi's interactions with his pupils at Towson, a public university in Baltimore County with more than 22,000 students. The rabbi has been an associate professor there since 2009 and has tenure.

The document filed in Baltimore County District Court says that "several young female students" toured Kesher Israel Congregation with the 62-year-old Freundel, with "some even participating in the bathing ritual." The affidavit for the warrant alleges there is "evidence of the crime of voyeurism" in Freundel's office, Room 3139 in the College of Liberal Arts building.

Gay Pinder, director of media relations for Towson, said there is "no information at this point that anything seized in [Freundel's] office involved our students." She added, "We will have to await what is revealed by the continuing D.C. Metro Police investigation."

Pinder said the school has been "concerned about this whole incident from the beginning. Of course we would be concerned if indeed any of our students were victims of this voyeuristic incident."

The spokeswoman said school officials have not been briefed on whether the list of names, or the photo of the nude woman, is in any way connected to Towson. Law enforcement officials declined to comment on evidence uncovered thus far.

The rabbi is scheduled for a status hearing on Nov. 12 in D.C. Superior Court. He has been charged with six misdemeanor counts of voyeurism.

Freundel's attorney, Jeffrey Harris, declined to comment on the allegations, but had plenty to say about the disheveled state of Freundel's office after the search was conducted by D.C. police detective George Desilva and Towson University Police Sgt. James Moynihan.

"No one is minimizing the allegations, but the police do not get to exact their own punishment in this process," Harris said. "That's not the way it works."

When asked the status of his client, he responded: "He's not doing great."

Students and an assistant at the bath have previously told The Washington Post and Towson University's student-run newspaper that some classmates who toured the synagogue also disrobed and used the bath — a purported educational, rather than religious, exercise. This Maryland warrant is the first confirmation that students have told law enforcement they used the bath. There is no indication yet that any students were recorded, but police say they have just begun to analyze the seized computer storage devices at a forensic lab. Additional storage devices and cameras were found during an earlier search of Freundel's Georgetown home, along with a manual for a camera hidden in a fan.

A D.C. police affidavit filed last week said authorities believe the rabbi had been "engaging in the criminal act of voyeurism in several locations and with the use of several devices and over a period of time." Police said they found six images of synagogue congregants on a storage card for a camera hidden in a clock radio pointed at the shower area in the ritual bath. The videos were filed under the women's first names, the court document said.

Police searched Freundel's office at Towson University on Tuesday, a week after the school had suspended him and barred him from campus. The day after the search, the school announced it had opened an internal investigation to determine whether federal rules on reporting suspicious conduct regarding sexual abuse were followed, and issued an urgent plea for former and current students to contact police if they ever felt Freundel had acted inappropriately.

The charges against the rabbi have shocked not only his congregation in the District but spiritual leaders around the country who saw Freundel as an important voice on religious laws and customs. He has written on the difficulties of keeping moral in the midst of modern technology and the accessibility of pornography on the Internet. He was a leading expert on conversions to Judaism, which is one of the times where people use the ritual bath.

Police said a tip from a woman who helped with the bath led them to the camera hidden in a clock radio. Police said they found other cameras and additional memory cards and storage devices in the rabbi's home. They also reported finding a manual for a fan with a hidden camera inside in Freundel's bedroom.

It was then that police and officials at Towson said they discovered Freundel had routinely invited students to drive to Washington and tour the synagogue and bath, which he was instrumental in building and is run by the National Capital Mikvah. That board, as well as the separate one overseeing the synagogue, has suspended Freundel.

The link to Towson University emerged slowly after Freundel's arrest, and officials there have refined their responses several times over the past week. Responding to questions from the media, the school issued a public release saying Freundel had been suspended and that "at this time there is no indication that these activities occurred on the Towson University campus community."

But in a separate e-mail to Freundel's students, school officials noted that he had invited students to the Georgetown synagogue. A university spokesman told The Post that the field trips were unauthorized and inappropriate. The spokesman also said the school was unaware if any students had also used the ritual bath.

Later, the spokesman said that the trips to the synagogue appear to have been approved because Freundel's department had encouraged "outside-the-classroom learning opportunities." But the official said any trip to the ritual bath in which students shed their clothes would still have been deemed inappropriate.

The search warrant application filed in Baltimore County District Court says that although the computer storage cards had yet to be analyzed, "in cases such as these, defendants store their voyeur photos and other information as 'trophies' or 'mementos' in their professional and personal computers and other media devices."

[derspiess]

Lol tissue box

[CountDeMoney]

Lol tissue box

I know, right?  It's, like, poetic and shit.

[Malthus]

Well, apparently he was by way of being an expert.

He has written on the difficulties of keeping moral in the midst of modern technology and the accessibility of pornography on the Internet.

It was research! 

[DGuller]

Lol tissue box

I know, right?  It's, like, poetic and shit.

I don't know, it seems hard to use both the camera and the tissue box at the same time without scaring off your prey.