Oddly reluctant to cry ‘hate crime’ - So why isn’t shouting “Kill the Jew!” while stabbing a Jewish student in a temple enough to raise the hate issue?

When someone enters a synagogue with a knife and stabs a rabbinical student there, it sure looks like a hate crime. Multiple witness reports that the attacker shouted “I want to kill the Jew!” seem a clincher.

Yet the NYPD and most media seemed strangely reluctant to acknowledge that angle in the early wake of Tuesday’s attack in Brooklyn.

The NYPD officers’ conduct in responding to the attack was exemplary. A video shows the immense restraint of a policeman repeatedly demanding the suspect drop the knife.

It’s only after the suspect appears to surrender as he sets the knife down, but then abruptly grabs the knife, continuing his threatening gestures and advances that the police, left with no choice, use lethal force.

Happily, the victim, 22-year-old Levi Rosenblat, was in stable condition yesterday, recovering from stab wounds to the head.

Media accounts near-universally mentioned that the knife-wielding suspect reportedly shouted “I want to kill the Jew!” and “Kill the Jews!”

But some stories feature the police saying he may have said only, “I will kill all of you” — though, again, in a synagogue, that’s still pretty telling.

Remarkably, the New York Times account didn’t even see fit to mention any “kill the Jew” statements, though it did link to a Chabad.org article noting that “according to witnesses, the perpetrator was heard repeatedly saying: ‘Kill the Jews!’”

Yet the Times only reports the part caught on video where the suspect tells worshipers, “You want me to kill you.”

And initial reports treated it as a crime with no known motive. Headlines read: “Police Shoot, Kill Stabbing Suspect at Brooklyn Jewish Center,” “NYPD shoot, kill man who stabbed rabbinical student in synagogue,” “Police kill knife-wielding man in NY synagogue.”

That the suspect may have yelled stuff about killing Jews wasn’t the focus of any articles I found.

Contrast that with the tale of Ahmed Aden, a mentally disturbed Kansas City man who intentionally ran over a 15-year-old boy outside a Kansas City mosque — which the media quickly (and correctly) highlighted as a potential hate crime.

It helped that news swiftly broke that the perp had made prior anti-Muslim statements — on the other hand, no reports tried to suggest it wasn’t a hate crime because the man was also delusional and mentally ill.

Headlines read: “FBI eyes Kansas City man’s car kill as anti-Muslim hate crime,” “Police report reveals man accused of killing 15-year-old in hate crime threatened others before.”

So why isn’t shouting “Kill the Jew!” while stabbing a Jewish student in a temple enough to raise the hate issue?

An initial NBC New York reports stated that the police weren’t even investigating the Brooklyn attack as a hate crime. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton is now saying that the hate-crimes unit is investigating.

That seems mandatory: State law defines a hate crime as a “crime committed when an offender selects a victim because of a belief of perception about the victim regarding race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation.”

The 49-year-old suspect wasn’t robbing anyone or committing any other known crimes. Before viciously stabbing the student in the head, he entered the synagogue asking for a Bible. His actions and ramblings certainly suggest mental issues, but that does not rule out anti-Semitism.

That the knife attack echoes the recent deadly hatchet attack in a Jerusalem temple even suggests a copycat hate crime.

Today, the mere fact that a cop is white and a suspect is black is enough for much of the media to quickly imply racial motivations in shootings. This makes the silence deafening when the same media ignore the strong likelihood that the Brooklyn assault was anti-Semitic.

Hatred of Jews and Israel is spreading around the globe like wildfire. Recently, a 19-year-old woman was tied up and raped in a horrific anti-Semitic attack in France.

If we’re not willing to acknowledge the motive in these attacks, we’re inviting more of them.

http://nypost.com/2014/12/09/oddly-reluctant-to-cry-hate-crime/

Rabbi Who Installed Hidden Cameras in Dorm to Open New Seminary

Rabbi Who Installed Hidden Cameras in Dorm to Open New Seminary

December 9, 2014 by Hannah Katsman Leave a Comment

In May, 2013, Haaretz reported that Rabbi Tully Bryks, director of the Bar-Ilan overseas program, was forced to resign after installing hidden cameras in the hallways of the girls’ dormitories.

The surveillance cameras were discovered within hours by several stunned students living in adjacent rooms, who immediately lodged a complaint with program administrators citing severe invasion of privacy and who demanded police intervention.

Bryks was soon thereafter relieved of all his responsibilities at the program and barred from any contact with students.

Bryks posted an apology on his personal Facebook page, claiming that he installed the cameras in order to investigate complaints against the maintenance staff:

In the middle of last year, Rabbi Bryks began teaching a weekly class once a week at Tomer Devorah, a Jerusalem seminary for women. According to a mother who attended an event in the Five Towns, Rabbi Bryks is now planning to open his own seminary for the coming school year 5776 (2015-16). According to the website of Bnei Akiva Toronto, Rabbi Bryks represented both Tomer Devorah and the new seminary, Meorot, at a visit to its high school on November 18, 2014.

Representatives of Israeli Seminaries

Yet Tomer Devorah’s site does not include Rabbi Bryks on its list of 37 staff members. The not-yet-opened seminary, Meorot, also has a website. Rabbi Bryks is not listed as astaff member there either.

But a simple check reveals that Tully Bryks is listed as the registered owner of the domain “MyMeorot.com”:

If Rabbi Bryks is visiting high schools as a representative of two seminaries, and operates one of their websites, he should be included in the public staff listings. According to the mother attending the event, Bryks is not only the recruiter . He is a founder of Meorot.

It’s safe to assume a connection between the fact that Rabbi Tully Bryks left his last job under a cloud, and the omission of his name on the websites of the two institutions.

Bryks has not been convicted of a crime, and may possibly be guilty only of a lapse in judgment. There was a police investigation, that was closed.

Bryks’ activities at Bar Ilan could be indicative of more serious concerns. Parents have a right to know that someone with such a history is involved with an institution, and in what capacity. Anyone considering sending to an institution should demand full transparency.

http://www.amotherinisrael.com/tully-bryks-camera-meorot-seminary/

Obama’s Threats Won’t Hurt Netanyahu

Few savvy observers took Secretary of State John Kerry at his word earlier this week when he piously proclaimed that the United States had no thought of attempting to intervene in Israel’s elections. The animus bordering on hatred felt by President Obama’s inner circle toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not exactly a secret.

 But it didn’t take long for a leak to an Israeli newspaper that is among the PM’s most rabid foes to dispel any doubts about the administration’s hopes that it could somehow derail his bid for a fourth term. The report from Barak Ravid, Haaretz’s diplomatic correspondent that the White House held a meeting whose purpose was to plan possible future sanctions against Israel to punish it for continuing to build homes for Jews in Jerusalem and West Bank settlement blocs, is a shot fired over Netanyahu’s bow. But the real question here is not so much Obama’s desire to see the prime minister defeated, as it is why anyone in the administration thinks this gambit will succeed now after the same tactics have failed repeatedly before.

The Haaretz report makes it clear that the administration is looking ahead to another two years of escalating confrontation with Israel. The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly demonstrated its lack of interest in negotiating, let alone signing a peace agreement that would end the conflict. Nor do the construction of homes for Jews in existing Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem or even in the settlement blocs that everyone (including President Obama) knows would remain inside Israel if peace were ever achieved constitute any sort of obstacle to a two-state solution.

 But the administration still clings to the illusion that the problem is Netanyahu and settlements rather than a Palestinian political culture that makes peace impossible and PA head Mahmoud Abbas’s incitement to violence. That means it is entirely possible that, as Ravid breathlessly predicts, the administration will no longer make do with bitter denunciations of Israeli actions in the future but will, instead adopt measures intended to punish the Jewish state. That might take the form of refraining from vetoing anti-Israel resolutions in the United Nations Security Council or other actions intended to downgrade or undermine the alliance between the two countries.

But the notion that picking yet another fight with Netanyahu will hurt his chances of reelection tells us more about the administration’s continued inability to understand Israel than anything else. After all, President Obama has repeatedly tried to do this throughout his first six years in office. But every time the U.S. attempted to use Jewish building in Jerusalem to attack Netanyahu, the only result was that the prime minister’s political standing at home increased. 

Though the PM is under attack right now from both foes on the left and a crowded field of rivals on the right, there seems little reason to believe that his policies on Jerusalem or even on negotiations with the Palestinians has rendered him vulnerable. All the polls agree that Israeli voters appear poised to elect a Knesset that is even further skewed to the right than the existing government that was lambasted by American critics for being not interested in concessions to the Palestinians.

As even Ravid notes in the conclusion to his piece, Netanyahu always gains when he can portray himself as standing up to foreign pressure on security issues. The reason for that is that, unlike the Obama administration and Israel’s liberal critics abroad, the Israeli voting public has been paying attention to what the Palestinians have said and done during the last 20 years of peace processing. Israel has tried to trade land for peace and gotten more terror and no peace. 

At the present moment it is inconceivable that any Israeli government of any stripe would withdraw from the West Bank in order to make way for what could be an even larger and more dangerous version of the Hamas terror state that currently exists in Gaza.

It is true that the decimated Israeli left and their liberal American supporters such as the J Street lobby believe that the Jewish state must be saved from itself by heavy-handed U.S. intervention. Indeed, it is only by international pressure designed to thwart the verdict of Israeli democracy that their misguided agenda might be implemented. But it boggles the mind as to how anyone, either in Israel or the U.S., would think that the Israeli voting public would regard efforts to thwart their judgment in this manner as a good reason to vote against Netanyahu. 

Indeed, the commitment of the U.S. to a policy of heavy-handed pressure is the best argument for Netanyahu continuing in office since he is the country’s only major political figure with the experience and the tenacity to stand up to such treatment from the country’s sole superpower ally.

The three months between now and the election constitute a political eternity and Netanyahu cannot take his victory for granted even if the polls indicate he is the only possible choice for prime minister. But if Obama and his friends at Haaretz imagine such leaks will lead to Netanyahu’s downfall, it’s clear they have learned nothing from the past six years of such efforts.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/12/04/obamas-threats-wont-hurt-netanyahu-elections-settlements/

LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday his force would investigate ANY sexual assault charges against the embattled entertainer, OR ANYONE ELSE, regardless of whether they were covered by the statute of limitations, which limits how long after the fact lawsuits can be filed...

Cosby sex abuse accuser takes case to police

 Judy Huth was assaulted 40 years ago! 

The only woman to have filed a sex assault lawsuit against Bill Cosby took her case to police Friday, accepting an offer to have her claims investigated despite them dating from 40 years ago.

Judy Huth, who filed legal action against the veteran comic earlier this week, was accompanied by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred to meet detectives at Los Angeles Police Department.

LAPD chief Charlie Beck said Thursday his force would investigate any sexual assault charges against the embattled entertainer, or anyone else, regardless of whether they were covered by the statute of limitations, which limits how long after the fact lawsuits can be filed.

"Today Judy Huth and I came here... to meet with detectives of the LAPD to request an investigation of Mr Cosby," Allred said in a statement in front of the police headquarters in downtown Los Angeles.

"She is here because she believes that it is important that Bill Cosby be investigated... we are here to accept Chief Beck's invitation," she added.

"We also urge others to go to the LAPD and ask them to investigate."

Fresh allegations

The LAPD did not immediately comment on the meeting.

Around 20 women have now accused the 77-year-old Emmy and Golden Globe winner of sexual assault and even rape in alleged incidents dating mostly from decades ago.

So far the only one who has taken legal action is Huth, a 55-year-old former Playboy hostess who filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles on Tuesday claiming Cosby assaulted her at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in 1974.

On Thursday Cosby's lawyer, Marty Singer, counter-sued Huth in the LA Superior Court, accusing her of trying to extort up to $250,000 from him in return for her silence.

On Friday a new accuser came forward, another former Playboy "bunny" who claimed that she and at least 12 other fellow employees were raped by Cosby.

P.J. Masten, who began working as a Playboy waitress in 1972, claimed that Cosby drugged and raped her after inviting her to his hotel room in Chicago, and offering her a glass of what he said was Grand Marnier.

"The next thing I knew, it was four o'clock in the morning," she told CNN.

"I woke up in a bed naked, bruised. He was laying next to me, and I slithered out of the bed... I got myself together, I went downstairs, I got in a cab and I went home," she said.

But she was certain that he had raped her while she was unconscious. "This man has to be held accountable. He's a serial rapist. He's been that way since the '60s," she told the broadcaster.

She was not the only former "bunny" to be raped by the entertainer, she claimed.

There were "12 former bunnies that I know of that are ashamed to come forward, frightened to come forward, married with families (and) don't want to come forward," Masten said.

"But they were also drugged and raped by Bill Cosby."

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner issued a statement on the scandal Saturday. "Bill Cosby has been a good friend for many years and the mere thought of these allegations is truly saddening," he said. "I would never tolerate this kind of behavior, regardless of who was involved."

Cosby Hollywood star vandalized

Overnight Thursday a vandal scrawled the word "rapist" on Bill Cosby's Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

The word was written three times on the star on the storied Walk of Fame, the stretch of sidewalk honoring Hollywood celebrities that is visited by millions of tourists every year.

A worker cleans actor Bill Cosby's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on December 5, 2014  (AFP)

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which looks after the stars and organizes ceremonies for new inductees, acted quickly to have the graffiti removed.

"The Hollywood Walk of Fame is an institution celebrating the positive contributions of the inductees," it said in a statement.

"When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California state landmark."

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/culture/53729-141208-cosby-sex-abuse-accuser-takes-case-to-police

"In the racist cesspool known as the United States, black people are routinely treated like second-class citizens, if not subhumans. Oh, and by the way, please remain calm. Wink, wink."

Saul Alinsky Lives in Ferguson

If the late Saul Alinsky—the America-hating godfather of community organizing—had fathered a black son, he’d look like Barack Obama.[1]  Obama has embraced, revered, and employed Alinsky’s philosophy and tactics of social revolutionfor decades. Indeed, he even taught Alinsky’smethods in community-organizing workshops and seminars in Chicago, when he was a much younger Marxist. As we witness the continuing racial unrest sparked by the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson grand jury’s subsequent decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson, it is vital to understand that everything the protesters/rioters are doing—in Ferguson and elsewhere—is straight out of Alinsky’s most famous publications,Rules For Radicals and Reveille For Radicals. And Obama has encouraged them, every step of the way.

Obama and Alinsky never actually met in person, as Alinsky died when Obama was just 11 years old. Happily for the future president, by that time he had already been introduced to the man who would mentor him throughout his adolescent years—the America-hating, pro-Soviet, pro-Stalin, Communist writer Frank Marshall Davis. Thus, when Obama eventually encountered Alinsky through the latter’s writings, the young community organizer was well prepared ideologically to soak up Alinsky’s message.

In his quest to cultivate the type of chaos that would spark social revolution against America’s capitalist system, Alinsky exhorted activists to constantly “rub raw the resentments of the people” and “fan the latent hostilities to the point of overt expression”—but to do this in measured tones, so as not to “scare off” middle-class Americans.

Thus did Obama dutifully and blandly call for “unity” and calm in the immediate aftermath of Michael Brown’s “heartbreaking and tragic” death, even as he repeatedly reminded us that: “police should not be bullying or arresting” anyone without cause; “in too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and left as objects to fear”; “there is no excuse for excessive force by police”; “the justice gap” between whites and nonwhites is unacceptable; “the criminal-justice system doesn’t treat people of all races equally”; and “too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement, guilty of walking while black, or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness.” And when the grand jury in Ferguson subsequently chose not to indict Darren Wilson because the officer obviously had shot Michael Brown in self-defense, Obama pronounced the black community’s indignation to be “an understandable reaction.”

Obama’s carefully chosen words—all delivered in the type of nonthreatening tenor advocated by Saul Alinsky—clearly communicated a single, foundational theme to African Americans: In the racist cesspool known as the United States, black people are routinely treated like second-class citizens, if not subhumans. Oh, and by the way, please remain calm. Wink, wink.

Alinsky also taught that in some cases activists must be completely willing—for the sake of the moral principles in whose name they profess to act—to turn up the proverbial heat and watch society descend into chaos and anarchy; to “go into a state of complete confusion and draw [their] opponent into the vortex of the same confusion.” “Wherever possible,” Alinsky counseled, “go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat.”

Mobs of shouting protesters can accomplish that objective quite effectively—even if, as in the present case, they are oblivious to the irony that the poster-child of their crusade is a multiple felon who tried unsuccessfully to murder a police officer. Such demonstrations tend to give onlookers the impression that a mass movement is not only well underway, but may actually be preparing to shift into an even higher gear at any moment. A “mass impression,” said Alinsky, can be lasting and intimidating. Thus did President Obama recently meet at the White House with Al Sharpton, his leading advisor on race-related matters, and other protest leaders from Ferguson, urging them to “stay on course” with their activism.

Yet another highly noteworthy observation by Alinsky was this: “Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” “The threat,” he explained, “is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” Thus, “if your organization is small in numbers,… raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.”

This can be well achieved by orchestrating a host of simultaneous demonstrations in multiple cities or venues, exactly as the highly organized Gentle Giant crusade has been doing. The stature of these rallies is magnified by the fact that they receive lots of media attention, while scores of millions of ordinary Americans who view them with contempt and dread are busy quietly going about their lives, caring for their families, working at their jobs, and pursuing their personal aspirations as they see fit. Such people are many thousands of times more numerous than the perpetually aggrieved rabble-rousers of the Left, but Alinsky understood—as Obama understands today—that a spraying skunk inevitably gets all the attention when it intrudes unexpectedly upon a picnic.

The America-hating Alinsky also taught that activists, in order to cast themselves as defenders of high-minded principles, must theatrically convey “shock, horror, and moral outrage” whenever any of their demands—however inconsequential—are not met. And no one conveys such emotions more convincingly than Obama’s aforementioned racial “advisor,” Al Sharpton, who vows to continue the Michael Brown/anti-police brutality crusade until the end of time if necessary. Alinsky understood quite well that even a pathetic moral degenerate like Sharpton can be an effective revolutionary if he is skilled in the otherwise worthless arts of bluster and righteous indignation.

Lest anyone think there might be a way to bridge the gap between civil society and the revolutionaries in the vanguard of the current Gentle Giant Brigades, a dose of reality is in order: Alinsky emphasized that the overarching objective of any crusade is never to promote peace or reconciliation, but rather to be unwaveringly “dedicated to an eternal war” in which “there are no rules of fair play” and “no compromise” whatsoever; to mercilessly “pulverize” people with “fear”; and ultimately to “force their capitulation.”

We got a glimpse of this mindset recently when we learned that two New Black Panther Party members were plotting not only to blow up St. Louis’s famed Gateway Arch, but also to assassinate Ferguson police chief Tom Jackson and the city’s prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch. And a shrieking Louis Farrakhan, for his part, has been busy urging black Americans to throw Molotov cocktails at white people in order to fulfill a scriptural “law of retaliation”; condemning whites for allegedly “killing us” in large numbers; and warning that “we’ll tear this goddamn country up!”

Like all Marxists, Obama, Sharpton, Farrakhan, and the rest of their fellow revolutionaries seek to tear society apart by pitting the “races,” the “classes,” and the “genders” against one another—“rubbing raw” their respective “resentments” until hatred abounds in every person’s heart and mayhem fills the streets. Michael Brown’s corpse is merely a building block for these rabble rousers. They know that someday another African American will be killed by a white police officer and thus be anointed as their movement’s next martyred saint. Bit by bit, the inconvenient fact that Brown was a violent, abusive criminal whose death was brought about entirely by his own actions will be airbrushed out of public memory. And the grievance mongers of the “civil rights” movement will wistfully remember him as just another innocent black victim whose life was tragically cut short by white depravity.

Saul Alinsky would be proud.

NOTE:
[1] In March 2012, not long after the death of Trayvon Martin in Florida, President Obama famously said: “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/john-perazzo/saul-alinsky-lives-in-ferguson/

Satmar Officials Offer to Pay Israelis Not to Vote

Anti-Zionist Hassidic sect has offered $100 to any Israeli who does not vote in upcoming March elections.

Rabbi Zalman Leib Teitelbaum (R) in Israel

The anti-Zionist Satmar sect of Hassidic Judaism has offered to pay $100 to every Israeli who won't vote in the elections for the 20th Knesset on March 17, 2015, Walla! News reported.

According to senior Satmar officials, the intention is to prevent as many Israeli citizens from voting on election day as possible.

The distribution of the money is a part of the "Pure Shekel Project" - an official Satmar project that provides support to educational institutions in Israel who purposefully do not receive any government funding.

Sources within the Satmar community stated that hareidi and secular people alike who commit not to vote will be rewarded. Moreover, the Satmar community will guarantee funds to yeshivas who forbid their students from participating in the democratic process.

"The previous government proved their intentions to recruit yeshiva students to the army and change the study arrangements of hareidi institutions," Satmar's representative in Israel said.

"It's a shame that there are still hareidi parties who believe those politicians who destroy the religion."

This is not the first time that Satmar - which is actually comprised of two separate factions since the death of its previous Rebbe (Grand Rabbi) Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum - has offered to distribute funds to those who do not participate in the elections.

Two years ago, in the elections for the 19th Knesset, Satmar representatives gave away money to whoever deposited his/her identification or driver's license on the day of elections - a move which would effectively prevent a person from voting.

Prior to the last elections Rabbi Zalman Leib (Yekutiel Yehuda) Teitelbaum - who heads one of the Satmar factions, based in New York's Williamsburg neighborhood - landed in Israel with some $25,000 to donate to institutions who boycotted the vote.

Following Satmar's announcement two years ago, the Hiddush organization sent a letter to Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and Chairman of the Knesset Elections Committee, Judge Elyakim Rubinstein, asking them to examine the legality of the funds being offered by the Satmar leaders, claiming it qualified as election bribery.

Hiddush Vice President, Shahar Ilan, said that closer to the March 2015 elections, "the association will renew the request and demand practical steps."

This is not the first time the Satmar leadership has courted controversy for its radical anti-Zionist ideology.

During a eulogy for the victims of the Har Nof massacre, the other Satmar Rebbe - Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum - placed the blame not at the Palestinian terrorists who killed them, but on Jews who ascend the Temple Mount (Judaism's holiest site - ed.) as the cause.

Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum had previously caused outrage after reacting similarly to the brutal kidnap and murder of three Israeli teens during the summer - blaming their parents for sending them to a school in the Judea-Samaria region.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/188240#.VIDACdLF9A1

Don't Be Fooled - This Is Obama Sanctioned Anarchy!

And on the Third Day....God said It Was Good (Ki Tov) ...Twice! Freundel's Blind Eye Was Never Turned

By Peter Hermann December 2 at 2:35 PM  

A lawsuit filed Tuesday against a Georgetown synagogue and others accuses the sanctuary’s authorities of covering up a series of unusual practices of an influential rabbi, which the suit says allowed his alleged secret recordings of women in a ritual bath to go unchecked.

The lawsuit was filed by a Georgetown University Law School student, who accuses the rabbi, 62-year-old Barry Freundel, of luring her to the bath as part of her studies at the school. Among the unusual customs, the suit alleges, were the use of practice dunks before the bath, known as a mikvah, and encouraging non-Jews, unmarried women and students to use the bath as part of their studies, which runs counter to accepted Jewish practices.

Also named in the suit are the National Capital Mikvah, where the baths took place, and Georgetown University Law School, where Freundel taught.

Filed in D.C. Superior Court, the lawsuit seeks class-action status and identifies the plaintiff only as a third-year law student. “This case involves an unfathomable breach of trust by a Georgetown professor and religious leader and defendants’ utter failure to prevent and/or stop it,” Baltimore attorney Steven D. Silverman said in the lawsuit. He also said, “Defendants’ turned a blind eye to obvious signs of Freundel’s increasingly bizarre behavior, ignoring the bright red flags that Freundel was acting inappropriately with women subjected to his authority.”

The suit comes as the board that runs Kesher Israel synagogue and the National Capital Mikvah, the adjacent but separately administered bath, announced that they have terminated their contracts with Freundel, a nationally known arbiter of religious laws and a leader in conversions. He has been asked to vacate the rabbinic residence in Georgetown by Jan. 1. A mikvah is primarily used by people converting to Judaism and by religious women and men observing Jewish laws of ritual purification.

 Barry Freundel  Did Not Turn His Blind Eye

D.C. police arrested Freundel in October and charged him with six counts of voyeurism. Police said they found a camera hidden in a clock radio pointed at a shower in the mikvah. Authorities said that an aide to the bath found the hidden camera. Police seized numerous computer storage devices but have not said if more women have been identified as victims.

Freundel is scheduled for a hearing in D.C. Superior Court Jan. 16.

Attorneys for the mikvah, the synagogue and Freundel did not return calls seeking comment. Elissa Free, a spokeswoman for Georgetown’s law school, confirmed Freundel co-taught a law seminar in the spring of 2014.

Rachel Pugh, director of media relations for Georgetown University, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But she said in a statement: “We are horrified by the behavior reported to have taken place at the mikvah. The University is cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities on their investigation, as well as conducting our own investigation of Rabbi Freundel’s conduct.”

The suit alleges that Kesher Israel knew about past complaints but “simply passed” them to the Rabbinical Council of America — a major group of Modern Orthodox rabbis in which Freundel had been a leader — even though Freundel headed that group’s “protocol and standards” committee for conversions. The law student alleges that Georgetown “undertook no investigation into Freundel’s background prior to hiring him” and accuses the school of acting with “willful blindness.”

Religious experts have said that Freundel’s alleged practice of asking conversion students to take “practice dunks” in the ritual bath, before their actual conversion, was a problem. The concept has no basis in Jewish law and the Rabbinical Council of America said in a statement shortly after Freundel’s arrest that had they known of the dunks, it “would have engendered a more severe response.”

The Council was made aware in 2012 of complaints from conversion students who said Freundel was pressuring them to donate money and to do clerical work, but the board simply admonished him to stop.

The National Capital Mikvah advertised until shortly before Freundel’s arrest that it “supports practice dunks for conversions.” It isn’t clear whether Kesher’s leadership ever challenged Freundel on the practice dunks, or how uncomfortable leaders felt.

Police say “many” women have come forward since Freundel’s arrest to say they used the bath and have declined to confirm an exact number. In many cases the women have no idea whether they were recorded. Silverman, the Georgetown law student’s attorney, said his client also does not know if she was recorded. He said she has not been given any updates from D.C. police, although she gave them a statement and a picture of her face so they can try to match it to images they may find on computer drives seized in searches of the rabbi’s home and synagogue.

Several students from Towson University have come forward to police to say Freundel took them to the synagogue and that some accepted his invitation to use the bath. Police searched Freundel’s office at Towson, where he was a tenured professor, and reported finding, in a bag, numerous cameras hidden in everyday household items, such as a tissue box and a key chain.

The lawsuit describes the Georgetown law student as “devoted to her Jewish faith” but chose to study at the Catholic University for its “reputation for excellency and diversity.”

The student says in the suit that Freundel invited her to services at Kesher Israel and that she joined his family for religious dinners at his home.

She wrote that she had immersed herself in the bath “as a research tool for this paper,” and that she got into the bath twice — on March 2 and April 2. She wanted to return because she didn’t feel her first visit was long enough. She said in the suit that each time, Freundel accompanied her to the changing room and “specifically showed” her “where she should place her clothing when she undressed.” After the rabbi left the room, she disrobed, showered and bathed, the suit said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/lawsuit-filed-in-georgetown-rabbi-case-synagogue-severs-relations-with-leader/2014/12/02/4971ff4c-74b7-11e4-a755-e32227229e7b_story.html