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Kesher Israel Hires Interim Rabbi as Congregation Moves Forward From Freundel Scandal

Rabbi Avidan Milevsky will begin his duties on July 27

by
Jonathan Zalman
July 24, 2015
Flickr (Image credit: Adam Fagen)
Kesher Israel Synagogue. Flickr (Image credit: Adam Fagen)
Flickr (Image credit: Adam Fagen)
Kesher Israel Synagogue. Flickr (Image credit: Adam Fagen)

In May, Barry Freundel the former rabbi of Congregation Kesher Israel, a Washington, D.C. synagogue, was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison after he was found guilty on 52 counts of voyeurism. Freundel’s abuses of power, which included the surreptitious filming of more than 150 women inside the mikveh (ritual bath) adjacent to his shul, were widely documented and left a community reeling. Now, Freundel’s former congregation will be taking a step forward as Kesher Israel’s president Elanit Jakabovics announced via email on Thursday that Rabbi Avidan Milevsky has been named as interim rabbi. The congregation, reported The Forward, “has been without a paid spiritual leader since Rabbi Barry Freundel was arrested last October,” having relied on two volunteers “for answering members’ religious questions and providing pastoral care.” Milevsky will begin on Monday, July 27.

Milevsky, an associate professor of psychology and psychotherapist, is the former interim rabbi of Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Congregation in Baltimore and has served as a visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Wrote Jakabovics: “As we turn the page to Kesher’s next chapter, we know that despite our best efforts to move forward, many of our community members are still in pain and in need of healing. The Board hopes that the hiring of Rabbi Milevsky as our part-time interim rabbi will provide our community with the spiritual guidance that we need as an Orthodox shul, while leaving open the space needed for us to explore what it is that we would seek in a new permanent Rabbi.”

Jonathan Zalman is a writer and teacher based in Brooklyn.