Rabbi Jonathan Freirich of Temple Beth Zion will be leaving his post six months early after the Central Conference of American Rabbis deemed he had committed at least five ethics violations of a sexual nature.

Freirich will depart in December, six months shy of his four-year contract, after being accused of sexual harassment of a cantor and inappropriate outreach to pre-teen girls.

The Buffalo News reported it obtained a copy of a report written by an investigative team of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). The first documented violation occurred his first weekend on the job when he called Cantor Penny Myers the “beautiful blond cantor” when he referred to her in front of the congregation in February 2016.

Freirich also made a remark, “Fifty Shades of Cantor” after Myers and her husband went out of town to celebrate their wedding anniversary. When asked about the alleged reference, Freirich reportedly told the CCAR that Myers had shown him a pair of “play handcuffs” from her anniversary trip, but Myers and a witness said that never happened.

While discussing a dinner he’d had with a new executive director of Temple Beth Zion, Freirich compared the dinner with “popping his cherry” in a discussion in front of Myers and a sound engineer at the temple.

Temple Beth Zion Response to Allegations

Prior to the complaint Myers filed with the CCAR back in December 2019, a family from the synagogue had filed a complaint in June 2019. Several families said Freirich approached teen girls who were bat mitzvah students and tried to obtain their cell phone numbers. He used the girls’ phone numbers to arrange off-site appointments that he said were a part of their studies. The family that filed the complaint said the rabbi invited their daughter, 12 years old, to have coffee with him to discuss her bat mitzvah.

The girl’s father questioned Temple Beth Zion’s board of trustees in April of this year asking how the congregation is supposed to listen to a rabbi provide sermons about leading a life of high moral standards when the rabbi himself had been censured by fellow leaders of the synagogue.

According to the CCAR report obtained by the Buffalo News, the rabbi acted “oddly evasive, and extremely defensive” when they spoke with him about the family’s accusations. They also found him to be dishonest and to contradict both himself and witnesses to his offensive behavior.

The CCAR bluntly said Freirich “uses poor judgment, and offends large groups of people.”

The CCAR had kept the findings of its investigation secret, but David Goldberg, president of the Temple Beth Zion board, sent an email to members of the Buffalo synagogue that addressed the investigation. Before the email was sent, the congregation only knew that a special meeting had occurred in the summer that resulted in Freirich’s contract being terminated earlier than planned.

The email from Goldberg said in part, “We have done an admirable job, up to now, of trying to run the temple, protect the Rabbi, shield our congregants, pacify our Cantor, put on our happy faces, and hide our dirty little secrets.”

The synagogue addresses disciplinary action on its website and says the goal is offer a chance for rabbis to learn and grow from their mistakes rather than be reprimanded for them.

Freirich is married and the couple has two children. According to the temple’s website, Freirich worked and studied in Philadelphia and in Israel in the 1990s. He was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1999 and has since served on college campuses, elderly care homes and synagogues.

When Sexual Harassment is Against the Law

Even though Freirich is not accused of any physical sexual assault, he is accused of sexual harassment, which Myers said led to a hostile work environment. She did not welcome his sexually charged comments and was offended by them.

According to the CCAR report, Freirich also created a false and offensive narrative about Myers that was “actually worse than his original comment.”

Temple Beth Zion leadership said Myers is on a paid leave until the first of 2021.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s definition of sexual harassment includes verbal conduct of a sexual nature that affects an individual’s employment, causes unreasonable interference with a person’s work performance, or creates a work environment that proves hostile, intimidating or offensive.

While the sexual abuse allegations against Freirich are not at the level of sexual assault allegations faced by many priests caught up in the Roman Catholic Church sexual assault scandal, the attempt to keep the allegations secret strike a familiar chord.

This article is not legal advice. It is presented
for informational purposes only.