WASHINGTON — The voyeurism case against Rabbi Barry Freundel prompted calls for reform in his Modern Orthodox community this week, with a key rabbinical group creating a committee to improve the conversion process and other leaders calling for women to have a more prominent role in the use of the mikvah, or ritual bath.

Freundel, the longtime rabbi of the Georgetown synagogue Kesher Israel, was arrested and charged with six counts of voyeurism last month after allegedly planting video cameras in the mikvah he oversaw. The case intensified debates within Modern Orthodoxy – the more liberal part of Orthodox Judaism – over the place of women in the spiritual and legal leadership.

On Wednesday, the Rabbinical Council of America – the world’s largest body of Modern Orthodox rabbis – announced that it had formed a committee in response to the Freundel case.

“The current ‘conversion’ structure requires a thorough review and enhancements to avoid future abuses,” the rabbinical group said.

The 11-member committee includes two female converts to Judaism, both of whom worked with Freundel, 62. Soon after Freundel’s Oct. 14 arrest, the RCA said it would appoint a woman to serve as an ombudsman for all the regional rabbinical courts that oversee conversions.

Rabbi Jeff Fox, the academic head of Yeshivat Maharat, which seeks to expand women’s leadership roles in Orthodox Judaism, said the school will soon come out with a paper arguing that under Jewish law, men need not be in the mikvah room when a woman immerses at the end of her conversion.

In Judaism, three rabbis are appointed to each convert’s “court” and must affirm at the end of the process that the person was fully immersed in the ritual bath. Practices vary, but in many places, the men are able to see at least some part of the woman as she goes under the water, though she may be behind a sheet or wearing a robe. In some places, she is completely naked before them; in others, the men are in the hallway with a door open or in the next room.

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