The more we hear about the sexual predations of Washington, D.C., Rabbi Barry Freundel, the sadder and angrier we grow. In addition to the women victimized by the violation of the safe and sacred space of the mikvah, the case makes clear the particular vulnerability of women who convert to Judaism under Orthodox auspices.

In the weeks since the scandalous news broke, more and more women have come forward to share their difficult memories of conversion, especially of ritual immersion in the mikvah. Even after years lived in religious families and communities, the women remember their experiences not as spiritually momentous, but as traumatic and humiliating. And most of these memories are of halachic conversions done by the book, so to speak, not travestied by illicit cameras.

In non-Orthodox conversions of female candidates, male rabbis are never present at the immersion. They wait in a separate room, hearing the convert’s blessings and the female mikvah attendant’s pronouncement “kosher!” – indicating a proper immersion. Even when the beit din, or rabbinic court, includes women rabbis, usually only one accompanies the convert into the mikvah room. The others, respectful of the convert’s privacy, wait outside.

We thought that Orthodox rabbis, too, wait outside, relying on what they can hear and the report of the mikvah attendant. Especially given the strictures concerning female modesty that govern Orthodox Judaism, we did not imagine that three men would literally witness a female convert’s immersion.

Waiting outside the mikvah room was once the practice of many rabbis in Orthodox North American conversions. Some individual rabbis still do so. But in recent years, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), representing modern Orthodox rabbis, adopted an official policy: “Both male and female candidates must perform tevillah, immersing in a kosher mikvah, in the presence of a beit din. The modesty of a female convert is ensured throughout the process. The members of the beit din must witness the convert’s head fully immersed in the water.”

Ponder this: three men must witness the immersion of a woman protected from exposure only by a thin cloth that shields her body by floating above her as she immerses, with a hole for her head. One wrong move exposes her to the men’s gaze. And when, as some women report, the fabric complicates the immersion – either preventing the woman from being in full contact with the water, or causing the rabbis to doubt that she has done so, she must get rid of even that covering. Why subject a girl or woman who wants to join our people to that kind of sexualized situation? 

In what has become the norm for conversions in liberal Jewish North America, friends and family are invited to listen as the conversion candidate shares with the beit din what has brought him or her to this extraordinary moment. The mikvah ritual that follows marks the candidate’s drawing nearer to God and becoming a part of the Jewish People. 

Immersing in the waters of creation under the supervision of a mikvah attendant of the same sex, the convert utters the traditional blessings and hears a resounding “Mazel tov!” from the rabbinic panel who wait in a separate room. Afterward, the new member of our people receives blessings and good wishes from the rabbis and guests. 

Surely female converts to Orthodox Judaism deserve the same joyous, respectful, and spiritually uplifting experience. But in the growing conversation about conversion, we hear, instead, recollections of feeling shamed, confused and disempowered.  

A first step forward is to get the men out of the mikvah when women are immersing. It is high time for the RCA to overturn its policy. No male rabbi should be in a mikvah room when a woman is immersing. Ever. 

Gilah Langner is a Washington, D.C., rabbi and educator. She and Sara Horowitz co-edit the journal Kerem.