Rabbi David Kaye: Jewish Child Molester

For those who were fans of NBC’s famous candid camera series ‘To Catch a Predator’ they might remember how on one of the episodes from 2005 a rabbi was caught trying to meet up with – what he thought was – a thirteen-year-old boy only to exposed as both a child molester and an active homosexual on national television.

That rabbi was Rabbi David Kaye of Maryland then employed at ‘Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values’ in Washington D.C. and a fully ordained Reconstructionist Rabbi who had migrated over the years to Conservative Judaism.

To quote the ‘Jewish Daily Forward’ at the time:

‘An official with an educational program for Jewish high school students has resigned after allegedly using the Internet to seek out liaisons with underage boys and to transmit naked pictures of himself.

Rabbi David Kaye resigned from the Washington-based Panim: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values on October 31, several days before being shown on “Dateline NBC” seeking a sexual encounter with an underage boy in a chat room.

“He told me he was going to be on a program on national television that would identify him engaging in inappropriate behavior,” said Rabbi Sid Schwarz, founder and president of Panim.’ (1)

‘NBC News conducted a sting in August, working with a group called Perverted Justice. Posing as underage boys and girls, members of the group entered Internet chat rooms and waited for adults to engage them in conversation.

Kaye and others allegedly spoke to the presumed children about sex, and suggested meeting them. Kaye allegedly sent one individual naked pictures of himself and arranged a meeting at the Northern Virginia home where the “boy” said he lived, which NBC had equipped with hidden cameras.’ (2)

Predictably Kaye caught so utterly red-handed in the public eye was quickly sentenced to six and half years in prison in December 2006. (3)

Since his release however the jewish community actually been rather supportive of Kaye and when in 2012 the ‘Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Synagogue’ in Bethesda, Maryland – which he’d been regularly attending as a parishioner - told him to leave and not come back; (4) a large section – if not the majority – of the regular attendees at the synagogue backed Kaye and began visiting and arguing in support of him. (5)

Put another way: the local liberal jewish population actively wanted to have a convicted child molester in their midst and were upset that he was excluded!

References

(1) https://forward.com/news/2234/rabbi-resigns-after-televised-sex-sting/

(2) Ibid.

(3) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/2006/12/02/rabbi-sentenced-in-internet-sex-sting/201b0c27-f63c-43f2-ab2d-0179ec01a1f6/

(4) https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/bethesda-synagogue-grapples-with-presence-of-rabbi-convicted-of-sex-crime/2012/10/26/a6549984-1a0c-11e2-aa6f-3b636fecb829_story.html?noredirect=on

(5) https://www.timesofisrael.com/convicted-of-soliciting-a-minor-rabbi-is-banned-from-dc-area-synagogue/