Peeping Tully? Zionist Orthodox One Year Israel Program Caught With Hidden Cameras In Girls' Dorm

Before assuming leadership of the program, Rabbi Tully Bryks served as regional director of the Orthodox Union's Florida chapter of its National Conference of Synagogue Youth. This is allegedly first complaint lodged against him "on a matter like this.”

Rabbi Tully Bryks

Ha'aretz reports:

The director of an [Zionist] Orthodox gap-year program at Bar-Ilan University was relieved of his duties this week, after it was discovered that he had secretly installed surveillance cameras in the girls' dormitory. Police are investigating the affair.

Rabbi Tully Bryks, director of The Israel Experience, a program that serves mainly high-school graduates from the United States, had installed two surveillance cameras in clocks hung in the hallway of the girls' dormitory.

The surveillance cameras were discovered within hours by several stunned students living in adjacent rooms, who immediately lodged a complaint with program administrators citing severe invasion of privacy and who demanded police intervention.

Bryks was soon thereafter relieved of all his responsibilities at the program and barred from any contact with students.

In a letter addressed to staff, students and their parents, Bryks apologized for what he termed his "poor judgment," saying the reason he had installed the cameras was because of complaints lodged against maintenance staff working in the dormitory.…

[Rabbi Ari] Yablok said the surveillance cameras were not found in the bathrooms or the bedrooms, but only in the hallways. They were not found in the boys' dormitory either.…

The Israel Experience is a program started four years ago and run by Masa, a joint project of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency. There are currently 90 students studying in the program. Although they take courses for college credit at Bar-Ilan University, Israel Experience students live in dormitories in a separate campus in Ramat Efal, not far from the main Bar-Ilan University campus.

Before assuming leadership of the program, Bryks served as regional director of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth in Florida. Yablok said this was the first complaint lodged against him "on a matter like this.”…

Of course, the OU covered up Rabbi Baruch Lanner's rampant sexual, physical and emotional abuse of NCSY students for decades, so who knows if this is really the first time Bryks has done something like this.