Rabbi Yosef Paryzer is to have a hearing to extend his detention on Monday, a source said, after he was arrested last week for concealing his identity and having sex with multiple women through deceit.
Paryzer, a 34-year-old married father of two, is set to have his remand end on Tuesday.
The American citizen had posed as Jake Segal on dating apps, pursuing serious romantic relationships with at least nine women at the same time during a 10-month period.
Who is Jake Segal?
Segal presented himself with different levels of religiosity, depending on the women he dated, ranging from secular to traditional.
Rather than a rabbi at a Jerusalem yeshiva, he claimed to be a trainer for seeing-eye dogs. Paryzer was fired from the yeshiva as soon as his deeds were discovered, one of the women he had dated said.
Under the guise of his different personas, Paryzer met the families of the women he dated, spoke about marriage and starting a family with some of them, and slept with many of them.
A source close to the case said that many of the women are not in favor of arresting Paryzer and engaging with the media, preferring instead to move on and heal from the break-ups.
A few of the women he had dated notified the police about his deception when his true identity was discovered. Under Israeli law, “it is a sex offense to have consensual intercourse ‘obtained by deceit in respect of the identity of the person,’” according to the criminal code.
Police have collected the testimonies of at least five women, and published Paryzer’s photo on Thursday hoping more would come forward.
The legal provision for rape-by-deception has been a controversial clause in the criminal code section on sexual offenses.
An Arab man, Sabbar Kashour, was convicted in 2010 for rape-by-deception with a Jewish woman in Jerusalem. After a plea bargain, he was sentenced to 18 months, but his sentence was reduced in 2012 to nine months.