FBI Busts Rabbi For In-Flight Groping

Woman sleeping on plane.This article is from The Smoking Gun

FBI Busts Rabbi For In-Flight Groping

Unorthodox behavior came on flight from Tel Aviv

APRIL 14--An Israeli rabbi flying to New York from Tel Aviv allegedly twice fondled a female passenger as she slept, and when the woman angrily confronted him, he claimed, “It’s a mistake, I’m asleep,” according to federal court records.

Rabbi Gavriel Bidany, 47, was named earlier this month in a criminal information charging him with misdemeanor assault. A complaint sworn by FBI Agent Janet Ambrisco provides a detailed account of the March 27 incident on Delta Airlines Flight 269.


About 90 minutes into the 12-hour flight, Bidany allegedly reached over to the sleeping woman seated next to him and “placed his hand under her blanket, on her groin, and was groping her genital area.” When the victim, identified only as “Jane Doe” in the complaint, “jumped back,” Bidany “quickly removed his hand from her groin.”

The woman told the FBI that she then “pulled her blanket back over her head and body.” But minutes later, Bidany allegedly again “reached under the passenger’s blanket, this time groping the passenger’s breasts.”