A prominent rabbi was promised a no-jail sentence after he pleaded guilty in Manhattan yesterday to explicitly propositioning on the Internet a cop he thought was a 13-year-old girl.
Under a plea deal, Rabbi Israel Kestenbaum, a 55- year-old father of five from Highland Park, N.J., will continue sex-offender counseling indefinitely and serve five years of probation.
Kestenbaum had made a local name for himself as a Ground Zero chaplain and a member of the Manhattan-based New York Board of Rabbis, a position he no longer holds. In return for the no-jail promise, he admitted in Manhattan Supreme Court that he repeatedly solicited sex earlier this year from an undercover cop who was posing online as a 13-year-old girl named Katie.
Kestenbaum even set up a “date” with “Katie” at a Starbucks on Dey Street in the Financial District. He left after “Katie” didn’t show up.
But cops took surveillance pictures of him waiting for her, carrying a black bag that a later search warrant revealed contained lubricants and condoms.
Kestenbaum had faced up to four years in prison had he gone to trial and been convicted.