The rabbi who owns Pornhub

Solomon Friedman, who now oversees compliance at Pornhub (Getty Images/The Forward).

Published: 18 September 2024

Last updated: 19 September 2024

This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward's free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.

It’s really not as shocking as it sounds that a rabbi has become one of the top officials running Pornhub, the free internet pornography behemoth. After all, the investment group that bought Pornhub is called Ethical Capital Partners. And Solomon Friedman, the rabbi in question and the investment company’s co-founder and chief compliance officer, is trying to clean up internet porn.

Most people might be confused by the idea of a religious leader being involved with a pornography company; after all, isn’t lust a sin? Aren’t rabbis supposed to be a kind of moral police? 

But Judaism is actually pretty sex positive; most Jewish texts about sex focus on understanding and regulating the act, not warning people of its dangers. The Talmud has passages instructing husbands to have regular sex with their wives, emphasizing the importance of pleasure and encouraging experimentation. There’s even a tale of a student hiding under his rabbi’s bed when his teacher has sex with his wife; when the student is caught, he argues that everything is Torah and he was just trying to learn. 

Mind you, Friedman was never a practicing rabbi. He grew up in an Orthodox family in Canada and was ordained in Jerusalem, but then he became a criminal defense lawyer, making a name for himself defending extremely sketchy characters accused of such offenses as sexual abuse, possession of child pornography and drunk driving. So really, Friedman’s rabbinical plaudits are just fuel for a clicky headline, like the one published by Time; his actual career is a pretty obvious fit for Pornhub.

The problem with Pornhub isn’t necessarily the fact that it provides porn, though of course, plenty of people object to that too. But porn has existed for thousands of years; there’s ancient Greek pottery with erotic depictions of sex and temples in India with various hard-to-believe acrobatic positions sculpted on the walls. Besides, Pornhub is not only the best-known porn site, but the seventh most visited website in the world. (Google is number one.) It’s not going anywhere.

The more pressing issue for Pornhub is how it regulates its porn. Until recently, anyone could upload a video, which has led to a lot of nonconsensual porn and child sexual abuse on the platform. Poor moderation meant that there was little recourse to get videos removed, or at least to get them removed before someone had downloaded them and reuploaded them somewhere else. And some experts object to some of Pornhub’s legal, professionally produced videos that encourage illegal activities, such as categories that fetishize incest or scenes in which the actors pretend to be children.

While Friedman could theoretically apply the Talmudic arguments he learned as a young man in Jerusalem to the complex ethical questions posed by Pornhub, most of his work seems to concern complex technological challenges, such as how to digitally fingerprint videos or implement facial scans to ensure all the performers are consenting and of age.

Realistically, Friedman’s Judaism is probably most relevant to white nationalist conspiracy theorists who endorse the lie that porn is a tool a cabal of wealthy Jews use to control the world, and decimate the white population by tempting them to masturbate instead of procreate. 

Since Friedman got involved with Pornhub, videos have been circulating on X and Reddit accusing him of encouraging pedophilia, thanks to his criminal defense work. Others list him alongside other Jews who have been involved with pornography or simply with dating apps such as Tinder as proof of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white nuclear family. Friedman told The Washington Post that his children have been subjected to “horrific antisemitism” since he invested in Pornhub.

So is it really so weird that a rabbi oversees Pornhub? Only to antisemites. To everyone else, maybe he’s the only guy equipped to make porn ethical.

This story was originally published on the Forward.