(JTA) — One recent Tuesday evening, a group of about two dozen Jews in their 20s and 30s huddled around wooden tables poring over the text for the week’s Torah portion. A rabbi prodded them with questions about the petition that Zelophehad’s daughters submitted to Moses to inherit their father’s estate. Why do they petition…
J Street withdrew from a pro-Israel rally in Boston because it did not feel the rally would address all the group’s concerns. The liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, a constituent of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, explained its stance on the July 17 solidarity rally in a letter by its Boston…
The brakes of a private jet crashed as it tried to take off on Saturday, killing Lewis Katz and six other people near Boston, had been applied at the time of the accident, a U.S. transportation official said on Tuesday. National Transportation Safety Board investigator Luke Schiada told reporters that a review of the flight…
Jonathan Sarna, the American-Jewish historian, is making a steady recovery after collapsing a few weeks ago. Sarna is reading email and gradually regaining the use of his voice, according to recent postings on the website CarePages. “While Jonathan’s elation at being able to speak has calmed down a bit, he is still lecturing and threatening…
Getty Images I don’t know Rabbi Barry Starr personally, but I don’t like how he is being vilified in the media, most recently in an article in The Forward with the lurid headline “When a Good Rabbi Goes Bad.” We still don’t know all the facts in this case, and we’ve already found this man…
(JTA) — It’s been a rough few weeks for Conservative Jews in the Boston suburbs known as the South Area. First, Rabbi Barry Starr, the longtime spiritual leader of Temple Israel of Sharon, resigned amid allegations that he used synagogue discretionary funds to pay about $480,000 in hush money to an extortionist to hide a…
Rabbi Miriam Spitzer did not have to mention him by name. The class of sixth graders at Temple Israel, in Sharon, Massachusetts, knew exactly whom Spitzer was thinking of when she dedicated that day’s lesson to Elisha ben Abuyah, a revered rabbi who became a heretic. “The lesson was that the Torah taught [by Abuyah]…
Disgraced Boston-area Rabbi Barry Starr sent naked photos of himself to boys and trolled the internet for escorts for sexual liaisons — and was tripped up when the brother of one teen demanded thousands in hush money, court documents alleged. The prominent rabbi, who resigned as leader of Temple Israel in Sharon, engaged in “extensive”…
100% of profits support our journalism
