Will Boca Raton’s Shaarei Kodesh Synagogue Get $3M From Disputed Will?
A South Carolina court will decide the fate of a $3 million bequest to Shaarei Kodesh, a synagogue which merged with Congregation Beth Tikvah in Boca Raton, Fla.
A judge in South Carolina this week set the trial for June, according to the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.
Hadassah, ORT, Americans for Peace Now and the Blumenthal Home for the Aged in North Carolina are challenging the estate of Nathaniel Rosenfeld, who lived in South Carolina and died in 1997.
Rosenfeld instructed his two sisters to name the charities to benefit from his estate, which would receive the bequests after his wife died. She passed away in 2012.
The sisters directed 89 percent of the estate to Congregation Beth Tikvah, which they helped found. They also agreed to allocate 7 percent for ORT, 2 percent for the Blumenthal Home for the Aged, and 1 percent each for Americans for Peace Now and Hadassah. Both the sisters have died.
Beth Tikvah merged with Congregation Shaarei Kodesh in 2007, and the combined Conservative congregation took on the name Shaarei Kodesh, according to the Sun Sentinel. The congregations neglected, however, to file articles of merger with the state, and the Rosenfeld trust said the Jewish organizations chosen by his sisters had to exist in compliance with IRS charity codes at the time of his death, otherwise Blumenthal, Hadassah and ORT were to receive equal shares.
Shaarei Kodesh says it is the legitimate successor to Beth Tikvah and should receive the Rosenfeld bequest.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
