Boston Rabbi Barry Starr Paid Teenage Boy $500K To Cover Up Affair
Boston-area Rabbi Barry Starr allegedly paid nearly half a million dollars — taken from synagogue funds and borrowed from his congregants — to hide his affair with a 16-year-old male.
According to statements released Monday in the Stoughton District Court, Starr, the longtime spiritual leader at Temple Israel of Sharon before his recent resignation, used $480,000 to pay a man who claimed to be the teen’s brother. Nicholas Zemeitus, 29, threatened to expose the affair, which occurred two years ago, unless Starr paid him.
Much of the money came from the the rabbi’s discretionary fund. The Boston Globe reported that Starr also asked congregants for loans of tens of thousands of dollars to cover up the affair. Congregants are now suing him to recover the funds.
Starr could be charged with larceny by false pretense, forgery and forging a document, Sharon Police Detective Scott Leonard wrote in a statement to the court. The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16, so the affair itself does not constitute a crime.
Leonard wrote that Starr altered denominations on some of the eight checks he gave Zemeitus last month. In one instance, Leonard wrote, Starr added two zeroes to an $18 check.
“Sometimes people who try to be good people do things that are wrong, hurtful, and shameful,” Starr wrote in a letter to congregants last month, according to the Globe.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30