A Boston-area rabbi pleaded not guilty to charges that he stole from his temple to pay off a man who was blackmailing him for an alleged affair with a teenage male. Rabbi Barry Starr, 65, who resigned last year from Temple Israel in Sharon, Massachusetts, entered the plea Tuesday in Norfolk Superior Court, the Boston…
A prominent Boston rabbi was indicted for embezzlement and larceny for stealing money from his temple to pay off a man who was blackmailing the rabbi for his supposed affair with a teenage male. Rabbi Barry Starr, who resigned a year ago from Temple Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Sharon, Massachusetts, allegedly became entangled in…
A 30-year-old suburban Boston man has been indicted on theft and extortion charges in relation to the abrupt resignation last year of a leading Conservative rabbi over allegations of sex with a teenage boy. Nicholas Zemeitus, of Quincy, Massachusetts, is charged with eight counts of larceny, two counts of receiving stolen property and one count…
Those of us who knew, or thought we knew, Rabbi Barry Freundel — recently arrested for spying on women in the mikveh, with a mountain of evidence suggesting his guilt — are still in shock. As much as I disagreed with many of his halachic positions, I always thought he was one of the good…
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…
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”…
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…
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