The subject of Rabbi David Feinstein is very touchy. He is a son of Rav Moshe Feinstein and some claim a talmudic scholar of note on his own. It is not acceptable to crtiicize a important rabbi, [but] he has taken on some strange positions.
In the controversy over the Stanton Street Synagogue (Anshe Brezhan) several years ago, he supported the side of the rabbi's family against the majority of worshippers who wanted to keep the shul open. Rabbi Singer's family was suported by Rabbi David in their quest to sell the shul to a Roman Catholic association for a nice amount.
Later it surfaced that the [rabbi's] family had pledged a 6 figure sum to Reb Dovid 's institutions.
Given the tiny enrollment at MTJ , most of that money would fall under Rabbi Dovid Feinstein's personal control.This was also reported in the JEWISH WEEK in NYC.
Here again I guess we see another instance where nepotism and personal interest outweigh morality and fair play. Of course there may be another side to this and I welcome an alternative explaination.
[Slightly edited for clarity.]
In other words, a clear conflict of interest. If this is true, R. Dovid Feinstein should be written out of public Jewish life.
UPDATE: It's true.
The shul adversaries appealed to a rabbinical court, but the head of the court, Rabbi David Feinstein, ruled that it was fine to sell if the money stays in the community, where he runs a yeshiva, Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem. Rabbi Singer told The Jewish Week that Rabbi Feinstein’s yeshiva would, indeed, share in the real estate deal.
“There could be a conflict there,” said a Jewish community worker observing the rabbinic court.http://thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=4279
The Fight For The Stanton Street Shul
Battle for ownership of small synagogue has legal implications far beyond Lower East Side.
JONATHAN MARK - Associate EditorThe small and obscure Stanton Street shul on the Lower East Side seems an unlikely place for Jewish legal history to be made, but that shul may force a judge to decide: who owns a shul divided against itself?
Rabbi Joseph Singer, 85, a volunteer rabbi supported by a largely absentee board, wants to sell the shul at 180 Stanton St. so that he can have a pension. The congregants, who weren’t consulted, want to stay in the classic old shul that’s been their home since 1913.
Rabbi Singer who more than 25 years ago agreed to officiate voluntarily on Stanton Street, told The Jewish Week that the sale is “for the best. We lost any nighttime or daytime minyan. Some people just come, talk and go away.” The rabbi admits that there was no congregational vote or discussion; the board of directors that approved the sale was comprised of “mostly mishpocha and old members,” some now living as far away as Long Island.
“There’s nobody left,” said Rabbi Singer. “The board and myself, together, want to sell the shul.”
But some congregants are putting up a fight.
“The rabbi hasn’t got the right to sell as long as we have a minyan on weekdays and 30, 40, 50 people on Shabbos and holidays,” said Ben Sauerhaft, 88. “Not one congregant I’ve spoken to,” said Sauerhaft, a retired grocer, “was consulted if we should sell the shul.
“By what right should others benefit from selling my shul?” he said.
The New York Attorney General’s office, which oversees charitable operations, has so far withheld approval of last summer’s sale of the Stanton Street shul (to a theater group).
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York is currently mediating the dispute, trying to keep the two sides out of court.
The case, according to community observers, has implications for hundreds of shteibles and community shuls that have poorly written bylaws, if any. These shuls may be targets for hostile takeovers with an eye toward New York City’s real estate boom that has sent the value of even a modest two-story shul in disrepair, such as on Stanton Street, well over a million dollars.
The lesson of the Stanton Street shul fight, said the JCRC’s David Pollock, is that a congregation, while still healthy, ought to create a living will for itself. Or at least a clause for their bylaws similar to the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment on presidential disability and succession, to predetermine what benchmarks — low membership, no minyan, low funds — ought exist before a shul can be sold and assets divided. The will, said Pollack, should also specify how the assets are to be divided, rather than leave it to feuding parties who may not reflect the interests of the founders or supporters of the community in its prime.
At Bnai Jacob Anshei Brzezan Synagogue, to use the Stanton Street shul’s legal name, everyone agrees that the shul has been run with all the accountability of petty cash in a cookie jar.
No one knows if the shul has a constitution; no one remembers the last time any congregant paid dues; no one remembers the last time anyone elected a board of directors; no one knows who has the deed to the building.
Who’ll get the money from the sale?
Charity, Rabbi Singer said, “but they may give me, too, something.”
One official of the Lower East Side’s United Jewish Council, who asked not to be named, said he was “flabbergasted” when he heard the shul would be sold, but the council now supports the sale after it became clear that the council would share in the proceeds.
The shul adversaries appealed to a rabbinical court, but the head of the court, Rabbi David Feinstein, ruled that it was fine to sell if the money stays in the community, where he runs a yeshiva, Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem. Rabbi Singer told The Jewish Week that Rabbi Feinstein’s yeshiva would, indeed, share in the real estate deal.
“There could be a conflict there,” said a Jewish community worker observing the rabbinic court.Joel Kaplan, director of the United Jewish Council, describes Rabbi Singer as “a beloved personality. I don’t see the congregation being able to support the shul at this point. Under the circumstances, the sale should be concluded.”
What about his council getting money from the sale?
“We’re still finalizing the [appropriation] committee. Nothing’s final because if there’s no sale there’s no committee,” Kaplan said.
According to anecdotal evidence from other Lower East Side Jewish leaders, the neighborhood’s Jewish population is growing but not the shul-going population. One neighborhood pediatrician said he was losing about one Orthodox family a month.
The JCRC’s Pollack explained that as large Orthodox families are unable to find large enough apartments, they move out of the neighborhood, leaving mostly the young, transient or elderly.
Sauerhaft, the only person in the shul who is older than Rabbi Singer, claims to be the shul president.
Well, he admits, he’s not really the president of this particular congregation but of Congregation Bnei Joseph Dugel Machne Efrayim that was invited, upon the loss of their shul, into the Stanton Street shul 35 years ago.
“We brought in our Torah scrolls, and we pay to fix them. We pay toward the heat and electric bills, insurance for the Torahs, and we bought the ArtScrolls,” siddurs and Bibles.
“Every three months we’d give Rabbi Singer a certain amount, to light a memorial lamp or say a Kaddish,” Sauerhaft said. “No one had contracts for salaries or pensions.”
Sauerhaft added that while the shul didn’t ask congregants for dues, money was raised by selling High Holy Days seats and renting out space to Project Ezra, an organization for the Jewish elderly.
Congregant Iris Claire Blutriech told The Jewish Week, “We are doctors, lawyers, artists, and people that are homeless. We all talk to each other, and some of these people have no one else to talk to. Some of us came out of the concentration camps, or communist countries. Many are old, and it’s hard to find a new congregation and feel comfortable at that age.
“In the summer,” she recalls, “to draw people to the synagogue, I started a small garden [at the shul]. The shopkeepers, the Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans, the mechanics up the block, all bring me water for the garden when the synagogue is locked. We have bags of clothing we donate for the poor. If our light-timer goes off on Shabbos, we can ask anyone on the street and they’d be glad to turn the lights back on.”
Speaking for those still at the synagogue, Blutriech said, “Maybe you’d walk right past it, but this synagogue has a great soul. It’s not a building for somebody from Cedarhurst to sell.”
In the 1980 case of the old Pike Street Shul in Manhattan, a judge ruled that in the absence of a coherent membership list and process, a member may be recognized as anyone who contributes anything at all, even some wine and challah for kiddush.
That’s a dangerous standard, said one observer: “A group of organized people, and they don’t have to be that many, can identify dying shuls, bring in some cake, and take over the shul for its assets.”
The JCRC’s Pollack said, “In so many cases, the people who are left at the end are not the people you really want making decisions. What we’re trying to do, with the pro bono help of the Greenberg & Traurig firm, is help congregations, while they’re still healthy, protect their interests and assure that they are represented, in some kind of a will, when these decisions are made. It’s best that these issues be dealt with sooner rather than later.”