![\"Rabbi](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wranter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/4fc81e9af92ea17d9a000001-300x251.jpg?resize=300%2C251\" "\\"Rabbi")
<\/a>When Toronto Jews awoke last Saturday morning and collected their Globe and Mail newspapers from their doorsteps (those who still subscribe, that is), they discovered a front-page story<\/a> detailing how Holy Blossom Temple, the city’s oldest synagogue \u2013 and the country’s largest Reform congregation, with some 1,950 member families \u2013 has, in effect, dumped its senior rabbi, John Moscowitz.<\/p>\n The article painted a picture of shul politics at their most vicious, and the goings-on were on display for all in the Jewish and wider communities to see. It wasn’t pretty, but it seems to be par for the course in large Toronto synagogues these days.<\/p>\n The story of Rabbi Moscowitz’s departure first broke in the Jewish Tribune<\/a>\u00a0“newspaper,” the house organ of B’nai Brith Canada, which ran a short paragraph on April 24 that quoted shul president\u00a0Mark Anshan as saying Moscowitz would retire in June 2015.<\/p>\n That was it.<\/p>\n But the item ran with a picture of a rather young-looking Moscowitz, who apparently is only 60 years old.<\/p>\n Moscowitz’s youthful appearance and the rather cryptic nature of the announcement raised questions in the community. Veteran journalist Michael Posner answered many of them in his Globe piece.<\/p>\n Basically, Moscowitz \u2013 who has been at Holy Blossom for 25 years, including 12 as senior rabbi \u2013 will take a three-year sabbatical and then become rabbi emeritus of the congregation. The legal settlement reached after “protracted” talks between him and the synagogue was said to be worth more than $1 million.<\/p>\n Posner reported that the move to oust Moscowitz has divided the congregation, with a number of high-profile members saying they will leave because of it, including Canadian Senator Linda Frum and her husband, developer Howard Sokolowski. Frum called\u00a0called Moscowitz’s ouster “a tremendous act of board mismanagement.”<\/p>\n Neither Moscowitz nor the shul board are talking about the issue, but the Globe reported that a powerful “old-guard” faction within the shul tried\u00a0unsuccessfully\u00a0to block his reappointment in 2005.<\/p>\n The rabbi’s detractors would only speak anonymously, but some said he was more of a manager than a scholar and not in the same intellectual and scholarly league as his world-renowned predecessors, such as Dow Marmur, now the temple’s rabbi emeritus, and the legendary Gunther Plaut, the famed Torah commentator and former president of Canadian Jewish Congress who died earlier this year.<\/p>\n Others said Moscowitz wasn’t skilled enough at shmoozing with congregants.<\/p>\n More to the point, however, was that Moscowitz is politically and religiously more conservative than the temple’s more classically Reform liberal old guard.<\/p>\n He was front and centre in advocating a 2007 renovation plan that would have spent tens of millions of dollars to reorient the temple’s sanctuary to face east, toward Jerusalem, as do those in most Conservative and Orthodox shuls.<\/p>\n Many Reform temples, including Holy Blossom, deliberately erected buildings in which congregants would not face east when praying as a way of differentiating themselves from their more traditional counterparts in other movements.<\/p>\n The proposed renovations, however, have apparently gone nowhere, even though the changes to the sanctuary were part of a modernization of the temple’s building that is reportedly long overdue.<\/p>\n \u201cI think what happened is that [board chair] Mark Anshan managed to galvanize the opposition to John, based on his political conservatism and religious traditionalism,\u201d prominent Israeli journalist Yossi Klein Halevi, a good friend of the rabbi, told the Globe. \u201cHoly Blossom was classical Reform, and John offended those sensibilities. He broke the mould by understanding the implications of the collapse of the Oslo accords and by bringing in more Hebrew and greater respect for Halachah [Jewish law]. This was very painful for the old guard.\u201d<\/p>\n Rabbi Moscowitz’s unceremonious departure is perhaps the most recent high-profile case in a large Toronto shul, but it’s not the only one.<\/p>\n Thousands of men, to maintain their sexual health, feel viagra sale click to read more<\/a> better on a day to day basis, and avoid serious problems later on in life. One of the main causes for male infertility, ED buy viagra overnight<\/a> can stem from psychological situations and create severe emotional and physical stress that adds to the trouble. They used to feel that maybe it won’t viagra shop uk<\/a> give the required energy for better sexual performance. Take a gaze at these testosterone inoculation appraisals to be acquainted with more concerning the products that we provide. purchasing viagra in canada<\/a> <\/span>At Beth Tikvah Synagogue, a Conservative congregation with some 1,100 member families, spiritual leader Rabbi Wayne Allen is completing an 18-month sabbatical\u00a0this month<\/a>\u00a0after he was rumoured to have been forced out of his position for undisclosed reasons.<\/p>\n There a number of parallels between his case and Moscowitz’s.<\/p>\n Rabbi Allen, who was solidly on the religious right wing of the centrist Conservative movement and was a prominent member of the Union for Traditional Judaism (which, ideologically, straddles Conservatism and Orthodoxy), is leaving the congregation after 25 years as its spiritual leader.<\/p>\n Like Moscowitz, Allen, too, replaced a well-known predecessor, the charismatic founding rabbi of the congregation, Avraham Feder, who began his career as a cantor and also fulfilled that role at Beth Tikvah, with his powerful and passionate singing voice.<\/p>\n Speaking to The Canadian Jewish News in January 2011, Allen said his departure had nothing to do with philosphical differences with the shul’s leadership, although Beth Tikvah’s president at the time said the synagogue would be\u00a0going through an \u201cevaluation of when, and who, and what direction the synagogue will take in terms of ritual orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Holy](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wranter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Holy_Blossom_Temple.jpg?resize=246%2C300\" "\\"Holy")
<\/a>![\"Rabbi](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.wranter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/getImageadb8.jpg?resize=201%2C300\" "\\"Rabbi")
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