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Rabbi Barry Starr

Rabbi Barry Starr is a Conservative Rabbi and President of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis. He was ordained in 1976 from the Jewish Theological Seminary and served three years as an assistant Rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He then spent three years as the first Recruitment Director for the Jewish Theological Seminary. He successfully established recruitment as a tool for not only increasing the student population, but for outreaching to communities and bringing the message of the Seminary to its constituents.

Following four years at Temple Israel in Binghamton, New York, Rabbi Starr came to Temple Israel in Sharon, Massachusetts, where he currently serves in his sixteenth year. He has engineered steady growth at Temple Israel not only in numbers, but in quality of programs and community feelings. The synagogue has grown from 500 to 750 members, And a renovated facility now makes Temple Israel one of the leading synagogues in the New England region.

Rabbi Starr now serves as a member of the Chancellor's Rabbinic Cabinet of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has been a member of the Joint Placement Commission of Conservative Judaism in which capacity he prepared a special report on the situation of Assistant Rabbis and has spoken to the Rabbinical School on the same issue. He also has been the New England Regional President of the Rabbinical Assembly, the umbrella organization for Conservative Rabbis, and has served as Rabbinical Assembly Representative to a Joint Committee with United Synagogue and JEA on the Afternoon School.

In Sharon, Rabbi Starr has served on numerous committees and organizations including the Sharon Youth Coalition and the Sharon Clergy Association, which he helped found. Always interested in youth, Rabbi Starr served for many years as a member of the United Synagogue Youth National Board of Directors and while at the Seminary, founded OMETZ, a Movement-wide college outreach program that has grown and changed its name to KOACH. He lives in Sharon with his wife, Rebecca, and his children, Elianna and Uri.

From the Desk of Rabbi Starr

It may be an apocryphal story. But so it goes that a young aspiring Rabbinical student was facing his acceptance interview to the Jewish Theological Seminary...

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