Stoughton is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 29,281 at the 2020 census. The town is located approximately 17 miles (27 km) from Boston, 31 miles (50 km) from Providence, Rhode Island, and 35 miles (56 km) from Cape Cod.
Norman Lamm was an American Modern Orthodox rabbi, scholar, academic administrator, author, and Jewish community leader. He was the Chancellor of Yeshiva University until he announced his retirement on July 1, 2013.
Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks was an English Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and author. Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. As the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the United Kingdom, he was the Chief Rabbi of those Orthodox synagogues but was not recognized as the religious authority for the Haredi Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations or for the progressive movements such as Masorti, Reform, and Liberal Judaism. As Chief Rabbi, he formally carried the title of Av Beit Din (head) of the London Beth Din. At the time of his death, he was the Emeritus Chief Rabbi.
Baruch Aaron "Bernard" Poupko was a Russian-born American scholar, author, and lecturer. A refugee who escaped persecution in his native Russia, he went on to become a prominent figure in the Jewish community in the United States whose career largely focused on advocating for Soviet Jews.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, legal, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men in Judaism. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major branches of the Jewish religion.
Eric H. Yoffie is a Reform rabbi, and President Emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), the congregational arm of the Reform movement in North America, which represents an estimated 1.5 million Reform Jews in more than 900 synagogues across the United States and Canada. He was the unchallenged head of American Judaism's largest denomination from 1996 to 2012. Following his retirement in 2012, he has been a lecturer and writer; his writings appear regularly in The Huffington Post, The Jerusalem Post, and Haaretz.
Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) haCohen Weiss is an American Open Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist who led the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in The Bronx, New York until 2015. He is the founder of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah for men and Yeshivat Maharat for women, rabbinical seminaries that are tied to Open Orthodoxy, a breakaway movement that Weiss originated, which is to the left of Modern Orthodox Judaism and to the right of Conservative Judaism. He is co-founder of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a rabbinical association that is a liberal alternative to the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization Coalition for Jewish Concerns – Amcha.
Open Orthodox Judaism is a Jewish religious movement with increased emphasis on intellectual openness and a more expansive role for women. The term was coined in 1997 by Avi Weiss, who views halakha as permitting more flexibility than the normal practices of Orthodox Judaism.
Rabbi Hyman E. Goldin, LL.B. was a Lithuanian-American Orthodox Rabbi, attorney and Judaic scholar. A prolific author of English Jewish literature, he wrote over fifty works.
Rachel Barenblat, the "Velveteen Rabbi," is an American poet and rabbi. She was ordained as a rabbi in 2011. In 2013 she was named a Rabbis Without Borders fellow by Clal, the Center for Learning and Leadership, and in 2015 was named co-chair of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal along with Rabbi David Markus. In 2016, The Forward named her one of America's most inspiring rabbis.
Congregation Beth Israel Abraham Voliner is an Orthodox Jewish congregation in Overland Park, in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. Formally established as Tefereth Israel in Kansas City, Missouri in 1894, by 1960 it had moved several times, and merged with three other congregations, taking on its current name. Responding to demographic shifts in Kansas City's Orthodox community, it opened a branch in Overland Park in 1987, and in 1994 it moved to its current location at 9900 Antioch Road.
Congregation Beth Jacob is an Orthodox Jewish congregation located at 1855 Lavista Road in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is Atlanta's largest Orthodox congregation.
Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation (SBH) is a Sephardic Jewish congregation with a synagogue in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The name Bikur Holim means visiting or comforting the sick, an important mitzvah. The first official name of the congregation was Spanish Hebrew Society and Congregation Bikur Holim, shortened to "Sephardic Bikur Holim". For a time in the 1930s, after amalgamation with another congregation, it was known as Bikur Holim Ahavath Ahim Congregation.
Meir Yaakov Soloveichik is an American Orthodox rabbi and writer. He is the son of Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveichik, grandson of Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik, and a great nephew of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, the leader of American Jewry who identified with what became known as Modern Orthodoxy.
Ahavath Torah is a Conservative congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Formed as a merger of two older congregations founded in the 1890s, it is the oldest synagogue in Stoughton.
Itamar Rosensweig is a rabbi and maggid shiur at Yeshiva University in New York City and a dayan at the Beth Din of America, where he also serves as the editor of Jewishprudence: Thoughts on Jewish Law and Beth Din Jurisprudence. Rabbi Rosensweig is also the resident scholar at Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, NJ and teaches Jewish Business Law and Ethics at YU's Sy Syms School of Business. Previously, he taught an advanced Talmud shiur at Columbia University's Kraft Center, and presently serves as the maggid shiur at the University of Pennsylvania Hillel. He is the son of Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, and grandson of Yaffa Eliach.
Daniel Stein is a Rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in New York City where he holds the Perez and Frieda Friedberg Chair in Talmud.