Boston grieves rabbi killed in Jerusalem synagogue

SWAMPSCOTT, Mass. (RNS) When word spread that Boston native Moshe Twersky was among those murdered in a Jerusalem synagogue attack, local Jews grieved not only a native son but also a loss to a great rabbinic tradition.

SWAMPSCOTT, Mass. (RNS) When word spread that Boston native Moshe Twersky was among four Jewish men murdered Tuesday (Nov. 18) in a Jerusalem synagogue attack, local Jews grieved not only a native son but also a loss to a great rabbinic tradition.

In Boston, the Twersky name is synonymous with Orthodox rabbinic scholarship.

“Deep ties to his family and the beautiful religious tradition that they represented make this loss a deep blow to Boston’s Jewish community,” said Barry Shrage, president of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Greater Boston’s Jewish Federation. “What the terrorists represented is so unspeakably antithetical to everything that they cared about.”


Twersky grew up in Boston in the 1960s and ’70s before relocating to Israel more than 30 years ago. He came from long lines of scholarly rabbis on both sides of the family.

His father was Rabbi Isadore Twersky, an influential thinker who made Talmudic studies a serious pursuit in American universities with his founding of the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard University. Maternal grandfather Joseph Soloveitchik was a prominent Rabbinic philosopher who for decades commuted from Boston to New York and ordained thousands of rabbis through Yeshiva University.

Moshe Twersky carried on the family traditions as both a religious leader and scholar. At the time of his death, he served as dean of Jerusalem’s Yeshivas Toras Moshe, which a cousin founded in 1982 to be a training ground for Orthodox rabbis. He was at morning prayers with other rabbis when attackers stormed the synagogue, murdering them in their phylacteries and prayer shawls, reports said.

Later in the day, the toll from the attack rose to five with the death of traffic police officer Zidan Saif, who had been wounded in a shootout with the attackers just outside the synagogue.

As news of the horror began to sink in, Boston area institutions with ties to the Twersky family tried to express the community’s pain.

“The Maimonides School family is engulfed in grief and outrage today,” said a statement from the Brookline school, which Twersky’s grandfather founded in 1937. Twersky, 59, graduated from Maimonides in 1973.

Sharing in the shock and sadness was Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies.

“I speak for all of us in the CJS community when I say that we are heartbroken at the news of this unspeakable act of sacrilegious cruelty,” said Director Eric Nelson in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Twersky family at this terribly sad and difficult time.”


The fact that Twersky would seek dual citizenship and live his adult life in Israel, where his father was buried after his death in 1997, came as no surprise to those who knew the family. The Jewish homeland held enormous importance in their minds and hearts, Shrage said.

“Love of Israel was an important factor,” Shrage said. “Love of its holiness, love of the land, love of the people — these were central to the identities of these families, along with love of God and love of Torah.”

Twersky is survived by his mother; his wife, Bashy; five children; and many grandchildren.

(G. Jeffrey MacDonald writes for USA Today.)

Video courtesy of CBS Boston

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