Rabbi Peter Light received a five-year prison sentence in May 2007 after pleading guilty in Monmouth County court to stealing more than $80,000 from the Marlboro Jewish Center-Congregation Ohev Shalom.
Photo by Bob Bielk, Asbury Park Press
June 26, 2008
Rabbi Peter Light, who pleaded guilty in January 2007 to stealing more than $80,000 from the Marlboro Jewish Center-Congregation Ohev Shalom, died of a heart attack June 18 at Cooper Hospital in Camden.
He had been rushed there after experiencing chest pains at the Camden County Jail.
The 49-year-old Light was incarcerated at the jail after failing to meet the strict conditions of the Intensive Supervision Program administered by the state court system, which allowed him to live and work outside prison walls.
In November 2007, after serving six months of a five-year prison sentence, a three-judge panel granted the rabbi’s request to live with his girlfriend in Cherry Hill and to work there as a used-car salesman. Light had promised to pay child support for his teenage son and daughter and make restitution for the funds he admitted taking from the synagogue.
“Members of his congregation who came to court were not thrilled with the idea that he would be going on ISP,” said ISP director Harvey Goldstein.
“But they made it clear they wanted their money back.”
Goldstein told NJ Jewish News that within several months of Light’s entrance into the program, he “was not doing ISP the way the judges had ordered. He was not paying according to the way they said they wanted him to pay. There were curfew issues. He was not following the directions he was given.”
In April, the judges ordered the rabbi back behind bars.
Before Light’s reinternment, congregation president Jeffrey Sacks said, he was “bothered that he was out.” He also noted that the rabbi had paid back “only a small amount” of the $82,000 he admitted taking from the synagogue and spending on trips to Israel, private school tuition for one of his children, and a diamond ring and moving expenses for his girlfriend.
The money had been part of a discretionary fund the rabbi was supposed to dole out to congregants in case of emergencies.
It had been discovered missing during an audit after Light resigned from his pulpit unexpectedly in June 2006, citing unexplained “personal reasons.”
He had also served at a Memphis synagogue from 1990 to 2004.
‘Destroyed faith’
“I feel bad talking about him because he is dead,” said Sacks. “But if you had asked me three weeks ago, I would have said I was very upset that he was released. I don’t believe he paid his debt to society, and he destroyed the religious faith of many people, and that is something you can never, ever get back.”
The congregation president said the only official action the leadership has taken was to notify members by e-mail that their former rabbi had “passed on.”
Sacks would not comment on whether the synagogue intends to take legal action to recover any funds from Light’s estate.
But he did say, “I have a lot of respect for the children. I feel terrible for the children. Anytime a parent dies it is horrible. This is a tragic thing to have a father die. My heart and prayers go out to his family.”
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