Lester A. Segal

Rabbi Professor Lester Segal will always be remembered as a sweet and gentle man who was proud of his family and his distinguished Jewish heritage. He was deeply immersed in his own family history which began in Romania and Ukraine and ended up in Turkish Palestine of the 19th century. He was both scholarly and very approachable and welcomed questions of all types – rabbinic, historical, and linguistic. He was an important link to a rich Jewish past which is no more.

Born and bred in the Tompkinsville section of Staten Island, NY, Lester was the youngest son of Rabbi Jona and Sylvia Segal, both Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Safed, Palestine (Tzfat, Israel). To his family and close relatives, he was affectionately known as “Boomie,” a nickname for Avraham, his given Hebrew first name. As a child, he lived with his parents and two older siblings in the basement of Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, the Orthodox synagogue where his father officiated.

Until his Bar Mitzvah, he attended public schools in Staten Island. Thereafter, he studied at the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Yeshiva on Henry Street on the Lower East Side and later at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. His daily commute to school was a long one, involving bus, ferry and train. He concurrently attended City College of New York and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, receiving his undergraduate degree in 1949, and his rabbinic ordination in 1952. At JTS he studied under many of the greatest Jewish scholars of the period. From 1953 to 1955 he served as a Jewish chaplain in the United States Air Force. He later became assistant director of the Hillel Foundation at The Ohio State University.

While completing his PhD in History from Columbia University, he relocated to Boston with his new wife Ethel (nee Regenberg) in 1966. He joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Boston as a professor of history and Judaic studies and taught there for over thirty years. He had a special interest in Jewish historiography and, in particular, Azariah de Rossi, the 16th century Italian rabbi and physician best known for his Hebrew work Me’or Enayim (“Light of the Eyes”).

He is survived by his wife of 57 years, Ethel, four children: Hadassah Segal (Eric Rosen), Yoninah Cramer (Michael), Nechemia Segal (Margalit) and Ezra Segal, as well as six grandchildren: Elazar Cramer (Noa), Yedidiah and Yochanan Cramer; Asher, Avital and Gideon Segal. He imbued his family with a love of Jewish tradition and history and instilled in them a deep connection to their own rich and beautiful past.

He was a founding member of Congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Newton, MA.

Services will be held at Levine Chapel, 470 Harvard Street, Brookline on Friday, February 9, at 9:30am. Interment will follow at the Chevra Shaas Cemetery, 776 Baker Street, West Roxbury.

Shiva will be held at the home of Ethel Segal and the late residence of Rabbi Prof. Lester Segal the following dates and times:

Saturday Evening (2/10): Visitation from 7:00-9:00pm; Mincha/Maariv at 5:00pm

Sunday (2/11): Visitation from 8:00am-12:00pm, 2:00-5:30pm, and 7:00-8:30pm; Shacharit at 8:00am and Mincha/Maariv at 5:00pm

Monday (2/12): Visitation from 9:30am-12:00pm, 2:30-5:30pm, and 7:00-8:30pm; Shacharit at 7:00am and Mincha/Maariv at 5:00pm

Tuesday (2/13): Visitation from 9:30am-12:00pm, 2:30-5:30pm, and 7:00-8:30pm; Shacharit at 7:00am and Mincha/Maariv at 5:00pm

Wednesday (2/14): Visitation from 9:30am-12:00pm, 2:30-5:30pm, and 7:00-8:30pm; Shacharit at 7:00am and Mincha/Maariv at 5:00pm

Thursday (2/15): Shacharit at 7:00am

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Lester's memory to the following: Congregation Shaarei Tefillah, 35 Morseland Avenue, Newton, MA 02459 (www.shaarei.org) or The Adams Street Shul, 168 Adams Street, Newton, MA 02458 (www.adamsstreet.org)