Richard Wilgoren

Richard Wilgoren, a former kosher butcher and longtime pillar of Congregation Shaarei Tefillah of Newton, died Tuesday morning after six days in hospice care. He was 82 and had been battling chronic myeloma leukemia for three years.

A lifelong Bostonian, Richard was an ambitious cook and a generous host who created elaborate, detailed menus from farmer’s market ingredients for decades of Jewish holidays, Thanksgivings and other special gatherings. An invitation to dinner in his large wooden sukkah for the fall harvest festival was coveted in his community, as memorialized by the Boston Globe in 2017.

Richard was a founding member of Shaarei Tefillah, a Modern Orthodox shul that began as an itinerant minyan in 1983; he was the person who made sure there were chairs, books, Torahs and a quorum in its early years. In the 1970s, he co-owned Rosenberg’s Meats in Newton Corner, and later operated his own butchery and delivery service.

The oldest of three children born within the span of 39 months to Goldie (Dantowitz) z”l and Samuel Wilgoren, z”l, Richard grew up poor in the hardscrabble Jewish neighborhood of Dorchester. He attended the Maimonides School in Brookline and Torah V’das yeshiva in Brooklyn, among others, and while he never attended college, he revered education. In middle age, he became a voracious reader of hefty books, The New York Times, and Jewish texts.

Known as The Butcher and Uncle Richie, he loved a medium-rare steak and a perfect local peach, fine restaurants, watching professional sports, playing gin rummy, Veuve Clicquot, the Godfather movies, Nantasket Beach, coffee ice cream and strawberry milkshakes, yiddishkeit, and his family. As one friend put it, he had “a heart as big as his voice is loud.” Being “Papa” to his seven grandchildren over the last quarter-century was the highlight of a life that exceeded his expectations.

He is survived by his wife of nearly 60 years, Gale (Kline) Wilgoren of Newton; his three daughters and sons-in-law, Julie and Jim Coffman of Chicago, Debbi Wilgoren and Rick Silber of Washington, D.C. and Jodi and Gary Rudoren of Montclair, New Jersey; his sisters, Arlene Dunn of Oberlin, Ohio, and Rena Blotner of Springfield, Virginia; and grandchildren Carol and Isaac Silber, Noah, Alana and Jenna Coffman, and Lev and Shayna Rudoren.

The funeral will be Wednesday at 12:30pm at the Levine Chapels, 470 Harvard St., Brookline (with livestream viewing using the link on the Levine Chapels website), and burial to follow at the Agudath Israel Cemetery, 776 Baker St., West Roxbury.

The family will sit shiva together at **Richard’s and Gale’s home in Newton:

**Wednesday, Feb. 8 from 7pm-9pm (Mincha/Maariv at 4:55pm),

**Thursday, Feb. 9, 10am-12pm, 2:30pm-4:55pm and 7pm-9pm (Shacharit at 7:30am, Mincha/Maariv at 4:55pm),

**Friday, Feb. 10 from 10am-1pm (Shacharit at 7:30am),

Saturday, Feb. 11 AT CONG. SHAAREI TEFILLAH from 7pm-8:30pm

**Sunday, Feb. 12 from 9am-10am (Shacharit at 8am)

and then individually at the daughters’ homes in Chicago, Washington and Montclair.