Ontario rabbi awarded damages of $130,000 for wrongful dismissal

TORONTO, April 21 (JTA) — A Canadian court has awarded $130,000 in damages to a rabbi who claimed that the synagogue where he served for 25 years was wrong in dismissing him with only nine months’ notice. Justice William Festeryga found that Congregation B’nai Israel, the synagogue in the Ontario town of St. Catharines where Rabbi Joseph Ben-David had worked since 1969, had behaved in a “cruel, abusive, insolent and hurtful” manner when it terminated his contract in 1994. Although at one point the synagogue alleged it had dismissed Ben-David with cause, it retracted its reason for dismissal before the trial began. Ben-David asserted that he had never been informed of any complaints against him and that the synagogue had given him a “glowing letter of recommendation.” The court also criticized B’nai Israel for attempting to exclude Ben-David and his son from a minyan and for sending a letter to congregants in 1996 that “was calculated to put [the rabbi] in a bad light for trying to enforce his rights in the civil courts.” The 62-year-old rabbi, who claimed that his long record of service should have entitled him to 30 months’ notice, received $110,000 for the wrongful dismissal and another $20,000 in punitive damages. “It was not a question of money, but of justice” that made him take the matter to court, he said.