US Supreme Court won’t intervene in synagogue dispute

The Supreme Court is declining to intervene in a fight over the control of a historic Rhode Island synagogue and its Torah scroll adornments worth millions.

The justices’ decision Monday not to take up the case means that a lower court ruling that a New York synagogue owns Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, stays in place.

Congregation Jeshuat Israel has worshiped at Touro Synagogue since the late 1800s. It wanted control of the synagogue and the ability to sell one of its two sets of Colonial-era Torah scroll bells, called rimonim. It wanted to sell the set to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for $7.4 million.

An appeals court found that Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel, which objected to the sale, owns the Touro property including the rimonim.

— AP