Co-leaders of Project Shoresh leaving Providence

BY ROBERT ISENBERG

PROVIDENCE – Friends of Rabbis Noach and Naftali Karp are accustomed to receiving frequent emails from the brothers inviting them to community and networking events. But the emails they sent on July 26 came as a surprise to many.

“It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we will be moving to Memphis, TN on August 6, 2023,” Noach Karp wrote. “This was a very difficult decision, however for personal reasons this is the best decision for our family right now.”

“In what seems like just a few hours (and in all honesty, not much more than that) my family and I have made the decision to relocate to Waterbury, CT,” Naftali Karp wrote in his email. “This decision was a most difficult one as we have so many close friends here. We love Providence and love all of you.”

The Karp brothers are co-leaders of Project Shoresh, a Jewish education nonprofit based in Providence.

In the fall of 2021, Project

Shoresh hired four additional rabbis, all of whom moved to Rhode Island, with their families, to help with the organization’s mission. In his email, Naftali Karp wrote that one rabbi, Chaim Yehuda Shaps, and his family, will remain in Providence, but the rest will be moving to other states as well.

Naftali Karp declined an interview, but reiterated that the decision was due to “personal reasons” and offered to follow up in September.

“When one is in the position that we are in it is inevi- table that one may rub someone the wrong way, thus we would like to ask forgiveness from all of you,” Noach Karp said in his farewell email. “Whether we didn’t show enough concern or respect or whatever it may be, we only wanted to help each other grow and to recognize the beauty of our religion. We thank you for this opportunity and hope that we have helped others in this life-long process. We know for certain that we have grown so much from our time here.”

According to its website, http://www.projectshoresh. com, Project Shoresh was founded in 2001 “to encourage, enable and facilitate Jews to connect to their Judaism.” The future of the organization was unclear at press time.

ROBERT ISENBERG (risenberg@ jewishallianceri.org) is the multimedia producer for the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island and a writer for Jewish Rhode Island.