NETS bought the closed Phillips church last year for about $1.2 million after its members had merged with a church in Belmont. The congregation sold the building to NETS hoping to save it from the fate of some other former churches — conversion to condominiums, Bass said. Redeemer Fellowship was started by the NETS Institute for Church Planting, an interdenominational evangelical organization in Williston, Vt., that recruits recent seminary graduates to set up new congregations. Christ the Kin

The 32 lanes of one of the most prominent suburban bowling alleys in the area will go dark next week, as Fairway Bowling -- a Route 9 institution-- shuts its doors after nearly 56 years in business. The prospect of Fairway's closing -- the latest of several local bowling alleys to close recently -- is "like a death," said its 84-year-old owner Helen Sellew, who along with her father and brother, helped open the business in 1955 on part of their family's dairy farm. "When we opened, everyone bo

Local advocacy group asks why mothers can't stop feuding and support one another's lifestyle choices These women are sick of the ''Mommy Wars." They've had enough with bickering over formula feeding, day care, cosleeping, and going back to work. They have no patience for mothers who deliver play-group lectures about how their way -- stay-at-home or full-time work -- is the only way. Stop the guilt trips and playground mind games, says the 135-member Framingham chapter of the advocacy group, Moth

NEWTON - Dr. Bob Levenson always appeared wherever he was asked, on the eighth day, whether that was a national holiday, the Sabbath, or a day packed with visits from his regular patients. His task was to preside over the most profound and delicate rituals of Jewish family life, singing ancient prayers in Hebrew while circumcising and bandaging a newborn ... (Full article: 1096 words)

February 7, 2010 His fresh look at Revolution finds diversity at its heart By Erica Noonan CONCORD - The American Revolution is not just for white, British guys anymore, local historian Dr. Joseph L. Andrews says. The retired physician, himself a descendant of several Jewish colonists who battled the British, is making it his mission to delve into the role that long-ignored minorities - women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews, and even children - played in the nation's battle for i

By Erica Noonan Want to get a funny look at parties? Tell people you have a child named Dennis McCormick enrolled at the Sunday School for Jewish Studies. First people make the most reasonable assumption: I must be a Jew who married an Irishman.   “What's your maiden name?” they ask. “Noonan,” I say.  That doesn't clear anything up, so they peer at me a little more closely, searching for a reassuring Semitic look around the eyes and nose. It is there, so they start peppering me wi

WATERTOWN - Auschwitz survivor Meyer Hack kept his secret for more than 60 years - a small cache of pocket watches, an exquisite diamond ring, an ornate Old World bracelet of gold and emerald, and other jewelry that Jewish Holocaust victims took to their deaths. Hack spent four years as an inmate at the notorious Nazi concentration camp, where he worked on the camp's laundry crew - processing clothing the Nazis had confiscated from new arrivals to Auschwitz, and handing out uniforms to other pr

Crime: Federal agents protected two secret informants, even exchanged gifts, testimony shows. The relationship puts prosecution of major figures in jeopardy. As time passed, Bulger and Flemmi grew more valuable as informants and friends to agents like Gianturco, Connolly, Morris and H. Paul Rico, the guy who had recruited Flemmi as an informant. That tip, the agents still believe today, saved Gianturco's life and drew Bulger and Flemmi into the FBI fold. An amazing 20 years followed. Connolly

The mark of a true, old-school Lake resident is talent for the so-called Lake language - a collection of words and phrases believed to have roots in Romany, a language spoken by Gypsy immigrants from Europe, and brought back to the Lake early this century by local youths who worked for a time with traveling carnivals. "Hey, mush!" he calls out to greet his fellow Lake old-timers, in a special lingo used by generations of Nonantum natives, many of whom, like the 76-year-old Fat, can trace their