Herbert Tarr

The North Shore Institute for Adult Jewish Learning, a joint educational program serving 18 synagogues and one Jewish community center in the Long Island area, was renamed the Herbert Tarr North Shore Institute for Adult Jewish Learning in his memory. The 2012 season of the Jewish Studies and Lectures Program opened at Temple Judea in Roslyn, New York in October 2012.

Herbert Tarr (1929 – November 18, 1993), born Herbert Targovik, was an American Reform rabbi who left his pulpit to become a novelist and humorist, believing he could reach more people that way because "religion is basically out of touch with people."

Tarr died of liver cancer at the age of 64 on November 18, 1993, at the home of his sister, in Roslyn Heights, New York.

He said, "[R]eligion is basically out of touch with people". He wanted to help people "contemplate their lives," to consider "how they fit into the world around them". He wrote with humor, through stories that carried values and ideals. As the playwright Brendan Behan wrote in a review for his first novel, The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen (1963), while Tarr "has us busy laughing, he's throwing sermons at us behind our backs".

Following his service as a chaplain, Tarr served as the rabbi of a synagogue in Buffalo, New York. In 1960, he moved to a congregation in Westbury, New York. In 1963 he decided to leave the pulpit to pursue a career as a novelist full-time, believing that he could be more effective in terms of reaching others that way.

He was ordained as a rabbi in 1955 and entered the United States Air Force to serve as a military chaplain. This experience inspired some of his first novel, The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen. In it, he explore how a young civilian rabbi was "converted" to the role of a military chaplain who helps men and women of all faiths.