"As much as you don't want to think that these kinds of things go on in your community, they do," Berg said. "I feel bad any time there's abuse, and we want to help anyone who's been abused."
Berg said he saw no reason to dispute the women's accounts, even though, he added, "I would like to think that the situation with Rabbi Max is a one-time deal."
Max, he said, has "got to be embarrassed, and he's got to be ashamed."
The rabbi's behavior appears to have left indelible imprints on the memories of the women who agreed to be interviewed.
"I can't even think about it without being disgusted," said Flax-Gerstein, who now works for a doctor in the Timonium area and has five children. She said she was dismissed from her job at the temple after presenting a detailed written report about the rabbi's conduct to the synagogue's board, which included Max. She said she no longer has a copy of the document.
"I was told I was causing a ruckus," Flax-Gerstein said. "I was fired from the synagogue, my children were pulled from the Hebrew school and I had to make other arrangements for my son's bar mitzvah."
Karen Pine, whose second wedding was officiated by Max and who was his secretary for more than three years before his retirement, watched Flax-Gerstein grapple with the news of her firing.
"I remember her completely freaking out, screaming and crying," Pine said last month from her home in Las Vegas, recalling the moment when Flax-Gerstein, whom she considered one of her best friends, told her she had just been ordered to pack up and leave. "Then she ran out the door."
Pine, 58, said she often heard rumblings about Max's behavior toward women in the congregation, but that its members never did anything about it because of the rabbi's position.
"My mother - may she rest in peace - used to call him Jake the Snake," she said.
Neither Bob Meyerson, the longtime president of Moses Montefiore, nor Adler, the current rabbi, responded to requests for comment.
Adler's only public statement about the matter came in his July 11 sermon, during which he told worshippers that Max's title as rabbi emeritus had been revoked, along with the privileges that go with it, such as an office in the synagogue's building. Max's name was removed from the lobby and from the entrance to the parking lot - where it had been etched in marble - and no longer appears on mailings to the congregation.
