In March 1997, congregants of The Conservative Synagogue marched two Torah scrolls to their new home on Hillspoint Road.

WESTPORT – In 1986, a handful of Jewish families returned from an Israel mission led by UJA/Federation Westport Weston Wilton. Along with photos and souvenirs, the participants came back inspired to build something big: the first Conservative congregation in their community.
Longtime congregants can pinpoint the moment the idea crystallized, a pivotal discussion on a bus in Israel on the way to Ben Gurion Airport. Lewis and Isabel Sperber (now Isabel Moskowitz) were the only people on the bus who didn’t belong to Temple Israel, the Reform synagogue in Westport.
“We were the only members of Temple Beth El, the Conservative synagogue in Fairfield,” recalls Isabel. “That made us feel like religious outsiders in our own community.  When everyone on the bus said, ‘See you in synagogue,’ Lewis and I knew that we had to start a Conservative synagogue in Westport so that we too would belong.”
At Beth El services, the Sperbers found that many fellow Westport-area residents were interested in starting a new synagogue.  On Jan. 21, 1987, nine families met in the Sperbers’ business office to put together an action plan. “We used every resource we had: our energy, our talents, our contacts, and our money to get our synagogue off the ground,” Isabel says. “From the beginning, there was literally never a time when we thought, ‘We can’t do this.’ Nothing was too difficult – even when things went wrong. We just kept on going.”
The group first met in office space donated by local attorney Leo Nevas and his family, in a building on Post Road East in Westport, above a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream store. A few months later, when “B’nai Baskin-Robbins” had outgrown the space, Nevas provided a larger office.
In March 1987, the fledgling group held its first service, officiated by Rabbi Josef Grodsky, then-director of the University of Hartford Hillel, and featuring a Torah scroll on loan from Temple Israel in Westport. Soon afterwards, Rabbi Robert Summers was hired part-time and led the first High Holiday Day services, at the Westport Country Playhouse. By September,, the congregation’s religious school boasted nearly 90 children, as well as seven teachers, four teacher’s aides, and a principal.
In 1989, the congregation hired its first full-time rabbi, Martin J. Pasternak, who also took on the role of religious-school principal before Barb Moskow was hired as the school’s first full-time principal. With many of the congregation’s children approaching bar- and bat-mitzvah age, talk turned to establishing a permanent home. A building fund was launched, drawing donations not only from congregants, but from Jewish families in the community who were not members. Between 1992 and 1994, the 150-family congregation tried, and ultimately failed, to obtain approval to build on a site on Post Road near the Norwalk line. In January 1995, the group purchased their current site, on Hillspoint Road.
The congregation broke ground on Sept. 8, 1996. On a rainy day in May 1997, congregants and community dignitaries marched two Torah scrolls from “B’nai Baskin-Robbins” to its new home, sheltering under umbrellas and a plastic chuppah. A mezuzah, presented as a gift by the Hillspoint Neighborhood Association, was affixed by Rabbi Gabriel A. Mazer to the synagogue’s main doorpost. Mazer was present on Sept. 13, 1998, when The Conservative Synagogue of Westport (TCS) was officially dedicated.
This year, TCS marks its 25th anniversary. Now led by Rabbi Jeremy Wiederhorn, who arrived in 2008, the congregation now numbers some 430 families, mostly residents of Westport, Weston, and Wilton.
Cantor Laura Berman is now marking her ninth year at TCS. “Aaron Copeland said that music is in a continual state of becoming. So it is with our Jewish community,” she says. “TCS started with an ideal, then a minyan, a school, a building, and is now a thriving center of Jewish life. Our future is built every day, person by person, by connecting to our Jewish heritage, to Israel, to each other, and to the experiences of Jewish community that we pass on to our children.” The synagogue board of directors is co-led by Ilene Frost and Margie Labarre, both of Westport. “Similarly to how we view our own personal maturation, TCS has grown from infancy to adulthood in 25 years,” Frost says. “We are proud of the synagogue’s accomplishments and owe much to many years of dedicated clergy, strong leadership, and the countless volunteer hours from our membership. We look forward to sustaining and building Jewish continuity in the years ahead, not only for our members, but for the entire Westport Jewish community.”
“It is thrilling to see how the dream of a handful of individuals 25 years ago has turned into a thriving community,” says Labarre. “All of our growing pains are now well behind us and we look forward to a very bright future.  TCS is a warm, welcoming, vibrant center for Jewish life and a leader in our community at large.  I am very proud to be leading, along with my co-president, a very special congregation at this important time in our history.”
TCS will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a gala evening on Saturday, Feb. 11.
For more information: www.tcs-westport.org / (203) 454-4673.