By Cindy Mindell

WEST HARTFORD – In an era when many synagogues are merging or closing, news of a landmark anniversary like 25 or 50 is rare enough. But when an American Jewish congregation reaches the impressive age of 170, one is inspired to investigate the secret behind the success.

Congregation Beth Israel is among the oldest Jewish congregations in the state and one of the largest Reform Jewish congregations in New England, with some 2,000 individual members.

The congregation will celebrate its milestone on Sunday, June 2.

Beth Israel was founded in 1843, the year the Connecticut legislature first permitted public worship by Jews in the state, and was originally an Orthodox congregation. In the first of many adaptations, the synagogue soon assumed Classical Reform practices, in part influenced by the arrival of German-Jewish immigrants in Hartford. The first Beth Israel synagogue was built at 21 Charter Oak Ave. in Hartford in 1876. A year later, the congregation joined with other American Reform Jewish synagogues to form the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism), an umbrella support

The sanctuary

organization.

Rabbi Abraham Feldman came to the Beth Israel pulpit in 1925, and would lead the congregation until 1968, when he became rabbi emeritus. (In 1929, Feldman co-founded with Sam Neusner the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.)

The congregation moved to its current location at 901 Farmington Avenue in 1936, a building designed by architect Charles R. Greco and listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1995.

Feldman was succeeded by Rabbi Harold Silver, a third-generation rabbi and the nephew of the influential American Zionist leader Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. After Harold Silver retired and became rabbi emeritus in 1993, Rabbi Simeon Glaser led the congregation for four years, followed by Stephen Fuchs, who became rabbi emeritus in 2011.

Beth Israel is currently led by Senior

Rabbi Michael Pincus and Assistant Rabbi Dena Shaffer. Cantor Pamela Siskin joined the clergy in 1998.

Beth Israel boasts a population of lifelong members and multi-generational families, some dating back to the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Kay Lavitt, 88, is a third-generation member; her grandparents joined in the early 1900s, and her children comprise the fourth generation. She has witnessed significant changes in the temple, which mirror an evolution in the Reform movement as a whole.

Breaking Ground of Meeting House, 1954.

“Our family followed ‘Classical Reform Judaism:’ we celebrated Rosh Hashanah for one day instead of two, had only one Passover seder, our services – on Friday night and Saturday morning – were mostly in English, and we went to ‘Sunday school,’ not ‘Hebrew school,’” Lavitt says. “Rabbi Feldman was very Reform: in those days, he would not allow you to wear a yarmulke or a tallis. If you told him you were marrying a Conservative person and wanted the men to wear yarmulkes at the ceremony, he would not officiate. I didn’t even know what a ‘bar mitzvah’ was.”

Lavitt represents much of the congregation’s historical memory since the move to Farmington Avenue in 1936. She watched the congregation grow from 250 members to more than 1,500. In the ‘70s, her children’s Confirmation classes had up to 80 members. She was on the search committee that brought Rabbi Harold Silver to the pulpit in 1968, and was elected as the congregation’s first woman president, from 1976-79. She then served for more than a decade as temple administrator.

Silver’s tenure reflected an era when many Reform congregations were starting to embrace traditional religious Jewish aspects initially excluded from the movement, and to add new traditions. “If someone walked into services wearing a yarmulke, Rabbi Silver wouldn’t put them out, even though he himself didn’t wear one,” Lavitt says. (It wasn’t until Rabbi Fuchs’s arrival, in 1997, that yarmulkes and tallitot became de rigeur.) The temple started hosting a communal second-night Passover seder; families began celebrating their girls’ bat mitzvah milestone.

Beth Israel’s clergy has had a long tradition of interfaith outreach, Lavitt says, starting with Rabbi Feldman, a member and founder of several Greater Hartford civic organizations, including the Connecticut Advisory Committee of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the Hartford Rotary Club.

Rabbi Abraham Feldman

“We have had a beautiful relationship with the local Christian community, especially during times of antisemitism in West Hartford,” she says. When a fire ravished the Congregational Church at the corner of Main Street and Farmington Avenue in 1942, Feldman offered the Beth Israel sanctuary to the displaced worshippers. Rabbi Silver did the same 50 years later when a fire gutted the sanctuary and auditorium at St. John’s Episcopal Church near the synagogue on Farmington Avenue. Beth Israel regularly participates in pulpit exchanges to mark Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

Indeed, social justice is a pillar of the congregation, says out-going president Jeffrey Winnick, and represents the largest and most active committee in the congregation. This is, no doubt, a reflection of the ongoing commitment of influential rabbis.

Rabbi Michael Pincus

“Beth Israel has never shied away from the challenges that confront our people,” says Rabbi Michael Pincus. “We have a rich legacy, from Rabbi Abraham Feldman, who founded the annual Clergy Institute that educates area clergy, to the amazing work led by Rabbi Harold Silver in fighting for Soviet Jewry and then welcoming them into our community, to Rabbi Stephen Fuchs’s recent leadership in the healthcare debate, and being a longstanding supporter of Foodshare and our fight for social justice.”

In the ‘90s, Beth Israel found itself literally in the thick of Russian-Jewish resettlement, when the new immigrants came to live in the Farmington Avenue area. In response, the congregation formed the New American Committee, providing educational and material assistance to the emigres. Many second-generation newcomers went through the temple’s religious school, celebrated b’nai mitzvah and Confirmation, and were married on the bimah. Today, those new families are joining the congregation, while their elders continue to engage in cultural and educational activities at the synagogue, assisted by the still-active New American Committee.

With thanks to Charles Darwin, the secret to organizational survival, it would seem, is adaptation.

Congregation Beth Israel on Farmington Ave. in West Hartford

“In the 1840s, there was a lot of tension between Orthodox Judaism and the new trend reflecting Reform points of view,” says Siskin. “There was a lot of turmoil in our own congregation and in the end, Reform won out. Our early rabbis looked at the inclination among American Jews and realized that it was the Reform movement that was growing in the American Jewish psyche and thinking, so we were able to adapt to the changes in society. That’s not to say that it wasn’t challenging for the leadership, but they were able to adapt. Rabbi Feldman realized that you have to reach out to the non-Jewish community and to the entire community, which was really innovative at that time. When the Soviet Jews came, this was the first congregation to embrace them and understand that they constituted a whole new part of the Reform movement. We have long welcomed interfaith families. We were among the first Reform congregations to hire a woman assistant rabbi, and a lesbian assistant rabbi. That may have been very difficult for the congregation initially. If Beth Israel has one strength of note, it’s that we embrace the changing times.”

Jeffrey Winnick echoes the sentiment, drawing on his personal experience growing up as a congregant in the ‘50s. He and wife Margie were married on the bimah in 1970, but left to raise a family in South Windsor and returned to Beth Israel, as empty-nesters, in 2004. His perspective reflects all that can happen to a congregation over five decades.

“As a child on Friday nights, I would enter the sanctuary with my parents from the rear doors and we would go directly to our seats. Today, Margie and I enter from the back entrance and on our way to our seats in the sanctuary we meet and talk to congregants and the clergy. And that is better,” he says. “As a child, the rabbis ceremoniously entered the sanctuary through the curtains on the bimah in their black rabbinical robes and their only interaction with the congregants was to shake their hands and wish them ‘Good Shabbes’ as they exited at the rear of the sanctuary onto Farmington Avenue. Today, the clergy comes down into the congregation before, during, and after the service. And, after the service, congregants enjoy each other’s company at the oneg Shabbat instead of exiting onto Farmington Avenue and going straight home. And that is better. As I was growing up, each service was essentially the same service, and a choir sang hidden behind closed curtains. Today, we have young family services, simcha Shabbat services, Kabbalat Shabbat services, and traditional services, and we hear the beautiful voices of Cantor Siskin, Laura Deutsch, and Fred Fitzgerald. And that, too, is better.”

Event committee chair Gail Mangs was confirmed at the temple in the late ‘60s by Rabbi Feldman; her three children followed suit 30 years later. As an adult, she has served on the board of trustees and the executive board and as president of Sisterhood, and taught in the religious school for 12 years.

“While every year that passes is an anniversary year, the big round numbers like 170 seem more special,” she says. “Few synagogues can match Beth Israel’s longevity and it is important for our members, as well as the greater Hartford community, to step back, celebrate, and appreciate just how amazing our history is.”

The June 2 program is designed with activities for all ages, starting with a children’s program at 3 p.m., followed by a celebratory worship service honoring past presidents and clergy, and simultaneous dinner and entertainment programs for children and adults.

How does a congregation kick off its eighteenth decade? Learn from the past, but don’t dwell there, says Pincus.

“In the nine years that I have been a part of this community many good people have died and we have welcomed many new faces into our midst,” he says. “While the mission of who we are hasn’t changed, our community is now more diverse than it has ever been. Our services have become more participatory, our programming more diverse, and a greater emphasis on both community and personal meaning. Now, as we look into the future, we see a Jewish world that is quickly changing. The words and wisdom that have been spoken in earlier generations need to find new means of expression. Our community grows ever more heterogeneous and complicated. And yet, the very reasons that this synagogue was founded 170 years ago have not changed: to be there for each other in good times and in bad, to learn, to grow, and to make this world a better place – these are the reasons this community was founded and what we hope to continue to be.”

Congregation Beth Israel will host a celebration in honor of its 170 years on Sunday, June 2. For more information: www.cbict.org / (860) 233-8215.

On the cover is one of the many stained glass windows  — this one depicting Ruth — that adorns the sanctuary at Congregation Beth Israel.

Comments? email cindym@jewishledger.com.