synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Congregation Brothers of Israel
Congregation Brothers of Israel
Welcoming to All
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
P eople have different reasons for
joining Congregation Brothers
of Israel, but ultimately they
have the same reason.

The congregants at the Conservative
synagogue in Newtown are warm and
welcoming almost the minute you walk
in the door. It doesn’t matter if they’ve
never seen you before.

Many have experienced this, though
no can quite say when or how it started.

Joan Hersch, the synagogue’s educa-
tion director and the wife of its rabbi
emeritus, said it was present even when
she joined as a single mother 44 years
ago. No one minded that she was a
single mother.

This culture is just a feature of a
140-year-old institution that still
counts 142 families in its congregation.

“We like to have people become part
of our family,” Hersch said.

Such stories, ones like Hersch’s,
abound among CBOI members.

Rabbi Aaron Gaber joined the com-
munity eight years ago and, during his
interview/weekend visit, his daughter
got sick. Brothers of Israel members
kept asking how they could help.

Congregant Amy Deutsch, who joined
14 years ago, is a convert to Judaism
who often brings her non-Jewish family
members for services. Her fellow congre-
gants are always friendly to her family
members and willing to direct them to
the right page in the prayer book.

CBOI administrator Sharon Segarra
learned about the community 25 years
ago when she attended the consecra-
tion of her friend’s son. At that event,
Hersch approached her and started
talking to her. The education director
told Segarra a story about a bar mitz-
vah for a child who had special needs;
Segarra’s son is on the spectrum. She,
like so many others, decided to join.

That spirit is alive and well in the
Newtown congregation, members say.

During the pandemic, CBOI gained a
handful of new families.

Hersch credits the continuation of this
32 positive energy to Gaber. When he took
over in 2014, the rabbi was inheriting a
long legacy. He also had a rabbi emeritus,
Howard Hersch, Joan’s husband, who
was still in the building after leading the
congregation from 1960 to 2007.

It wasn’t an easy position to step into,
but to his credit, the new rabbi did not
change anything. He only added.

In other words, Gaber maintained
CBOI’s culture while expanding its
offerings. He started new adult edu-
cation classes; he continued and nor-
malized the Conservative synagogue’s
transition toward allowing women
onto the bimah; and he got the syna-
gogue more involved in social action
efforts in the wider community.

Once the pandemic broke out, the
rabbi moved CBOI programming
online. More than two years later, the
Newtown synagogue, like many syna-
gogues, offers a wide variety of hybrid
programming. “Over the last eight years, we’ve done
really well together,” Gaber said. “We’re
growing together.”
In 2021, CBOI adopted a new mis-
sion statement.

“CBOI is an egalitarian community
of caring and diverse people, who strive
to be connected to our faith, families
and larger community. We are a grow-
ing, evolving and inclusive congrega-
tion, enjoying and enriching Jewish life
together,” it reads.

To live up to that mission statement,
synagogue members spent the past year
listening to community groups and
organizations in Bucks County. They
wanted to figure out how they could
better help the community, and they
settled on two core focus areas: food
insecurity and inequity in education.

Recently, congregants packed boxes
of food at the Jewish Relief Agency
and then delivered them to homes.

They also collected children’s books
and donated them to a Cherry Hill,
New Jersey-based nonprofit called
BookSmiles, which distributes books
to schools. Gaber said the latter effort
would be an ongoing partnership.

“And the kids really love doing
APRIL 28, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Congregation Brothers of Israel in Newtown
Photo by Sharon Segarra
The Purim carnival at Congregation Brothers of Israel in Newtown
Photo by Sharon Segarra
that,” said Roz Zucker, the synagogue’s
co-president. “Giving gently used
books to children who wouldn’t have
them otherwise.”
As it moves forward, though,
Brothers of Israel faces the same exis-
tential question that all synagogues
face today: Why do people need a
synagogue? Gaber and his congregants
don’t have the answer.

But with their welcoming culture at
the core of everything they do, they
feel confident in their ability to figure it
out, they say. Plus, the longtime mem-
bers are not going anywhere.

Congregation Brothers of Israel is
their home.

Segarra, Hersch and Zucker all moved
with the community from Trenton,
New Jersey, to Newtown in 2007. And
they would move with it again if they
had to, they say.

“It’s not a building. Brothers of Israel
is truly a community,” Hersch said.

“It’s the people and the idea of Jewish
life that keeps me.” JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com



d’var torah
After? Getting Past,
or Going Through
I Parshat Acharei Mot
s there really an “aft er” in this life?
Certainly, rabbinic Judaism gives
us multiple models and metaphors
for an aft erlife, but in this life, how do we
structure the time aft er a diffi cult moment?
Given our collective experiences over
the past 2-plus years of pandemic, I fi nd
myself newly troubled by the name, the
fi rst key words, of this week’s Torah
portion, Parshat Acharei Mot. We begin:
“God spoke to Moses aft er the death
(acharei mot) of Aaron’s sons, who died
when they drew too close to the Divine
Presence ...” (Vayyikra 16:1).

For millennia, rabbis and other scholars
have tried to explain Aaron’s sons’ sud-
den, tragic and mysterious death, which is
described in more detail back in Chapter
10 of the Book of Leviticus. Here, the allu-
sion seems almost heartless in its passing,
breezy mention — as if to say, “Now,
where were we? Ah yes, you know, right
aft er this unspeakable, unimaginable loss,
we’re back to business with the laws …”
As with so many of our modern media,
it can be diffi cult to read tone into certain
sections of the Torah — but here, I worry
that the words “acharei mot” (aft er the
death) feel like little more than a refer-
ence point, a calibration — itself not so
important, except in its role to keep us
on track. Perhaps even more unfeeling
is the fi rst reminder given to Aaron, via
Moses, that he should be more careful
and less fl ippant than his sons when he
approaches the Divine Presence.

Might Aaron hear this as “they should
have known better, don’t you make the
same mistake,” a warning that in some
way rationalizes the loss in a time when
it is still “acharei” — just aft er, still raw?
Is such an admonition even necessary?
Wouldn’t Aaron be instinctively reluc-
tant to get too close to God aft er this
shocking trauma? (Indeed, he is hesitant
to resume his priestly duties, as we read at
the end of Chapter 10 of Leviticus.)
And given that the next laws in our
parshah are about national and per-
sonal atonement rituals for the priest-
hood, might Aaron hear that as God
and his brother Moses ascribing
blame to Aaron’s loss?
Regardless of whether Aaron’s sons
Nadav and Avihu “deserved” their pun-
ishment of death (and given the rabbis’
struggle over the centuries to explain
or justify that shocking moment, I’d say
that’s an unsettled question!), the fol-
low-up words of acharei mot six chapters
later, feel too cursory. Immediately in the
wake of the loss, Aaron is struck speech-
less with the pain of loss (10:3). Just a few
weeks later in our reading, and just six
chapters in the Torah text, is he really
recovered, to the point that he feels it is
“aft er” such a trauma?
It may be true that both cataclysmic
and pinnacle moments can serve as key
markers in our lives. But when we mention
such moments, they are not just reference
points. As with a Yizkor service or a yahr-
zeit, we return to purposefully, mourn-
fully refl ect on these moments, to their
emotional tugs on our hearts. It feels too
cavalier to simply state, factually, “this was
aft er one of the worst, most unexpected,
most traumatic moments of your life.”
As a rabbi, present with people working
through diff erent stages of grief, including
the cyclical return to that loss through
memorializing, I have come to appreciate
the maxim that, in our healthiest psy-
chological selves, we do not just get past
a heartbreak; we go through a heartbreak.

Th ere was a time, early in the pan-
demic, when I was hopeful for some
triumphant moment of “return” to nor-
malcy. We envisioned a spirited collec-
tive b’nai mitzvah and other celebrations.

Aft er such a long time of emotional
exhaustion, the return has been less tri-
umphant and more incremental.

At Adath Israel, we are still planning
a more subdued series of group life-cycle
events (in addition to the individualized
ones), which we’ve entitled “Making up
for Lost Times”: an acknowledgment last
week of those who experienced loss over
the past two years but did not benefi t
from the communal outpouring of con-
dolence that comes with fully attended
funerals and shivas, a group aliyah so
that the community can celebrate our
b’nai and b’not mitzvah, a delayed aufruf-
style aliyah for wedding couples, and
a baby-naming berachah (for boys and
girls, some of whom, now out of infancy,
will toddle themselves to the Torah).

In a dystopian moment, T.S. Eliot
imagined the aft ermath of the world “not
with a bang, but a whimper.” Th e Israeli
poet Natan Alterman reimagined Chaim
Weizmann’s statement that a Jewish state
would not be given to us on a silver
platter as personifi ed by young soldiers,
“dressed in battle gear, dirty, shoes heavy
with grime ... ascend(ing) the path qui-
etly ... still bone weary from days and
from nights in the fi eld, full of endless
fatigue and unrested, yet the dew of their
youth is still seen on their head ... (say-
ing), ‘We are the silver platter on which
the Jewish state was given …”
Let us, incrementally emerge from
this time of pandemic — far from tri-
umphant, but weary and weathered by
loss — both the loss of life and the
social-emotional toll that continues
to aff ect us in varying degrees. We
are far from acharei.

Even as we venture forth, let us do so
with humility and care — with the years
2020-2022 not a dark reference point
but rather a learning, a cause for soft er
words toward one another ... a font of
caring, viewed not as a hashmark on
some timeline that we get past, but rather
an arduous period that we go through,
together. JE
Rabbi Eric Yanoff is a rabbi of Adath Israel
in Merion Station, and is the immediate
past co-president of the Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia. Th e board is proud
to provide diverse perspectives on Torah
commentary for the Jewish Exponent. Th e
opinions expressed in this column are the
author’s own and do not refl ect the view
of the Board of
Rabbis. social announcements
ENGAGEMENT R
Photo by Scott Goosenberg
BY RABBI ERIC YANOFF
GOOSENBERG-OLIVIERI MARTINEZ
obyn and
Rick Goosenberg of Fort
Washington and Marisol
Olivieri of San Juan,
Puerto Rico announce the
engagement of their children,
Scott Ross Goosenberg and
Fátima Olivieri Martinez.

Fátima is the daughter of
the late Eric R. Olivieri. She is
a graduate of the University
of Puerto Rico and the
University of Virginia with a master’s of architecture. She is a principal
at Philadelphia architecture fi rm KieranTimberlake.

Scott is a graduate of the University at Buff alo Honors College,
with a master of arts in political science from the University of British
Columbia and a master of science in security studies from UCL. He
is an information technology program manager at Washington, D.C.

consulting fi rm CoAspire.

Sharing in the happiness are grandparents Stanley Goosenberg,
Ana Martinez and Jovina Beauchamp and siblings Hallie (Zac Yeni)
and David (Hannah Talbot) Goosenberg and Cari and Cindy Olivieri.

Scott is the grandson of the late Miriam Faye, Irving Faye and Pearl
Goosenberg. Fátima is granddaughter of the late Mariano Martínez
and Edgar Olivieri.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 33