synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Society Hill Synagogue
Society Hill Synagogue To Celebrate
Long-awaited Expansion
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
F ifteen years is a long time to wait,
but for Society Hill Synagogue,
the waiting has paid dividends.

The “independent egalitarian” congre-
gation at 418 Spruce St. bought an old
colonial row home at the adjacent 430
Spruce St. in 2007, hoping to transform
the building into an accessible extension
for its education programming.

Over two phases of fundraising from
2007 to 2019, the synagogue raised more
than $3 million and completed construc-
tion and renovation of the buildings
during the pandemic. Though con-
struction finished in early 2021, and the
synagogue held classes there over the
summer, the synagogue will officially
celebrate its new space on April 25.

The space offers six classrooms for
the synagogue’s Ann Spak Thal Hebrew
school, playschool and adult education
classes — an upgrade from the original
building’s three. The Hebrew school
— which will be held on Tuesdays and
Saturdays, rather than Tuesdays and
Sundays — and playschool will offer
three new classes in the summer, two
of which are already at full capacity.

The construction costs also covered
an expansion of the 418 Spruce St.

social hall, an outdoor space behind
the two properties and Americans
with Disabilities Act-compliant eleva-
tors and restrooms. The expansion will
allow adult congregants and children
to meet in the same space for Saturday
morning onegs and kiddushes.

As the synagogue, established in
1967, grew to its now-membership of
300 households, the need to expand
became apparent to leadership.

“We were just bursting at the seams,”
synagogue President Jeremey Newberg
said. To accommodate all of the Hebrew
school students on Sundays — which,
pre-pandemic, numbered more than
85 — the synagogue split the students:
First- through fourth-graders attended
Hebrew school from 9-11 a.m., and
fifth- through Hebrew-high school stu-
32 APRIL 7, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Society Hill Synagogue’s historic 418 Spruce St. building next to the renovated
rowhouse at 430 Spruce St.

Courtesy of Sahar Oz
dents took the second shift from 11 a.m.

to 1 p.m. For parents with multiple chil-
dren, the headaches of multiple com-
mutes to and from the urban synagogue
were quickly evident, Newberg said.

Sahar Oz, the synagogue’s executive
director and once-education director,
said that adult education classes shared
a space with a playschool classroom.

“You were doing text study, and you
have creatively designed butterflies and
things hanging from the ceiling,” he said.

As the synagogue gained awareness
of the accessibility needs of its con-
gregants, it realized the current space
wasn’t making the cut.

“We had this Soviet-style lift that
was pathetic,” Newberg said. “It was
really loud and undignified for some-
one with physical disabilities to come
to services.”
After the 2007 buy of the new space,
the synagogue community raised $1.44
million, almost half of its goal, before
the 2008 recession hit. Funding for the
project was halted for almost a decade,
when synagogue leadership gained
community input on how to move for-
ward with the space.

“We regrouped, and we just got to
the core of what is needed,” Newberg
said. “The vision for 430 Spruce as an
education hub really resonated.”
From 2017 to 2019, Society Hill
Synagogue held phase two of its capital
campaign, raising $2.64 million from
174 member-households and surpass-
ing the goal by $200,000. Though the
synagogue relied on 20 donors for 72%
of the funding, 55% of the synagogue
community chipped in for the project.

The new education hub, the Paula
Kline Learning Center, was named to
honor the late wife of synagogue member
and donor Tom Kline, who died in 2014.

But Newberg was cautious about
relying on big donors early in the cam-
paign. He employed the motto, “Make
a joyful stretch,” to the congregants,
encouraging members to give a dollar
amount that felt like a true investment
in the synagogue community but one
that wouldn’t break the bank.

“The dollar amount that you give is
not the issue; it’s that you gave some-
thing,” Newberg said. “A capital cam-
paign is part of the mitzvah of being a
member, and mitzvot is not only good
deeds, but it’s affirmative obligations.

So making a joyful stretch is fulfilling
your obligation to support the institu-
tion you love.”
For Rabbi Nathan Kamesar, the
expansion finishing up during a lull in
COVID numbers brings promise for
the re-establishment of physical com-
Students and teachers from the
youngest class in the synagogue’s
playschool, the Comets Class, which
opened in June 2021 as one of the
new classes made possible by the
construction of the Paula Kline Learning
Center.​ Tom Kline (right) and Frank Wolf affixed
the mezuzah at the entrance to the
Paula Kline Learning Center in memory
of their late wife and sister Paula Kline.

munity with intergenerational connec-
tions and schmoozing that can’t be
replicated over Zoom and were stunted
by the tight quarters of the synagogue’s
cramped historic building.

“It is definitely a hope for me that
people find themselves drawn to ser-
vices and adult education, but I am
equally, if not more excited, when I just
see a bustling social hall over a kiddush
lunch,” Kamesar said. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com



d’var torah
The Warning of
Shabbat HaGadol
BY RABBI ARTHUR WASKOW,
RABBI NATHAN MARTIN AND
ATARA SAUNDERS
Parshat Metzora
W e are approaching Pesach,
and Jewish tradition
marks the approach with
a special Haft arah to be chanted on the
last Shabbat before the holyday begins.

Th at Shabbat is known as Shabbat
HaGadol, named aft er one word in the
Haft arah, “the great.”
But especially in our own generation,
we feel the whole Haft arah and, because
of it, the whole Shabbat, is indeed “great.”
Why? Here are the last words of
the Prophet Malachi, the last of the
ancient Hebrew prophets. His words
seem almost uncanny, spoken 2,500
years ago in language that pierces our
ears and hearts with astonishing preci-
sion and profundity:
“Here! Th e day is coming
Th at will fl ame like a furnace,”
Says the Infi nite YHWH / Yahhhh,
Th e InterBreath of Life —
“When all the arrogant, all evil-doers,
root and branch,
will like straw be burnt to ashes.

“Yet for those of you who revere My Name,
Yes! My Name, Yahhhh, the
Interbreath of Life!
a solar sun of justice will arise
with healing in its wings, its winds,
its rays.

“Here! Before the coming
of the great [HaGadol] and awesome
day of YHWH/ the Breath of Life,
I will send you the Prophet Eli-Yah [Elijah]
[Whose name means “My God is the
Breath of Life”]
to turn the hearts of elders to the youth
and the hearts of youth to elders,
lest I come and smite the earth
with utter destruction.

(Malachi 3:19-24)
We ourselves live in the day of Earth’s
getting hotter and hotter, bringing on us
plagues of fi re, fl ood, famine and, in targeted
neighborhoods of color and low-income,
epidemics of asthma and cancer. All of us are
suff ering as in the days of Pharaoh, when the
plagues ruined lives and livelihoods of all.

Our ancient forebears had to choose
between “normal” — Pharaoh’s army,
slavery with meat and pickles — or the
unknown — the sea and the wilderness.

Th ey chose freedom, which always tastes of
the unknown.

Today, as in Malachi’s prophetic words,
Earth’s burning heat comes from the burn-
ing of fossil fuels. Th ose who survived in
the ancient story were Yisrael (the people of
Israel) who revered and wrestled with God.

Today, it will be villages, cities, whole coun-
tries whose people will be brave enough,
who love the breath of life enough, to swift ly
turn to solar and wind energy as remedy.

Today, let us pause on Shabbat HaGadol,
heed the words of the Prophet Malachi,
and invite ourselves to shoulder the task of
Elijah by taking active roles in the world
for healing Earth, not devastating the next
generation. Perhaps we can even ask ourselves to fi nd
a support partner for climate action and
share what single action we each will take to
uphold the Elijah covenant to turn toward
each other, young and old, to heal the
Earth. Th e youth are already speaking out
– the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, the
Sunrise Movement, Extinction Rebellion.

Will we, the elders, turn our hearts to them,
our own grandchildren?
Were we to write a response to Malachi, it
would sound like this:
“Here! we ourselves are coming
Before the terrible day
of smiting Earth —
For we ourselves shall turn the hearts
Of elders and youth to each other
So that this day of smiting
Does not fall upon us.” JE
Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the founder and
director of The Shalom Center, Rabbi Nathan
Martin is the associate rabbi of Congregation
Beth Israel in Media and board chair of
Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light
and Atara Saunders is a student at Drexel
University. The Board of Rabbis of Greater
Philadelphia is proud to provide diverse
perspectives on Torah commentary for the
Jewish Exponent. The opinions expressed in
this column are the author’s own and do not
refl ect the view
of the Board of
Rabbis. P R E S E N T S
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