synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Congregation Beth Or
Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen
Continues to Thrive
Jarrad Saffren | Staff Writer
O n Dec. 7, Rabbi Gregory Marx
presided over the funeral of the
last living founder of his synagogue:
Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen.

The man, who died at 104, was a mem-
ber of one of the six families that started
Beth Or in 1955.

It was a sad day, according to Marx.

As the rabbi put it, he will now look out
on the High Holidays and see another
empty seat.

But, at the same time, he will see that
most of the chairs are still full.

Congregation Beth Or has lost about
100 families over the past five years,
according to Marx. The congregation
is down from its all-time high of about
1,100 households. But it still retains
an active membership of roughly 985
families. The last founder may be gone,
but the synagogue remains.

And it doesn’t just remain. It is strong,
with a recently paid-off mortgage, 450
students in the religious school, 185
kids in the preschool and more than 100
weekly attendees at hybrid Shabbat ser-
vices. Marx has been the temple’s spiri-
tual leader since 1989 and spent much of
that time raising money, he said. Now,
as he prepares for his retirement in June
2024, he is excited to have the resources
to spend more on members than on
interest payments, as he put it.

“We’ve weathered the storm,” he said
of the larger movement away from syn-
agogue membership.

Marx learned from original congre-
gants that Beth Or was built on a helpful
spirit. Members came from “well-es-
tablished, well-heeled congregations,”
the rabbi said, with assigned seats that
placed wealthier congregants up front.

At Beth Or, they did not want the same
arrangement. Instead, they wanted their
new Reform temple to be egalitarian.

People could sit where they wanted, and
everyone would help with more than
just their wallets.

Members had to pitch in with their
hands and feet because the synagogue,
as Marx explained, “didn’t have the
22 Congregation Beth Or members are devoted to helping the synagogue and the
community around them.

Courtesy of Congregation Beth Or
resources it has now.” So in the 1950s
and ’60s, if there was a job that needed
to be done, congregants came by and
did it. They painted the walls; they
moved furniture to set up for events;
they mowed the lawn; they plowed
the snow.

“There was a can-do spirit,” Marx
said. Today, Beth Or has enough money to
hire people to mow the lawn and plow
the snow, according to the rabbi. But its
members maintain that spirit. They just
focus it outward a little more.

Every year on Christmas morning,
Beth Or congregants travel around
town “doing mitzvahs,” Marx said. A
couple hundred people volunteer for
tasks like bringing food to hospital staff
members and gifts to children in the
hospital. One year, they did a highway
cleanup. Earlier in 2022, Beth Or congregants
raised $110,000 for Marx to bring with
him to the Jewish Community Center
in Krakow to help refugees from the
war in Ukraine. The money provided
child support to a group of mostly
women. The Maple Glen synagogue also
DECEMBER 15, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
keeps a disaster fund that it can use in
any situation. It sent money to Houston
after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, to
Haiti after the 2010 earthquake that
killed more than 100,000 people and to
California after the deadly Camp Fire
in 2018.

“Our community is all about giv-
ing. Giving to one another and giving
locally,” said Gwen Silverstein, the syn-
agogue’s president and a member in her
22nd year. “We all believe that we get
more from what we give.”
Silverstein, now in her second year as
president, said she gets the same type of
support that members used to give each
other in the temple’s early years. When
she needs something, people come,
whether it’s a repair, an issue relating to
COVID or a financial concern.

The longtime member raised both
of her daughters in the synagogue,
sending them through preschool, bat
mitzvahs and confirmation. Both girls
made friends at Beth Or whom they
went to camp with and traveled to
Israel with. Silverstein said the girls
now consider those friends to be
family members.

“They got to make new friends
Rabbi Gregory Marx
Photo by Dara King
Congregation Beth Or in Maple Glen
Photo by Dara King
and create a Jewish community,” the
mother said.

And then hopefully, that microcom-
munity will come back to the bigger one
in Maple Glen, explained Amy Abrams,
the temple’s executive director and a
member for 27 years. Beth Or, even
without any founding members left,
has many multigenerational families,
according to Abrams.

“You want to build Jewish identity in
the children so hopefully they will come
back with their children,” she said. JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com