synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel
Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel
Honors Long History
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
T 24
Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel rabbis
Abi Weber and Abe Friedman
Among the 400 member house-
holds are people who have lived in the
city for decades, empty nesters who
moved downtown from the suburbs
and young families who live in the
Graduate Hospital and Point Breeze
neighborhoods, according to BZBI
Assistant Rabbi Abi Weber. While “a
lot” of congregants have joined within
the last 10 years, Friedman said, sev-
eral have been members for almost 50
years. Certain families are “second,
third, even fourth generation in the
congregation,” he added.

Th e mix has helped BZBI avoid some
of the diffi culties that have plagued
other local synagogues in recent
years. Th e 400-family congregation
has remained stable over the past fi ve
years, with old members leaving and
new members joining each year. BZBI’s
early childhood program and reli-
gious school have 65 and 45 students
enrolled, respectively. And 60 to 70
people attend Shabbat services each
week unless there’s a special event like
an aufruf, in which case more people
attend. Most of that crowd is in-person
now, too, since BZBI is back open aft er
staying closed or partially closed for
much of the pandemic.

“It’s people who are committed to
DECEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
BZBI’s new member meet and greet, Sukkot 2022
living in the city. BZBI is their central
hub,” Weber said. “A lot of our Shabbat
regulars are families who are really
committed to being part of the fabric of
the city, and that’s nice to see.”
Friedman, Weber and other temple
leaders are in the process of developing
a strategic plan for the 2020s. Th ere
are not yet specifi cs to share, but there
is a principle to follow, according to
Friedman. He wants BZBI to continue
fostering a sense of belonging, but to
do that for the wide variety of Jewish
people today. He mentioned Dwell,
a synagogue member for decades in
the suburbs before joining BZBI, and
Bowler, who started his conversion
process in the past decade, as two
types of members whom the synagogue
should work to accommodate equally.

“How do we make BZBI a place
where people will feel like they are
seen and centered in the experience
of our community?” Friedman asked.

“In the next 10 years, I’m committed to
deepening our investment in terms of
belonging as a core piece of BZBI.”
Th at is what BZBI’s leaders have
always tried to do. Now they are just
attempting it with a diff erent and mod-
ern population of Jews.

“Th ere’s a huge weight of respon-
Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Center City
sibility to hold true to the past but
to help it build for the future,” said
Lynne Balaban, the synagogue’s exec-
utive director. “So much of what we do
is making sure we’re respectful of the
culture and community but also help-
ing it come into the next age or century
for families who will utilize it down the
road.” JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Photos courtesy of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel
emple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in
Center City is a combination of
three diff erent synagogues that
once existed in Jewish Philadelphia —
Temple Beth Zion, Temple Beth Israel
and the Neziner Congregation.

Th e fi rst to open, Temple Beth
Israel, did so in 1840. Th at makes
BZBI the third-oldest congregation in
Philadelphia, according to the history
section on the temple’s website.

For a religion in which l’dor v’dor,
or from generation to generation, is a
core principle, maintaining an almost
200-year-old Conservative congrega-
tion is a serious responsibility. But
BZBI leaders say it comes naturally.

You can feel the tradition when you
walk through the doors on South
18th Street, according to Rabbi Abe
Friedman, the temple’s spiritual leader.

People dress how they want to dress,
Friedman explained, in everything
from three-piece suits to T-shirts. Th ey
also sit wherever they want since BZBI
members have never believed in mark-
ers of status. And when congregant
Eileen Dwell joined in 2014, people
were friendly right away and quick to
reach out.

“I feel comfortable there,” she said.

“I feel comfortable spiritually; I feel
comfortable socially.”
Akil Bowler, the chair of the build-
ing committee on BZBI’s board of
trustees, is a convert to Judaism who
joined the temple around the same
time that Dwell did. And he echoed her
sentiment. “Th e congregation and community
as a whole is not cliquey,” he said.

How could it be? Th e respective syn-
agogues that formed BZBI were places
of refuge for Polish, German, Eastern
European and Russian immigrants to
the United States. Merging was a busi-
ness decision, but it also brought those
groups together. And today, while BZBI
no longer needs to serve as a place of
refuge for immigrants, it does remain
a melting pot.




d’var torah
Chanukah and Joseph
Inspire Us
By Rabbi Linda Holtzman
T Parshat Miketz
he story of Joseph is a story of
dreams: first Joseph revealing
his own dreams that antago-
nize his brothers, then Joseph finding
the meaning in the dreams of those
with whom he is imprisoned, and
finally, in this week’s Torah por-
tion, Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s
dreams and finding himself second
in command of all ancient Egypt.

Dreams in the Torah have power as
do all the dreams in our own lives.

Miketz falls during Chanukah, so
dreams are especially important to
us right now. We need dreams to give
us the impetus to move ahead, to gain
vision, to process all that happens in
our lives and our world.

This is the time of year that is cold
and dark. The days are the shortest
of the year. Many of us go out in the
darkness in the morning and come
home from work after the sun has
set. Having so little light and so much
dark time should give us extra time to
dream, but it isn’t always enough. To
learn to use this dark time well, we
need to pay attention to Joseph and
to what helped him look into dreams
so deeply and clearly.

First, Joseph pays attention. He
learns as a boy to notice what is going
on with others. His own brothers
teach him how dangerous it can be to
not pay attention. And when Joseph
grows up, he is primed to notice
everything in life. There are many
writers who see Joseph as a queer
man: He loves bright, multicolored
coats; he isn’t interested in sleeping
with his employer’s wife; he is treated
like an outsider. Joseph learns to pay
careful attention to everything to
help him negotiate the challenging,
unaccepting world.

As we read the story of Joseph, we
can all use his inspiration. We can
give ourselves ample time to dream
and to hold onto our dreams. We can
all try to pay closer attention to what
the world is bringing us. And we can
all use this time to shine a light on
what is truly happening in our lives
and our world. It is not a coincidence
that the story of the dreamer, Joseph,
and the holiday, Chanukah, fall at the
same time every year.

It is nothing short of a miracle
that Joseph, an imprisoned, young,
possibly queer outsider, a young man
from another land, can use dreams to
catapult himself to such a position of
power. When Joseph can reach inside
and find a way to access the power of
dreams, to shine light on the truth,
there is no end to what can happen.

It is a miracle.

When we give ourselves the time to
focus on our dreams, when we shine
a light on ourselves and our world,
there is no end to what can happen.

There can be new miracles. It was
up to Joseph to persevere, even from
deep within a prison, and to find the
light he needed to change the fate of
an entire people, an entire country. It
is up to each of us to give ourselves
the time to step back at this cold,
dark time and to shine a light on all
that we need to see to change our own
people, our own country.

When we shine our lights in the
world, miracles happen. Then we see
injustice and we work to fight against
it. Then we see how people are mis-
treated because of their race or reli-
gion or sexual identity or gender and
we work to fight against that mis-
treatment. Then we stay open to all
that desperately needs to be changed
and healed in this broken world and
we don’t shy away from the work that
needs to be done.

It is not easy to let ourselves use
these short days with so little light
effectively, but the conf luence of
the Joseph story and the miracle of
Chanukah remind us that we can
cause miracles. We all have dreams:
dreams of a better world, of a com-
munity where everyone is treated
with loving kindness and respect,
dreams of a world where antisemi-
tism and Islamophobia and racism
and homophobia and transphobia
vanish. We can use the inspiration
of Chanukah and of Joseph to do
our part to bring about the mira-
cle of this new world. My hope is
that this Chanukah will be the one
that inspires us to create a health-
ier, kinder and more just community
and country. Wishing all of us a
Chanukah of great miracles! JE
life at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical
College and the rabbi of the Tikkun Olam
Chavurah. She is a commissioner on the
Mayor’s Commission on Faith Based and
Interfaith Aff airs and is involved with
the Anti-Gun Violence initiative of Live
Free/POWER. Th e Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia is proud to provide
diverse perspectives on Torah commen-
tary for the Jewish Exponent. Th e opin-
ions expressed in this column are the
author’s own and do not refl ect the view
of the Board of Rabbis.

Linda Holtzman is the director of student
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 25