synagogue spotlight
Temple Judea Remains a Spiritual
Center for Doylestown-Area Residents
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
Photo by Lori Bergman
W hen it opened in 1959, Temple Judea
of Bucks County became “the fi rst
synagogue in Doylestown” and “the fi rst
Reform synagogue in Bucks County,” according to a
2019 Bucks County Courier Times article. Today, the
shul has 150 member families and a building at 38
Rogers Road in Furlong, its home for the last 10 years.

But in 2023 and 2024, the community will fi ght for
its life.

A decline in membership since 2019, from almost
200 households to the current number, has made the
Furlong property “too burdensome,” Treasurer Joel
Weiner said. At a congregational meeting in January,
shul leaders informed members that they were going
to look into selling the building by the end of 2024.

The almost two-year timeline would give the congre-
gation time to fi gure out its next move.

But it was what happened over the rest of that
meeting that gave everybody in the room hope. One
after another, people got up and said they wanted to
fi gure out that next step. It was important to them to
“stay together and continue the tradition of Temple
Judea,” according to President Len Saff ren.

“No matter where we were in the physical space, we
were a community,” Saff ren recalled of the message
he got from congregants. “I found that to be the most
heartening piece of information.”
It also made practical sense. Sixty-four years on from
its founding, Temple Judea plays the same important
role that it did in 1959. It’s a spiritual center for the
Reform Jews of Warwick, Chalfont, Warrington and
other towns in the Doylestown area. Central Bucks
has a Jewish population but not many synagogues.

Lower Bucks has Shir Ami in Newtown, Ohev Shalom
in Richboro and several others. But as you drive north
in this county of more than 600,000 residents, it’s
Temple Judea, the Conservative Tiferes B’nai Israel in
Warrington, the Reconstructionist Kehilat HaNahar in
New Hope and the Chabad Lubavitch of Doylestown.

That’s it.

So even though Temple Judea’s membership is
declining, it is getting younger, according to Weiner.

The base includes 86 religious school students and
50-60 religious school families. Weiner estimates that
a third of the shul’s congregants are Hebrew school
families. There are also 156 kids in Temple Judea’s
Small Wonders preschool, though not all of them are
synagogue members.

Temple Judea of Bucks County
The Bucks County synagogue is also attracting a
key group in Jewish community life today: interfaith
families. Saff ren said 35-40% of Temple Judea’s
congregants are interfaith households.

“We play a very signifi cant role in Central Bucks,”
he added.

Tom Gibson, 45, is Catholic but he’s been a member
of Temple Judea for 20 years. As Gibson explained,
he married a Jewish girl, his wife Kim, and while he
was not comfortable converting, he was secure in
raising their three children Jewish. Today, Gibson is a
board member at Temple Judea, and his fi rst two kids
have celebrated their bar and bat mitzvahs there. His
youngest daughter is 11 and on her way to starting that
same process.

“I want to make sure this community stays in place,”
Gibson said.

Janna Fisher, 43, feels the same way even though
she only joined last year. Her 9-year-old daughter and
7-year-old son just went through Small Wonders. But
now that Fisher’s daughter is in third grade, the family
has to join to send her to the Hebrew school, accord-
ing to synagogue policy. The Furlong resident is
happy to do it. She had a Jewish community growing
up and she wants the same for her kids.

In Hebrew school, you make Jewish friends who
understand you. It’s not public school where you
always have to explain yourself. Fisher believes that
it’s important to have that safe haven, especially in an
era of rising antisemitism. The Central Bucks School
District in recent years has been too permissive of
a culture of antisemitism, according to some Jewish
parents in the district. And district leaders took down
a poster in a school library that showed a quote from
Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, only to apologize later
and put it back up.

“When there’s so much going on in the world, it’s
nice to have a central place where other people
have similar beliefs as you, similar traditions as you,”
Fisher said.

The synagogue’s plan moving forward, according
to Weiner, is to sell the Rogers Road property and
use the equity to pay for a new home. It will be in the
Doylestown area since that’s where most congre-
gants live.

“People want this temple. They want to be a
community. And that’s not going to go away,” said Lori
Bergman, the temple’s director of education. ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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