synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Congregation Beth Hamedrosh
Congregation Beth Hamedrosh a
Destination for Jews on Spiritual Journeys
A Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer
bout 75 people show up every
Saturday to Congregation Beth
Hamedrosh in Wynnewood
for Shabbat morning services. Then
throughout the week, 10 to 20 congre-
gants attend morning and evening
minyans. For a synagogue with 80 or so families,
that’s a high percentage of devoted
members. Many of them are Orthodox or,
as some like to say, traditional, after
growing up in a Conservative or Reform
Jewish community, or even outside
of a religious community altogether.

Their spiritual journeys took them to
Orthodoxy, Wynnewood and Beth
Hamedrosh. And now it’s the center of
their weekly lives.

“Certainly the members that have
been part of the congregation a while,
over a decade, are extremely dedicated,”
said Mark Solomon, a congregant in his
11th year. “Those that have joined have
adopted those practices.”
Solomon attributed that dedication
to “a love of Judaism.” It’s not just the
services, either. It’s a learning environ-
ment that includes morning Talmud
study sessions and evening Torah
classes. It’s also a spirit of helping one
another during periods of childbirth,
deaths in the family and other major
life events. Congregants step forward
to “provide meals or whatever families
may need,” said Beth Razin, a member
in her 32nd year.

Solomon, who was ethnically
Jewish but not religious, found Beth
Hamedrosh after his parents died
within 10 months of each other a
little over a decade ago. He started
looking for morning minyans, and the
Wynnewood synagogue was on his
route to work in Delaware. He stopped
in once and then kept coming back.

“I found that people there cared about
davening and Jewish law,” he said. “That
was something that was growing more
and more important to me.”
Razin discovered Beth Hamedrosh
when it was still located in Overbrook
Park in 1990. After growing up in the
Conservative movement, she became
shomer Shabbos with her husband
and started looking for other obser-
vant families so her kids could make
friends. They moved to Overbrook Park
and joined the synagogue that was two
blocks away.

The longtime member remained
dedicated to her spiritual home even
after her kids grew older and the home
moved down the street to Wynnewood.

Today, she needs to walk 1.1 miles instead
of two blocks. But she’s OK with that.

Congregation Beth Hamedrosh congregants at a community picnic
Photos courtesy of Rabbi Yonah Gross
24 JANUARY 5, 2023 | JEWISH EXPONENT
“It was important to have shomer
Shabbat families that our kids could
play with,” Razin said. “We realized that
would only really happen in an Orthodox
community.” Beth Hamedrosh’s spiritual leader,
Rabbi Yonah Gross, arrived in 2009 from
an Orthodox synagogue in Phoenix. He
had never heard of Wynnewood before,
he said. He also had no idea that it was
part of the Philadelphia suburbs.

But when the rabbi got here, he
quickly discovered that the synagogue
was a good fi t. He enjoys the challenge
of answering halachic questions, and he
likes to meet Jews where they are to help
them fi gure out how to move forward
in their journeys. In the Wynnewood
community, his job is to do both.

Razin said that when Gross fi rst
arrived, he got 30 volunteers to go
around to people’s doorsteps during
the High Holidays and leave little bags
with apples and honey in them —
just to say happy holidays. Solomon
credited Gross with convincing him
to join the synagogue in 2011. It was
evident that the rabbi “cared about all
Jews,” he said.

“He’s the one who reaches out to all
diff erent Jews,” Solomon added.

According to Solomon, Beth
Hamedrosh’s parking lot is closed on
Shabbat. But if someone parks around
the corner and walks in, Gross and the
members greet them at the door.

“They are a Jew when they walk in the
door,” Solomon said.

Beth Hamedrosh’s congregation
includes baby boomers, Gen Xers and
millennials. According to Razin, families
from 40 or 50 years ago have moved out
and been replaced by younger house-
holds. Those young families move into
Wynnewood neighborhoods, then walk
to Beth Hamedrosh, since Orthodox
Jews don’t drive on the Sabbath.

This cycle has allowed the synagogue
to keep its membership base steady.

Razin and Gross don’t believe it has
declined or increased since Gross
started 13 years ago.

“As the rabbi said, it’s a good place
for a starter home,” Razin said of
Wynnewood. But Solomon explained that, over the
past 30 years, the Main Line has shifted
from a Conservative Jewish area to a
more Orthodox region. He also said
that more Orthodox people continue to
move to the Philadelphia area and that
they have a younger median age than
other Jewish denominations.

“Ten years from now, there are going
to be a lot more people in this building,”
he concluded. ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Beth Hamedrosh members share a meal.




d’var torah
Internecine Confl ict in
Jewish History
By Rabbi Lance J. Sussman
T Parshat Vayechi
he French writer Jean-Baptiste
Alphonse Karr (1808-1890) is
best known for his aphorism,
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même
chose“ or “The more things change, the
more things remain the same.”
For better or worse and contrary to
popular perception, the application of
Karr’s insight to Jewish history confi rms
that internecine confl ict, not communal
unity, characterizes much of the Jewish
experience. For example, in ancient Israel,
the united monarch quickly dissolved
into two diff erent states. Better known is
the Chanukah story which, refocused on
tensions in the Jewish story, is as much
a story of civil war as it is of resistance to
including the authenticity of conver-
sion performed by diff erent streams
of Judaism, the Jewishness of various
groups in Africa and India, the religious
status of immigrants from East Europe
to Israel and the scope of Israel’s Law
of Return.

In particular, the religious and legal
legitimacy of non-Orthodox Judaisms,
not unlike 40 years ago, is again in the
headlines in the Jewish world as a new
government takes shape in Israel. In
addition to these issues, basic questions
about the place of the LGBTQ+ commu-
nity and the question of settlements
and a two-state solution are in play.

In particular, the inclusion of far-right-
wing politicians like Avi Maoz of the
Pleasantness party, Bezalel Smotrich of
the Religious Zionism party and Itamar
teaching that “the more things change,
the more they stay the same.”
Perhaps some comfort can be found
in this week’s Torah portion in Jacob’s
words that “the scepter shall not depart
from Judah nor the ruler’s staff from
between his staff as long as men come to
Shiloh” (verse 10). In other words, despite
all the tensions and controversies, it may
yet be possible that a higher, transcen-
dent unity in Jewish life will remain,
that we can have our internal confl icts
and still remain a single people and
not dissolve into irreconcilable factions.

Certainly, our common enemies hope for
our dissolution as a people.

Let us pray that, in the words of
Jacob, we will continue “to come to
Shiloh” and remain, in spirit and in
practice, Am Echad, a single people. ■
Lance J. Sussman is a professor of
Jewish studies at Gratz College and
scholar-in-residence of the Holocaust
Awareness Museum and Education
Center. He was the senior rabbi of
Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel
for 21 years and was named rabbi
emeritus in July 2022. 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. Yet again, we have a moment of
reckoning in the Jewish world.

assimilation and the quest for religious
freedom as most American Jews would
understand it.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi,
which concludes the Book of Genesis,
points to substantial tensions among
the Hebrew tribes. Jacob’s blessing
(Genesis 49) begins with an appraisal
of the tribe of Reuben as “unstable as
water” (verse 4). The patriarch then
proclaims that the “kinship” of Simeon
and Levi are “weapons of violence” and
that they will be divided and scattered.

Dan, Jacob teaches, will behave like “a
serpent in the way” and that Benjamin
is a warlike wolf (verses 5-27).

In short, the Torah hardly off ers a
picture of familial harmony on the eve
of liberation from Egyptian slavery or of
peaceful coexistence in Israel.

What about today? Deep divisions
exist in the Jewish community over
the question of “Who is a Jew,”
Ben-Gvir from the Jewish Power party
have raised concerns, not only about
the preservation of even a modicum of
Jewish unity, but about the democratic
(and secular) nature of Israeli society.

Calls to shut down egalitarian prayer
areas near the Western Wall and to
repeal the grandparent clause of the
(amended) Law of Return have set off
alarm bells across the Jewish world.

Defenders of the emerging coalition
insist that Israel is a true democracy,
and the will of the Israeli electorate is
above moral judgments.

By contrast, Netanyahu’s critics are
concerned that Israel is moving beyond
the bounds of a democratic state and
risks delegitimizing itself in the eyes of
the world and the majority of the Jewish
people. Yet again, we have a moment of
reckoning in the Jewish world and sadly
are experiencing the truth of Karr’s
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 25