H eadlines
JCC Masons
He thinks that Kaiserman
already has two solid business
entities upon which to build.

In 2021, Camp Kef, the
JCC’s day camp, has more kids
than ever with between 450
and 465. And going into the
fall, Kaiserman’s Robert J. Wilf
Preschool is at capacity with
140 students.

There is just one empty
space in the JCC’s business
model, and at the Haverford
Road facility itself: the room
where the gym used to be.

After the pandemic broke out
in March 2020, Kaiserman
officials removed the workout
equipment from the room, and
they still haven’t put it back.

Scher said the organization
is using the room for camp
activities this summer. But he
stopped short of calling that a
permanent use.

“It could be a fitness center,”
Scher added.

Or it could be something else.

Board Chair Cindy Smukler
said she would like to try
programming in the form of an
annual book festival, speakers
and other Jewish events. The
JCC already hosts an annual
Purim carnival that draws
hundreds of people.

Scher likes Smukler’s idea.

But the veteran of five JCCs
across the country said that
arts and culture are not always
the best revenue drivers.

The CEO has worked at two
JCCs in New York City, the
14th Street Y and the YM &
YWHA of Washington Heights
and Inwood. The 14th Street Y
is a famous arts and cultural
center, while the Washington
Heights Y is more of a social
service institution.

It’s a matter of figuring
out what’s right for a given
JCC facility, according to
Scher. To find that answer in
Wynnewood, Scher is in the
process of speaking with more
than 100 Kaiserman members.

When he worked at the
Jewish Community Center of
Though gone are the days
of stonemasonry as a popular
profession, the fraternal
organization of the Masons
persists and, for a community
of Jews around the world, it’s a
touchstone of connection.

When the pandemic hit,
Shlomo Bar-Ayal, an Orthodox
Jew and former master at the
James W. Husted-Fiat Lux
Lodge in Manhattan, and Sean
Rothberg, a Mason from the
Richardson Masonic Lodge
#1214 in Dallas created respec-
tive Facebook groups for Jewish
Masons. When they found out about
the other’s groups, they joined
forces to create a larger group
of Jewish Masons, from New
York, Pennsylvania, Ohio,
Texas, even Australia, that now
meets online weekly: a Zoom
minyan of Masons.

The group, an ensemble of
men of varying ages, many
bespectacled or sipping a beer
in front of Zoom greenscreen
backgrounds, are truly, in a
somewhat stereotypical sense,
a brotherhood.

They kibbitz, frequently
ganging up on Bar-Ayal, one
of the group’s more seasoned
members, cracking jokes about
his age. Members frequently
speak over each other, and
conversation gets garbled in
the video chat forum.

But the group also discusses
Torah portions and connec-
tions between Masonry and
Jewry and hosts lecturers
on Jewish topics, such as the
Holocaust. This group of Jewish
Masons, along with most
every other Mason presently,
are not guildsmen. Rather, the
organization serves as a place
for men to not only connect
with a diverse community, but
self-actualize — despite the
wisecracking — and practice
etiquette and respect for those
different from them.

“We make good men better,”
Bar-Ayal said.

Continued from Page 1
8 JULY 29, 2021
Continued from Page 1
New Kaiserman JCC CEO Alan
Scher needs to decide if the
facility’s fitness center will remain
a fitness center.

Photos by Janine Nelson
Camp Kef is in session at the
Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood.

San Francisco, Scher came up
with a series of youth programs
that started after the facility
hosted the JCC Maccabi Games.

To make their $1.5 million
fundraising effort and invest-
ment in the center worthwhile,
community members needed
to know it would go further
than the seven-day event.

Scher spent weeks talking
to Maccabi athletes and other
San Francisco teenagers about
what they might like. Then he
implemented two programs
— one that trained post-Mac-
cabi athletes as youth coaches
and another that helped high
school students earn commu-
nity service hours.

“It’s exactly what I did in
San Francisco,” Scher said of
his process in Wynnewood.

“I’m meeting with as many
people as I can.”
Dialogue won’t mean
anything, though, if the JCC
doesn’t have enough money.

Smukler said Kaiserman has
enough to operate its two
businesses. But she also said it
could always use more money.

Scher has not raised any
money yet. But he did meet
with long-term investors and
some people who may be inter-
ested in investing.

Smukler is confident.

“There are a lot of people in
the community that believe in
a Jewish Community Center,”
she said. “Right now, the world
is upside down, and this is a
place to find community.”
Wynnewood resident and
Kaiserman member Rebecca
Bar agrees with Smukler. Bar
and her husband, Matt, send
their two sons, Micah, 6, and
Jonah, 4, to Camp Kef.

The Bar parents love the
camp because it offers a wide
variety of activities, from art
to sports, and a strong Jewish
foundation, with Shabbat
services and blessings every
Friday. Micah also attended
JEWISH EXPONENT
preschool at Robert J. Wilf,
which Jonah is going to attend
for the next two years.

Micah loved Jewish preschool
so much that, after attending the
public Penn Wynne Elementary
School this past year for kinder-
garten, he asked his parents why
he wasn’t learning about Jewish
holidays anymore. For 2021-22,
they are enrolling him in a
Jewish day school.

Before the pandemic, though,
the Bars would often use the gym,
especially the track and the pool.

Yet despite the gym’s closure, the
Bars plan on remaining members
for a long time.

“It’s been such a nice
gathering place for people,”
Rebecca Bar said. l
jsaffren@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



F TAY-SACHS
R F R E E E E
H eadlines
Shlomo Bar-Ayal is installed as master of the James W. Husted-Fiat
Lux Lodge on May 11, 2019.
Courtesy of Shlomo Bar Ayal
In addition to opening
many Masonic hospitals in the
19th century, Masons are now
known for giving charity to
various organizations, such as
these hospitals.

According to Dov Reidenberg,
a fourth-generation Mason from
Philadelphia, Masonic activi-
ties are tzedakah. Reidenberg’s
lodge periodically spends time
cleaning up and picking up
trash at Har Nebo Cemetery and
Monuments in Philadelphia.

To some outside of the
Masonic community, however,
the connection between Jewry
and Masonry is more sinister.

Among a cadre of conspiracy
theories that the secrecy of
Masonry has excited is the
theory that Masons started the
Holocaust. In reality, Adolf Hit-
ler suspected Masons of working
under Jews and conspiring
against the Nazi regime.

In the true good-spirited
nature of these Masons, the
group was quick to dismiss
this theory, along with others
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM — that Masons are devil-wor-
shippers and are taking over
the government.

“If Masons control the
government and Jews control
the economy, then why did I
go to a community college and
not straight to Harvard or Yale
for free?” Rothberg said.

Judaism and Masonry
are intertwined more deeply
than just the number of Jews
who happen to be Masons.

According to Bar-Ayal, Jews
have been a part of Masonry
for about as long as Masonry
has been around in the United
States, since the 18th century.

Though the fraternity is
seen to outsiders as enigmatic
and exclusive, there are few
rules to becoming a Mason:
One must be a man, believe
in a deity and join the broth-
erhood by his own free will.

Therefore, Masonry did not
preclude Jewish men from
becoming Masons.

Reidenberg adds another
requirement to becoming a
Mason: “To be one, ask one.”
To begin the initiation process,
one must simply ask a Mason
about joining the fraternity.

This simple directive is
largely responsible for what
Bar-Ayal calls “Jewish lodges,”
meetings of Masons that are
largely Jewish, yet a bit of a
paradox, as lodge meetings bar
any discussion of religion or
politics in the space.

Growing membership
through word of mouth,
Jewish Masons tap synagogue
acquaintances to join the
Masonry and, in areas
with large Jewish popula-
tions, Jewish membership of
lodges such as Bar-Ayal’s and
Reidenberg’s lodges snowballs.

Masonry’s domino-effect
recruitment strategy still does
not account for the dwindling
number of Masons in the
U.S. In the 1960s during the
counterculture movement,
Masonry was seen as “square,”
according to Mark Stought, a
Jewish Mason in Cleveland;
it was an organization for
parents or veterans looking
for the comradery they once
had with other soldiers during
wartime. Now that many of these
veterans are gone, Mason
numbers are diminishing, and
lodges are merging to keep
membership numbers up.

Reidenberg, 50, said young
people just aren’t as interested
in joining the brotherhood.

“It’s not a TikTok thing; it’s
not an Instagram thing; it’s not
a Facebook thing,” Reidenberg
said. “Some of the youth today
... it doesn’t appeal to them.”
Reidenberg has
been married to his second wife for
three years and said that his
time as a Mason has helped
him become a better husband.

But Reidenberg doesn’t have
any children, and he said that
his family line of Masons will
end with him.

Reidenberg became a Mason
almost 30 years ago, largely
to spend more time with his
father, who has been a Mason
for almost half a century.

JEWISH EXPONENT
“It’s a legacy that we want
to pass down from one gener-
ation to the next,” Steven
Reidenberg, Dov Reidenberg’s
father, said.

When Dov Reidenberg
joined his father’s lodge in 1994,
which at that point was about
85-90% Jewish, he remembered
doing something that made his
grandfather laugh, a memory
he still holds onto almost 30
years later.

“When he passed back in
1995, it was one of the things
that I remembered about him,
that I made him laugh in a lodge
meeting,” Dov Reidenberg said.

Dov Reidenberg is hopeful
that Masonry will continue to
endure, even though he’s uncer-
tain there will be a fifth generation
of Reidenberg Masons.

Masonry doesn’t need to be
trendy, as long as it continues
to attract those who share the
values of the centuries of men
who came before them: “To
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This message is sponsored by a friend of
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be a Mason, you really want
to be able to not only improve
on yourself, but help change
the world, to help change the
community, help make the
community and the world a
better place.” l
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9