synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Beth El in Yardley
Beth El in Yardley
Hires New Rabbi
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
I t’s not every day that a man from
California falls in love with a town
in the Philadelphia suburbs and
migrates across the country.

But the new rabbi at Congregation
Beth El in Yardley, David Cantor, is
doing just that.

In the winter, the rabbi was looking
to leave his Long Beach congregation
due to rising rent prices and the unat-
tainable price of a starter home (about
$1 million) in the area. During his
interview process, he visited Yardley
and felt a connection with Beth El offi -
cials and congregants. He drove around
the town’s neighborhoods, dined on its
main street and fell in love.

Between June 20-24, Rabbi Cantor,
Rebbetzin Kedma Cantor and their four
children, all between 16 and 25, packed
their van and drove across the United
States. Cantor begins his new role at
Beth El, a Conservative congregation
with 211 member families, on July 1.

“It felt kind of like home,” he said of
his February visit to the synagogue’s
lower Bucks County locale.

During that weekend, Cantor met
with temple offi cials, spoke at Beth
El’s Hebrew school, talked to diff erent
synagogue groups and led services. He
found the congregants to be lively, cor-
dial and curious, as well as unafraid to
ask questions about their priorities, his
values and his vision.

Th e rabbi, though, didn’t have to ask
the members about their values. Th ose
were made clear to him throughout the
three-day visit.

“Th is notion of, I’ve become a better
person by being involved in the com-
munity, and I want to give back by
making this community even better,”
he said.

Cantor saw that Beth El off ered a
well-established internal structure.

Th ere were “committees and commit-
tees and committees” for initiatives
like adult education and social action.

Th ere were also twice-daily minyans
and great uses for community space,
24 Congregation Beth El in Yardley
Photo by Alan Gilbert Photography
the rabbi explained.

Additionally, though the synagogue
does not off er a preschool, it does have
a bar and bat mitzvah program and a
religious school with 50 students.

In an institution that already func-
tions well, the rabbi believes he can
focus on what he’s good at — playing a
more therapeutic role where he tries to
talk to each member regularly. Cantor
once studied to leave the rabbinate and
become a family therapist. But he real-
ized halfway through the program that
his listening ear was best used in a shul.

“My highest priority is being there
for the congregant,” the rabbi said.

“Th ere’s nothing so important in a
book that can’t be set aside when some-
one walks in the door.”
But it was not just Beth El that was
perfect for Cantor. It was Yardley, too.

Cantor, 51, is from Winnipeg,
Canada, and he said the architec-
tural style in the Bucks County town
reminded him of his childhood home.

During that February visit, he ate on
Main Street with Beth El leaders at
“lovely local restaurants.”
Cantor realized that he could aff ord
to buy a home in the area, too. His
Yardley house will have a forest, a
farm and a river within a mile, he said.

He also mentioned that he liked an
oft -cited quality of the Philadelphia
suburbs: If you are looking for a city
experience, both Philadelphia and New
York are just a day trip away.

“We wanted to live the American
JUNE 23, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Rabbi David Cantor
Courtesy of Rabbi David Cantor
dream and own a little bit of paradise,”
Cantor said.

Th e rabbi is talking like a man who
is ready to settle down somewhere,
and that’s the type of leader Beth El is
looking for as well. Out of the temple’s
last three rabbis, one of whom was
interim, none stayed longer than seven
years, according to Mindy Albuck, the
synagogue’s vice president.

Candidates were honest with Albuck,
who chaired the search committee,
during this most recent hiring process.

Th ey viewed the small synagogue as a
career stepping stone.

Th e longtime member was not mad;
she understood. But she quickly real-
ized that Beth El needed someone
diff erent than the well-published, big
personality, good talker archetype that
kept walking through the door.

Someone like Cantor, in other words.

“It was clear that he wants to make
personal connections and get to know
people,” Albuck said. “He’s not a per-
former.” Beth El congregants oft en get
together outside of the synagogue, too.

Albuck thinks Cantor will fi t right into
that culture.

“Th e relationships are kind of long.

Th e people stay around long. We’re
just not a transient type of group,” she
said. JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com



d’var torah
The Act of Seeing
BY RABBI ABE FRIEDMAN
I Parshat Shlah Lekha
was 17 when I started wearing tallit
katan — the thin, four-cornered
undergarment worn in order to ful-
fi ll the mitzvah of tzitzit — and I went
to great lengths to hide my tallit katan
from my parents: washing it by hand
late at night and drying with rolled tow-
els, slipping it between folded T-shirts
when I put it away at night, carefully
tucking in my shirts so it wouldn’t show.

In the grand scheme of things teen-
agers hide from their parents, this is not
front-page news. Still, it’s strange that I
tried so hard to keep them from learn-
ing about my tzitzit. I had no reason to
think my parents would be upset — on
the contrary, my parents sent me and
my sisters to Jewish day schools, youth
groups and summer camps and, quite
likely, would have supported my deci-
sion to take on this mitzvah.

Tzitzit originate in this week’s Torah
portion, Shlah Lekha. At the very end of
our parshah, God tells Moses, “Speak to
the Israelites, and you shall say to them
that they should make them a fringe
on the skirts of their garments ... and
you shall see it and be mindful of all the
Lord’s commandments and you shall do
them” (Numbers 15:38-39). From this
passage, familiar to many as the third
paragraph of Shema, we get the wide-
spread practice of wearing a tallit (prayer
shawl) during services and the prevalent
but less-widely-observed custom of wear-
ing a tallit katan under one’s clothes.

But tzitzit feature only in the last
fi ve verses of Shlah Lekha. Most of the
parshah focuses on the 12 spies who are
sent to the land of Israel, the demor-
alizing report they bring back and the
grave consequences the Israelites face
for believing the fearful lies over Caleb
and Joshua’s faithful report. I’m curious:
Of all the places in the Torah, why does
the mitzvah of tzitzit appear here, right
next to the story of the spies?
A common theme throughout our
Torah portion is the act of seeing. Th e
spies are sent to look at the land and see
whether it is good; they see the strong,
powerful natives and report back that they
“looked like grasshoppers in their eyes”;
the Israelites are condemned to 40 years
in the wilderness so that they will not
see the promised land; and fi nally we are
instructed to wear tzitzit so that when we
see them we will remember the mitzvot.

More subtly, the parshah plays with
the diff erences between what we see
when we look outside of ourselves and
what we see when we look within. Th e
10 faithless spies look outward, compar-
ing themselves to the fi erce Canaanites,
and feel like tiny little bugs. Caleb and
Joshua visit the same places and take in
the same sights, but they look inward
and ask whether, in their hearts, they
believe that the Israelites, with God’s
support and protection, have the for-
titude to overcome the challenges of
settling the land of Israel — and they
conclude that it is possible.

With tzitzit, we fi nd a similar inter-
play between seen and seeing. Reading
carefully, the Torah emphasizes that
the purpose of tzitzit is to remind us
of the mitzvot and our covenant with
God when we see them. It doesn’t mat-
ter if others can see our tzitzit or not
— secretive teenage me with the hidden
tzitzit still saw them when I got dressed,
sensed them under my clothes as I moved
around throughout the day, and they kept
my attention on living right: Beyond the
formal practices of Judaism, I thought
diff erently about how I spoke and how
I behaved. Tzitzit helped me keep my
attention within — on the values that I
wanted to express into the world and the
kind of person I wanted to be.

All too oft en, when our attention turns
outward, to what others have that we
feel we lack, wondering how the people
around us perceive us, our behavior turns
away from our best selves. Kids, teenag-
ers, adults, seniors — it doesn’t seem to
make a diff erence. People tend to make
very poor decisions when we focus on
wanting others to approve of us.

Th e opposite holds true as well: When
we focus inward and consider what
kind of person we want to be, how we
ideally want to live, these questions
oft en help us align our actions with our
values. Whether your current practice
of Judaism includes wearing tzitzit in
some form or not, the emphasis in this
week’s parshah on where we focus our
attention and what we see can help each
of us live our best each day.

Rabbi Abe Friedman is the senior rabbi
at Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in
Philadelphia. Th e Board of Rabbis of
Greater Philadelphia is proud to pro-
vide diverse perspectives on Torah com-
mentary for the Jewish Exponent. Th e
opinions expressed in this column are
the author’s own and do not refl ect the
view of the Board of
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