synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Shir Ami
Shir Ami a Hub for Reform Jewish Life
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
24 MAY 19, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
Briskin photo by Mindy Berger, event photo by Eric Goldberg
W hen it opened in 1999,
Shir Ami’s community
mikveh became just the
second of its kind at a Reform syna-
gogue in the United States.

Today there are a few more, but the
Newtown temple continues to offer the
only mikveh at a Reform shul in the
Philadelphia area. As Rabbi Charles
“Chuck” Briskin explained, the ritual
purification bath draws Jews from all
over Bucks County, from Philadelphia
out into the suburbs and from across
the New Jersey state line, extending as
far north as New Brunswick and as far
south as Cherry Hill.

The mikveh makes Shir Ami a
Reform hub of sorts, Briskin said. And
that also is how the community sees
itself in general.

With a membership that used to
hover around 2,000 families in the late
1990s and early 2000s, the Newtown
synagogue once united Jews from
across the area. It still does, to an
extent, though, like many temples, it
has experienced a membership decline.

About 525 families are in the congre-
gation today.

“It’s definitely holding steady over
the last few years,” Shir Ami President
Ellie Short said.

Even though Shir Ami’s congrega-
tion has gotten smaller, its worship
may have gone a little deeper during
the pandemic. According to Briskin,
the introduction of a virtual option for
Shabbat services increased the average
crowd from about 50 people to between
70 and 80.

This same deepening may be hap-
pening in the temple’s other programs,
too. During Sukkot last fall, four dif-
ferent member families built sukkahs
on their properties and hosted fellow
congregants for meals.

Everyone was invited to go to any
location, and many did. More than
200 members visited at least one of the
sukkahs during the week-long holiday,
Briskin said.

The depth of membership is still
Shir Ami Rabbi Chuck Briskin
Shir Ami congregants attend a charity event at Citizens Bank Park.

Even though Shir Ami’s congregation has gotten smaller,
its worship may have gone a little deeper
during the pandemic.

reflected in Shir Ami’s long-established
programs like its early learning center
and religious school, which count 160
and 225 students, respectively.

Briskin, like many post-pandemic
rabbis, points to virtual access as a
key driver of increased engagement.

The isolating and sometimes-tragic
pandemic experience brought people
closer together in spirit, he said.

After COVID emerged, Shir Ami
lay leaders began calling congregants
to make sure they were OK, with a
particular focus on older members.

Congregants also started to run
errands to pick up groceries and pre-
scription drugs for each other.

Synagogue leaders are trying to cre-
ate a committee to both formalize that
outreach and keep it going long-term,
according to Short.

“That’s something we hold on to,”
Briskin said.

Between the desire to connect and
the access to do it more frequently, Shir
Ami may have figured out its future
during the pandemic.

Short said the synagogue recently
started a record club for music lovers.

Members get together to play an album
by Billy Joel or Tom Petty or another
artist; when the album ends, they dis-
cuss it.

The rabbi envisions other such clubs,
too, around interests as wide-ranging
as civic engagement and meditation,
among others. Imagine 15 groups with
10 or so members each, Briskin said.

But the groups don’t even have to be
built around interests. Much like the
Sukkot effort last fall, they can be based
on demographics or geography.

Maybe young families want to get
together for a specific activity, like
the nature walks that the rabbi is now
starting on the weekends. Or maybe
congregants who live in Yardley want
to pray or study Torah together one
night or weekend morning.

“Establish a number of small groups
that will have opportunities to come
together,” Briskin said. “They are still
connected to Shir Ami, but they won’t
actually be at Shir Ami.”
The synagogue itself, though, will
bring everybody back together. Briskin
recognizes that a bunch of small and
separate groups do not need a bigger
organization to unite them.

But these small groups will be con-
nected by their faith, their identity and
their desire to practice Judaism. They
also may still be united by the quality
services that Shir Ami has to offer, like
preschool and religious school.

“The Jewish focus is the first point of
commonality,” Briskin said. “You have
someone who is committed to support-
ing Jewish life in Bucks County and, in
particular, Shir Ami.”
And if members are getting together
on a more regular basis in small groups,
they are unlikely to feel alone at bigger
events, Briskin said.

“No one’s coming alone,” he said.

“Everyone’s feeling comfortable.” JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com



d’var torah
A Place of Choosing
BY RABBI LYNNDA TARGAN
T Parshat Behar
his week’s parsha, Behar,
located in the middle of the
Book of Leviticus, also partly
containing The Holiness Code in the
Torah, places the Israelites, renewed
from their freedom from Egyptian
enslavement, at Mount Sinai.

In their efforts toward self-determi-
nation, we find them learning how to
be a holy community as they continue
their journey towards the fulfillment of
the Biblical Covenant, i.e., to enter and
dwell in the land of Israel.

The narrative begins with the laws
of indentured servitude and land ten-
ure, including, but not limited to an
agricultural discussion of shmita, the
Sabbatical year, which is required rest
for the land every seven years, just
as the weekly seventh day of creation
is the weekly biblical day of Sabbath
respite. The text continues with a dis-
cussion about the Yovel, the Jubilee
observance, which occurs in year 50
during a seven times seven plus one
cycle every half-century.

Embedded in that discussion are
the words, “Proclaim liberty through-
out the land for all its inhabitants”
(Leviticus 25:10). The commanded bro-
ken blast of the shofar is a clarion
wake-up call to action.

These words have a familiar ring
to those of us living in Philadelphia.

Perhaps because we know them as the
inscription emblazoned on the cracked
Liberty Bell, which pealed thunder-
ously after the historic signing of the
Declaration of Independence. America
is a symbol of freedom all over the
world, and yet, sometimes we sleep-
ily take these freedoms for granted.

Perhaps we might at times be too com-
placent about rising up against chal-
lenges when they’ve been threatened,
even though, as we are witnessing now,
those freedoms that we assumed to be
iron-clad, are not absolute.

The theme of freedom and indepen-
dence resonates in the here and now in
a world where there is an overwhelm-
ing radical dissonance on a plethora of
issues embodying the intense values of
freedom — COVID behavior, freedom
in the Ukraine and other parts of the
world, religious freedoms for all, free-
dom against antisemitism, race rela-
tions, climate change, LGBTQ rights,
Israel and women’s agency over their
own bodies — just to name a few.

This week’s Torah portion reminds us
that we are all figuratively at a moun-
tain at a place of choosing. Neurologist,
psychiatrist, philosopher, writer and
Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl wrote,
“Between stimulus and response there
is a space. In that space is our power to
choose our response. In our response
lies our growth and freedom.”
Through the chronicle of expected
behaviors delineated in the Torah
regarding shmita and Yovel obser-
vances relating to the Promised Land,
we learn that the concepts about inde-
pendence and choice pertain to the
civility expected of humanity.

In one passage God reminds us,
“The land is Mine; you are sojourn-
ers and residents with Me” (Leviticus
25:23). Freedom, thus, as wayfarers on
God’s land maintains an adherence
to social and communal responsibility
and activism, which, without excep-
tion, extends to all of God’s creations
— land, animals and peoples. It is aspi-
rational that we are to leave our world
better and a more empathic place than
when we entered into it.

Behar then comes to teach us about
the values of reverence, social justice,
cultural morality, caring for others,
compassion, respecting differences and
rising up against injustices in all of
its iterations. Especially those of us to
whom God has been generous, much
is expected.

It is a manifesto to stop, listen and
be transformed by performing acts
of kindness and ma’asim tovim, good
deeds. During the shmita and Yovel
years, the Bible tells us that our debts
are canceled. But the debt to our inher-
itance, to our people, to our families,
to society, to humanity, and to those in
need, can never be nullified. Freedom
is not freedom from responsibility.

On the contrary, freedom embraces
a deepened understanding of our per-
sonal and societal obligations as well
as our accountability for heightened
social consciousness. Klal Yisrael are-
vim zeh ba zeh, we learn. All of Israel
is responsible, one for the other. This is
a truth for our times and for all times.

Moving forward, I hope that we can
all be mindful of the powerful mes-
sage of the Yovel, and even though our
Jewish calendar cycle is now closer to
Shavuot than to Yom Kippur, I submit
that we imagine hearing the shofar,
described as a “sound beyond a sound,”
as an ever-present reverberation, to pay
mindful attention to the concept of
freedom, Earth’s riches, and to all of
the members of God’s sacred commu-
nity who must share them. JE
Rabbi Lynnda Targan is a commu-
nity rabbi and the co-founder of The
Women’s Midrash Institute. She is a
teacher, life cycle officiant, activist, wife
and author of “Funny You Don’t Look
Like a Rabbi, A Memoir of Unorthodox
Transformation.” The Board of Rabbis
of Greater Philadelphia is proud to pro-
vide diverse perspectives on Torah com-
mentary for the Jewish Exponent. The
opinions expressed in this column are
the author’s own and do not reflect the
view of the Board of Rabbis.

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