local
Vilna Congregation
Now a Mikvah,
But It’s Always
Represented Change
z Bring this ad. Take 17% off any item not on sale.

Certain restrictions apply. Offer ends December 4, 2022
Cool gray
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
S ince its founding in 1904, Vilna
Congregation in Society Hill has
experienced its fair share of changes.

Most recently, on Oct. 2, the commu-
nity dedicated its ritual bath Mikvah
Mei Shalva, marking the space’s transi-
tion from a century-old synagogue to a
full-time mikvah. Th ough the building’s
upstairs space at 509 Pine St. will remain
an education and prayer space for sporadic
minyanim, it will primarily serve as Center
City’s only community mikvah, according
to Vilna Rabbi Menachem Schmidt.

Th e transition of the historic space rep-
resents the changing Jewish landscape in
Center City: both a celebrated past and a
glimpse of the future.

“For me, it’s sad not to have that shul.

It’s something that I miss,” Schmidt said.

“For the handful of people that really
appreciate the services that the com-
munity needs, and especially when it
comes to this whole idea of understand-
ing taharat hamishpacha (family purity
laws) and what the mikvah represents, it’s
a very important thing.”
According to some, including Chava
Schmidt, Menachem Schmidt’s wife who
helps run the mikvah, operating a mik-
vah supersedes the mitzvah of operat-
ing a synagogue, as it is considered an
essential service to Jewish families who
abide by the rituals of taharat hamishpa-
cha. In this tradition, Jewish women are
required to use the mikvah aft er men-
struating, a time when sexual contact is
also forbidden.

“As much as there’s kedushah, there’s
holiness, in a shul, in a synagogue, that
doesn’t compare to the holiness of the
parents’ bedroom,” Chava Schmidt said.

“You can daven in a kitchen, a living
room.” For the Schmidts, the transition of the
space is still bittersweet. While leading
the community since 1989, Menachem
Schmidt has seen hundreds of people
7 1 %
The Sweater Mill
115 S. York Road, Hatboro 215.441.8966 Open Monday-Saturday 11-4
Vilna Congregation at its 509 Pine
St. location in Society Hill
fi lter through the shul.

Beyond hosting minyanim and ser-
vices, the rabbi most fondly remembers
the kiddushes and meals Vilna hosted.

For one year on Simchat Torah, a phrase
circulated in the Vilna community: “Skip
shul, come to kiddush.”
“It was singing; there was l’chaim; it
was a whole farbrengen (joyous gather-
ing),” he said. “It was a gathering of all
kinds of people together.”
Holly Cohen, a member of Vilna
Congregation since the mid-1990s,
remembers the synagogue’s gatherings
fondly. She met her husband and started
a young family at Vilna.

“We would sit there for hours, these
young people, these young professional
people,” she said. “And instead of going
out to bars on Friday night, we were
going to Vilna on Friday nights.”
With the buzz of the synagogue in the
1990s and early ’00s, it’s hard to imagine
that the decade prior, the synagogue was
struggling to attract membership. Th is
was a trend in Jewish life in Center City,
which had waned substantially.

In “The Jewish Quarter of
Philadelphia,” Jewish historian Harry
Boonin writes that by 1994, Vilna was
the only rowhouse synagogue remaining
in the Jewish quarter of the city.

Th e Schmidt’s revival of the synagogue
30 years ago was hardly its only transfor-
mation. Founded in 1904 by Abraham
Aba Ben Yehuda Shapiro in a rented
building on Parkside Avenue, Vilna was
a sanctuary for Lithuanian immigrants.

Th e synagogue, which changed loca-
tions several times in its early days, had
trouble attracting congregants, and
Shapiro created an interest-free loan
program through the synagogue and
advertised it in the newspaper to attract
working-class immigrants, according to
Boonin. By 1922, Shapiro’s son Bernard Shapiro
took over aft er his father’s death in 1917,
moving the congregation to its current
Pine Street location and expanding the
building and installing 12 stained-glass
windows and a bimah on the main
room’s north wall, the only place the
pulpit would fi t.

An April 27, 1990 article in the Jewish
Exponent referred to the space, vibrantly
decorated, as “a little jewel.”
Vilna now transitions once more to
serve the changing needs of Center City’s
Jewish population, continuing to repre-
sent a microcosm of Jewish community.

Cohen’s daughter Emunah Wircberg,
who spent her early childhood at Vilna,
now helps operate the Old City Jewish
Arts Center with her husband Rabbi
Zalman Wircberg. Th e arts center also
has a Young Professionals Network to
grow the young Jewish community in
the city.

“People live in a city when they’re
young and they’re single and then they’re
starting to date and getting married, and
they have one child, eventually, and then
maybe a second child,” Wircberg said.

While some decide to move to the
suburbs to grow their family, Wircberg
and her husband are mostly concerned
with building community among 20-
and 30-something Jews already in the
city, as well as attracting young couples
and families to live there.

Vilna’s mikvah is representative of a
foundational need of the Jewish com-
munity, according to Wircberg, aiding
in the eff ort to support the fl ourishing
community in Center City.

“Having a mikvah,” Wircberg said,
“may have people stay longer. It might
have a positive eff ect in that area.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
5