synagogue spotlight
What’s happening at ... Har Zion Temple
H Har Zion Temple Approaches
Centennial with Focus on
Next Generation
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
ar Zion Temple opened in
1923 in West Philadelphia’s
Wynnefield neighborhood.

Next year, the synagogue, now in Penn
Valley, will celebrate its centennial.

And over those 99 years, the congre-
gation has made great contributions
to the Philadelphia-area Jewish com-
munity. According to the synagogue’s
history section on its website, members
“were instrumental” in the creation of
the Perelman Jewish Day School, the
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy and
Camp Ramah in the Poconos. They
also opened the “first afternoon reli-
gious school accredited by the United
Synagogues of Conservative Judaism.”
Today, that legacy is in the hands of
Har Zion’s 720 family units and its three
leaders: Rabbi Seth Haaz, Cantor Eliot
Vogel and President Josh Friedman.

Haaz arrived in 2018 from a synagogue
in Connecticut, but Vogel and Friedman
are fixtures, having joined the commu-
nity in 1991 and 1994, respectively.

Yet all three understand this history
and the challenge they face. They also
believe that they, along with their con-
gregants, know how to continue the
legacy into the next century.

Just a few months ago, the commu-
nity unveiled its new mission statement
on its website. It is, according to the
leaders, a reflection of the congregation’s
values as it looks ahead.

Several values are listed, but two stand
above the others, Haaz explained. Those
are inclusivity and community.

“We’re each on our own journey, and,
as members of a Jewish community, we
go on this journey together,” he said.

This congregation-wide conversa-
tion started because the leaders felt that
COVID drove people away from com-
munities. But it would have been appro-
priate even before COVID because Jews
were leaving their communities any-
way, according to Haaz. At Har Zion,
the congregation has shrunken from
36 Rabbi Seth Haaz
Photo by Jay Gorodetzer
around 1,500 family units after World
War II to its current number of about
half that.

Community, as Haaz explained, has
become “a countercultural concept.”
But that is also the time when it is “most
needed.” “It’s when we look at students strug-
gling with mental health; when we look
at seniors struggling with isolation; and
when we look at friends who haven’t
seen each other in years,” the rabbi said.

“We want to bring people back to the
synagogue.” To do that, Haaz, Vogel and Friedman
need to turn Har Zion into a temple
that people want to join. Since releasing
that mission statement, they have made
several changes to try and live up to its
values. Recently, the synagogue held its first-
ever Pride event: a screening of a movie
about a gay Israeli man who relocates
to London after being rejected by his
family. The temple also established an
inclusivity committee. The five-person
group aims to “address various com-
munities who might not know how wel-
come they are,” Haaz said. Congregants
want “everyone to be part of the (Har
Zion) community,” he added.

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
The first day of preschool at Har Zion Temple in Penn Valley for the 2022-’23
school year
Photo by Norman Einhorn
Towards that same end, synagogue
leaders changed the name of the bar
and bat mitzvah program to a B mitz-
vah program. Haaz said the temple
wants to recognize that “bar and bat
is very binary and not everybody fits
into that.”
Deeper than the name, though, the
rabbi and his team are working to
make the process more communal. No
longer do students study one-on-one
with a tutor. Instead, they learn in a
group. This way, they can celebrate
“each other’s accomplishments,” the
rabbi explained.

Leaders are trying to create a similar
environment across the rest of syn-
agogue life. They are building a cov-
ered outdoor space so congregants
can gather even during a situation like
COVID, according to Haaz. They are
renovating their outdoor playgrounds to
make equipment more accessible and to
add more tree and nature sections. They
are also building a hiking trail behind
the synagogue “so we can journey and
spend time together,” Haaz said.

Perhaps most importantly, the syn-
agogue is changing its membership
structure to make it less hierarchical. In
the past, congregants paid for member-
ships based on where they sat for High
Holiday services. The better the seat,
the more you paid, with three sections
in all. Now, dues are just based on the
number of individuals who are joining
from each family.

“Har Zion membership is not just
about those three days of the year,”
Friedman said. “It’s about a life cycle.”
This is a fundamental change, accord-
ing to Vogel. The cantor said that in the
past, people may have “joined because
their kids went to preschool here.” But
not because it was a place for adults to
feel “seen” in their Jewish journeys.

Today and moving forward, syna-
gogues need to do more seeing, the
cantor believes.

“Synagogue is not just a thing to be
consumed when you need it,” Vogel
said. “It’s not so transactional.” JE
jsaffren@midatlanticmedia.com