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



d’var torah
Character Memory — Lessons
From My Car and Eyeglasses
BY RABBI CHAIM GALFAND
G Parshat Nitzavim
rowing up, my mother would tell
me to “stand up straight!” Doing
so required concentration and repetition
and took some getting used to.

In time, though, I’d engrained the
specifi c motor tasks of good posture. We
call this “muscle memory” and use it to
describe our ability to throw a ball, swim
or repeat other common physical tasks,
even if we haven’t done the activity in a
long time. It’s as if our bodies automati-
cally remember what to do in the heat of
the moment. (Th ink of “Th e Karate Kid”
car waxing and fence painting.)
Th is notion of a practiced-movement
turned refl exive-action is on my mind pre-
cisely because Rosh Hashanah is next week.

I coined the term “character memory”
as a corollary to muscle memory and
believe the former is just as achievable
and essential as the latter. Comparing
physical training and character educa-
tion is something I’ve been thinking
about over the last few years. I believe
we should practice exercising vari-
ous character strengths until we auto-
matically deploy them when needed.

Parshat Nitzavim, read right before Rosh
Hashanah, confi rms my belief.

Nachmanides saw Nitzavim as the ori-
gin for the concept of teshuva (repen-
tance). We read, “For the commandment
that I command you this day: It is not
too extraordinary for you, it is not too far
away! It is not in the heavens ...” Which
command? Th at of teshuva, Nachmanides
says, because the passage preceding this
sentence comprises many variations of
the Hebrew root for teshuva: v’hashev-
ota, v’shavta, v’shav, tashuv, yashuv. Th e
repetitions signal emphasis. And I believe
that having a higher quotient of character
memory will mean fewer moments for
which we need to repent.

Teshuva literally means return, as in
turning back to something from which
you’ve strayed. It raises the question:
return to what? Th ere have been diff erent
answers: Israel, moral awareness, God,
the Jewish people. Th e biblical notion
of returning to God gave way to the
rabbinic era’s vision of teshuva as a path
to moral growth through the process of
self-education. Teshuva is a response — an acknowl-
edgment that we veered from where we
knew we were supposed to be. Concrete
analogies to daily life help me better
understand more abstract concepts, and
I keep coming back to two of them.

Th e fi rst is to the magic materials behind
“indestructible” eyeglasses that return to
their proper shape even if bent. Th ese
materials aren’t magic, of course, but are
appropriately called shape memory alloys;
they’re conditioned to remember a correct
form and to resist the forces that try to
push them in the wrong direction. With
education and practice, we can cultivate
character that immediately pushes back
against the forces that would twist us and
remembers precisely where it needs to be.

Th e second analogy is the feature on
many newer cars alerting you when you’ve
begun to drift . It prompts you to return to
your lane; it doesn’t make the change for
you but points you in the right direction.

We can develop character memory that
similarly nudges us to stay within the
boundaries of commendable behavior and
does so with similar insistence and con-
stancy. Th is fi ts nicely with seeing teshuva
as “returning” (to the path).

One’s character rarely exists in a vac-
uum; rather, it comes into focus in relation
to other people — especially the eff ect they
have on us. Nitzavim recognizes spheres of
infl uence. Referring to Canaan’s idols and
their worshippers, the Torah says beware,
“lest there be among you a root bear-
ing-fruit of wormwood and poison-herb.”
Like plants, our location and sur-
roundings aff ect us. Nitzavim continues
by warning that outsiders will observe
our conduct and “see the blows [dealt]
this land and its sicknesses ... by brim-
stone and salt, is all its land burnt, it can-
not be sown, it cannot sprout.” Chizkuni,
emphasizing the pitfalls of the company
we keep, would have us look out for the
misdeeds of others, because their infl u-
ence can be devastating for the collective.

Rather than reading that the individual
“poisons” society, the Sefat Emet looks
at the positive eff ects of community in
serving as a bulwark against the actions
of wayward individuals.

I won’t pretend that there’s an indis-
putable, objective list of what comprises
character, but there is consensus. A
team of 55 social scientists studied world
religions, philosophies and psychology
looking for agreed-upon virtues and
character strengths found across cultures
and time. Th eir research forms the basis
for the VIA Institute on Character.

Similarly, in Judaism we believe that
each of us is endowed with a full range of
“middot” or character traits. Both agree
that what distinguishes one person from
another is not that you have one trait and
I have another, but rather the degree or
measure of the traits that exist in each of
us. Most importantly, both recognize the
uniqueness of each person and also their
capacity to change.

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira
fi nds a kind of creativity in our process
of returning to who we are meant to be;
he believes growth and possibility must
be uncovered much as a sculpture is hid-
den by a brute block of stone and must
be drawn out.

My colleagues at Perelman Jewish Day
School understand how each of us is
aff ected by being in a good place with
good teachings and with good people.

We guide our young learners to a mind-
ful awareness of their particular char-
acter strengths, helping them nourish
and develop their virtues and traits as
they aspire to character memory. Th e
elementary years may be the optimal
time to begin, but it’s never too late for
any of us. JE
Rabbi Chaim Galfand is the rabbi for
Perelman Jewish Day School. Th e Board
of Rabbis of Greater Philadelphia is
proud to provide diverse perspectives
on Torah commentary 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 Rabbis.

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