BJ: A Model for a Revitalized Synagogue Life
May 2002      

A report based on research
by Dr. Ayala Fader
and Dr. Mark Kligman

Written by Sara Moore Litt,
with an Afterword by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman

Special thanks to Ted Becker and Ron Taffel for their invaluable help in editing this report, and to Robyn Tsesarsky for her help throughout this project.

 

Congregation B'nai Jeshurun and Synagogue 2000 express profound gratitude to Steven Spielberg and the Righteous Persons Foundation for its generous grant, without which this project would not have been possible. In particular, we would like to thank Marge Tabankin and Rachel Levin who originally suggested we undertake this work.

Introduction

Congregation B'nai Jeshurun (BJ), a synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side, is considered a phenomenon in the Jewish world, both because of its rapid and explosive growth and the level of regular involvement and intense commitment of so many of its members. BJ's story has attracted serious attention in the Jewish community. It has been the subject of numerous articles, book chapters and several documentaries in the Jewish and secular media. Shabbat services at the synagogue have become an essential stop on the global circuit of Jewish tourism.

At a time when many Jews describe synagogues, if they even belong to one, as boring or irrelevant, an extraordinarily large number of BJ members report that BJ is central to how they organize their lives and define their identities. In the words of one member:

BJ just changes your perception of what Judaism can be. It revitalizes and reenergizes it...it's like a living, breathing thing...it's not antiquated and in the books, it's about how does this thing relate to my life today.
A number of members even report that they remain in their cramped New York City apartments just so they do not have to move away from "their community."

It has not always been this way. BJ was originally founded in 1825, but despite an illustrious history, by 1985 it had become moribund. Fewer than 100 members remained, and its 88th Street sanctuary was in danger of being sold at auction. Around that time, Judith Stern Peck, a prominent Jewish community leader who was active in the Conservative movement, traveled to Buenos Aires and spent a weekend visiting Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer.

Marshall (rabbis at BJ are typically called by their first names), an American, was a charismatic, controversial and noted rabbi and human rights activist in Argentina. A graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) where he had been a disciple of Abraham Joshua Heschel, Marshall and his family moved to Buenos Aires in 1959. In his 25 years in Argentina, Marshall founded a synagogue, Comunidad Bet El, the South American Camp Ramah, and the Seminario Rabinico Latinoamerico, the first and only non-Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Latin America.

When Peck visited Marshall's congregation in Buenos Aires, she remembers being "blown away by the service, by the people's passion, and by what this man had accomplished." Shortly thereafter, in 1985, Peck, with the help of JTS, persuaded Marshall to come to BJ to revive the dying congregation. Marshall soon asked two of his former students from Argentina to join him. In 1986, J. Rolando Matalon (Roly) became the associate rabbi, followed by Ari Priven's becoming the hazzan in 1989.

Tragically, in 1993, at age 63, Marshall became ill and died. Roly served as sole rabbi of the congregation, with Ari as the hazzan, until 1995. That year, he, with the support of the board of trustees and the congregation, invited Marcelo Bronstein, another student of Marshall's, and Roly's childhood friend and rabbinic colleague, to leave the congregation Marcelo had founded in Chile and join him at BJ as co-rabbi. In February 2001 Felicia Sol, a second year rabbinic fellow at BJ and its former youth director, was elected assistant rabbi, effective in July of that year. She would become the first woman to serve as a rabbi of BJ in its entire history. (Because this study was concluded before Felicia began her tenure, references to "BJ's rabbis" in this report are to Roly and Marcelo.)

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