About 2 weeks ago the doorbell rang late in the day. Andrew had left, so I answered it. (Yes, Karl, I looked to see who it was and evaluated him!)
The man outside was a decade older than I am. Wore a baseball cap. He introduced himself and his brother — David and Marc, with a very Jewish last name — and I noted that his name was the same as that of a famous rabbi. But I figured he heard that all the time, so I didn’t say so.
He explained that their grandfather was Rabbi Hyman Lasker, who led the Orthodox congregation that’s now Beth Tephilah on River Street (1895-1932). Rabbi Lasker’s son had been deeply influenced by Rabbi Jacob Shankman, the rabbi here at Berith Sholom from 1930-37. That influence led their father to leave Orthodoxy and become a Reform Rabbi. In fact, both these brothers were Reform rabbis too. They were in town and wanted to visit the synagogue that had so powerfully changed their family’s trajectory.
“My brother is a historian,” he said. “He was principal of Leo Baeck College before he retired and wrote a lot of books. I worked for the Union for 50 years.”
At that point the penny dropped, and I looked at him — he must have thought I’d been living under a rock somewhere, not to recognize him — and asked, “David Saperstein as in David Saperstein?”
Yes. Rabbi Marc Saperstein, historian, and Rabbi David Saperstein, who was both director and legal counsel of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington for 40 years. Who was on Newsweek’s 2009 list of “50 Influential Rabbis” — in first place. Who became the first non-Christian to hold the post of “United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom,” when President Obama appointed him in 2014.
Who knew that our little congregation had such an outsized effect on the course of American Jewish history?!
Congregation Berith Sholom was just over 50 years old when the young Harold Saperstein came under the influence of Reform Judaism. It will be 160 years old next Spring. There have been 28 rabbis to serve Berith Sholom, but only 7 before me have stayed for 5 years or more. When I retire I will have been rabbi here for 29 years — which will, to my surprise, equal the term of the longest-serving rabbi, Rabbi Julius Gutmann. For a long time, I assumed he’d served as rabbi for 30 years. But actually, he led the congregation for 28 years from 1945-1973, retired, and a year later was convinced to return as an interim for one more year in 1974-5. Total, 29 years.
In the Capital District, we are fortunate to live in a Jewish “ecosystem” where long rabbinic tenure has been fairly common in recent decades. But I never expected to make this congregation my life’s work. Most rabbis, I think, move on in less than a decade. The congregation no longer thinks it’s a good fit, or the rabbi thinks so, or perhaps the rabbi is interested in “advancing” their career by moving to a larger congregation.
I never felt that need. And despite one rough patch, the congregation hasn’t felt the need to search for another rabbi. So we’ve had the incredible privilege of being together for across two or even three generations of a family.
The congregation, of course, has been here for more than five generations. I can say that with certainty because the Ehrlich and August cousins are part of a 5-generation Berith Sholom family, though not among the founders. The first recorded Jew in Troy was Barnet Levy, a tailor, listed in the Troy Directory of 1837. More families came in the 1840s, and in 1851 Emanuel Gratz decided to organize a congregation “in two rented rooms, one for men, one for women” in the Wotkyns Block, on Congress Street between River and First.1 (Today it’s a Russell Sage parking lot.) Two years later (1853), when the number of Jewish families had increased to 18, Gratz helped the community form Congregation Anshe Chesed (Men of Kindness, or we might say “Kind People”). In 1864, when there were perhaps 30-50 Jewish families in town, the Troy Whig newspaper wrote the following: “They are a quiet, decent and respectable and orderly class of citizens, always pay their bills promptly and while they are sharp in trade, they are nevertheless among the most inoffensive of all the various classes that make up the sum total of the inhabitants of a great city.”2
But “Two Jews, three opinions” — American Jewish communities in the 19th century, mostly immigrants, tended to split and coalesce around differences in “worship style, ethnicity, social class, personality [of course!], and the emerging Reform Movement.”3 Only two years after Anshe Chesed was formed, ten of the 18 families left to form another congregation, leaving the original congregation less than a minyan, unless there were two teenage boys among those 8 families.4 Four years after the split, in 1859, there was a ver public dispute over the ownership of a Sefer Torah that ended up in court — and in the newspaper!5 Not a great way to demonstrate your values to the wider community.
In April 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated. Elected officials from Washington DC on down requested that all citizens gather in “their respective places of worship” on the day of the President’s funeral and hold appropriate religious services in his memory. The Governor of New York issued a similar proclamation, and the Troy Common Council reiterated it locally, “respectfully request[ing] that the clergymen of the city coöperate in their respective churches and places of worship.”6 (emphasis mine)
We know a great deal about how this was observed in Troy because a booklet was published afterward. I quote: “Anshe Chesed was draped in mourning. A large audience assembled, comprising all the Hebrews living in the city and a great number of Germans of other denominations.” The “Rev. Dr. H.G. Salomon, the rabbi of the congregation, delivered a most solemn sermon,” and reminded the assembled congregation that Jewish law requires Jews “to pray daily for the welfare of the chieftain of the country.”7
I like to imagine the community members looking at each other over the following weeks and months and asking, “Why are we in two separate and tiny synagogues? If we can mourn together, surely we can celebrate together!” Because less than a year later, Abraham Ksensky gathered “All men of full age” in the Wotkyns Block on March 26th, and they constituted the religious society of Baris Sholem: Covenant of Peace.8
Four years later, in March of 1880, the community had purchased a plot on the outskirts of town and embarked on fund-raising. We have a facsimile of the list of “Subscriptions for [the] Synagogue” including the “Appeal: To the benevolent and liberal minded, who have an open heart to aid the holy cause of religion.” The 11-member Building Committee are the first donors listed, with gifts ranging from $25 to $550. There follow six pages of contributions, many in the $2-$10 range, and then on the last page we find most of the Building Committee again, insuring, as I imagine, that the goal is met!
Their “Appeal for assistance” was made not just to the Jewish community. It was addressed to “a generous public, without discrimination of religious opinion,” indicating their desire “to erect a Synagogue … for their public worship, … a structure as will properly accommodate them, and at the same time gratify the taste of the community in which they live.”9 (emphasis mine) And the community responded. At the top of the 4th page of the list of donations we find Uri Gilbert, the mayor of Troy and the son of a Methodist minister, with a $50 contribution. When the cornerstone was laid on June 12th of that year,10 he was the the one wielding the ceremonial silver trowel.11
Believe it or not, the building was ready just 3 months later, in time for Rosh HaShanah! It was dedicated on September 22 ... exactly 145 years ago tonight.
There was a mixed choir at the dedication, which sang in both Hebrew and English. Men’s heads were covered, but men and women sat together. These liberal tendencies became the custom for the new synagogue — and you won’t be surprised when I tell you that sometime between September and December of that year, a group split off and organized the precursor to the River Street shul that Rabbi Lasker served,12 which remains Orthodox to this day.
But here’s something curious. The 25th, 50th, and 65th anniversaries of our congregation were celebrated on the corresponding anniversary of the building. The 75th anniversary, however, was celebrated in 1941 — 75 years after the founding of the congregation in 1866. Every anniversary since then has focussed on the date when a divided community had joined together to form a Covenant of Peace.
Our 160th anniversary, therefore, will be celebrated this coming March, on Friday night, March 27. That Shabbat is observed in the Reform Movement as Founders’ Day, the yahrzeits of the Founders of the national Reform organizations iin North America. We are hosting the local celebration this year and will celebrate our 160th anniversary that night.
Each of these dates — 1866 and 1870 — represents something significant about being a community. 1866 is about who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about our values. 1870 is about how we take up space in the world: what we do as a community.
So who are we? When I arrived I found a congregation that treasured chesed, kindness, and tzedek, justice. These enduring values were reflected in our social action projects: The AIDS Care Team, the Superbowl Party at Bethany Center, Christmas meals, Reform lobbying day at the Capitol. Today they are expressed through the Good Neighbor team, Adopt-a-Family, attending the Troy Black Lives Matter rally together during COVID, welcoming Jun-San of the Peace Pagoda when she organizes Peace Walks — Christmas meals (still) — and countless other ways that we engage with the world around us in kindness and justice. Many, many people have led these efforts over the years, but when it comes to acts of chesed for the wider community I want to say the name of Dotty Jacobson, may her memory be a blessing, who was our Social Action Queen for many years.
We have chesed internally, too. Our Caring Community hasn’t always had a formal structure, but even so I have seen tremendous acts of chesed toward each other. I can’t mention that without naming two people who have spearheaded and carried out this aspect of our enduring values — sometimes singlehandedly — for over a decade: Jayne Architzel and Jane Ginsburgh. As this year gets underway, we are continuing to organize our Caring Community, in order to Fill the Freezer, visit the sick and grieving, support the traumatized and hurt, and reach out to each other. Please think about how you can help. Caring for each other is integral to our mission.
And our chesed to each other goes far beyond practical support. We are a congregation that prizes people over politics, relationship over rhetoric. We value coming together across our differences and we embrace the understanding that each of us is created B’tselem Elohim: Every human being is a person of infinite worth, and deserves our respect. Berith Sholom works hard at being a big tent. That means we listen to each other carefully and make space for views not shared. It means we respect the person whose opinion or worldview is different from our own. It means we treat each other with kindness and affection — even sometimes when we’re tearing our hair out. And it means we respond to the inevitable times of misunderstanding and hurt feelings with a deep commitment to basic respect for the other person. It means we apologize.
These things are in our DNA. Culture, they say, is “sticky” — it’s not easy to change. And this something we definitely want to keep, to continue the tradition of our ancestors who named us Brit Shalom: Covenant of Peace.
You all know that music is a huge part of Berith Sholom’s identity. Our Choir gives the High Holy Days beauty and meaning that simply would not exist without them. We are blessed to have organist and composer Al Fedak as our Choir director at this moment, stepping into the midst of High Holy Day preparation when Dan Foster had to step aside. Among Al’s many accomplishments, he was organist and choir director at Beth Emeth for 20 years. We’re delighted to working with him.
And some of you will remember that Cantorial Associate Emerita Leslie Boyer came to Berith Sholom the same year I did. She created a music program that has no equal among the Capital District synagogues. Her professional musical ability, her kindness — there’s that chesed again — and her many connections in the music community drew together professionals and amateurs alike. She understood that singing in Choir is a spiritual experience in addition to a musical one. Some years before we were able to put it into practice, she started suggesting that we bring our own congregants up onto the bimah as chazzanim and chazzaniot instead of a hired soloist. Tonight we experience the beautiful results of that.
In the Troy Daily Times of September 9, 1896, the afternoon edition of the paper reported that “The Jewish New Year was celebrated at the Temple Berith Sholom yesterday by a special service in the morning…. The program of music was choice, the quartette and new organ being heard to excellent advantage.” Further down, “The observance of the Day of Atonement” will include “special services at the Jewish temples of the city …. At the Temple Berith Sholom the musical service will be elaborate.” Well, yes!
The program book from every anniversary I’ve been able to find includes a celebratory evening of music, most of it classical European. And the Troy Daily Times of January 6, 1874 reports on the dedication of the Heilbrunn Torah, which was by the way the fifth scroll the congregation acquired! “The singing of the choir, under the direction of Prof. Baker, was excellent. Miss Cohen sang several solos in an admirable manner, and in the choruses she was assisted by…” and here are listed 7 more names. Indeed, music has been in our DNA since the dedication of this building.
The 1870 building also represents our place in and connection to the wider community. The Mayor contributed to the fund and laid the cornerstone. The newspaper article about the dedication reports that “The synagogue was filled with members of the congregation and invited guests, noticable [noticeable] among the latter being a number of prominent ministers of this city, all of whom appeared to be greatly interested in the ceremony.”
The mostly German Jews who founded this congregation obviously had close connections with the German Christians of the city, for many non-Jewish Germans attended the memorial service for President Lincoln that was held at Anshe Chesed. Jewish and non-Jewish businesses advertised in the anniversary program books, and later in the Election Eve Dinner ad book. “Emanuel Marks, an early arrival and an old-time member of Berith Sholom, represented” the Jewish community at Troy’s Centennial celebration in 1889.13
Today we are a part of the Troy Area United Ministries, which among other things sponsors Troy’s Martin Luther King observance. I’ve already mentioned ways that we reach out and support the wider community. Our members and I have participated in and led many interfaith gatherings, panels, and organizations. Berith Sholom has been profiled in the Times-Union. A Skidmore senior interviewed me a couple weeks ago for his documentary on bridging difference. And I got an email earlier today from a reporter and producer at WMHT who’s working on a documentary about the intersection of Black and Jewish communities in the region, asking “did we have any connection?” Well, yes. I’ll be speaking with them after the holidays.
It turns out that these three things — kindness, music, and involvement with the wider community — are in our DNA from the very founding of the congregation. The brit shalom, Covenant of Peace, extends back to 1866. It represents the enduring values that are at the heart of our congregation/community: chesed and tzedek, kindness and justice.
Our 1870 building represents the enduring community that we have built, and continue to build. It represents how we put our enduring values into practice in the real world: in our music, in our Caring Community, in our tikkun olam and interfaith work, in our learning and our celebrations and our sad times — and in our gathering in this very sanctuary, dedicated 145 years ago today.
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SOURCES:
167 Third Street
Troy, NY
12180
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