After 63 years
a synagogue gets a rabbi

By Katie Zezima New York Times

MONTPELIER - The Shabbat service on a muggy Friday night at Temple Beth Jacob here was like so many before it. The faithful clutched prayer books as sundown approached, singing prayers in Hebrew and listening to a leader read from Deuteronomy.

This leader's role, however, was unlike anything anyone at the temple could remember.

Beth Jacob last month got its first full-time rabbi in 63 years, an appointment that has stirred this congregation of about 130 families known for its remarkable self-sufficiency. The appointment took years to complete, at times splintering the congregants, some of whom are still uncomfortable with the concept of hired authority. Despite this, the small temple was overflowing with worshippers at the second service of the rabbi, Shana Margolin, an indication, she hopes, that her appointment will attract congregants who had not been actively involved at the temple.

"It's a very neat community, and the people are really serious about things," Margolin said. "It's only 8,000 people, a tiny population, yet there have been wonderful Jewish things happening for a long time, and people have been doing it themselves."

The congregation, many say, is emblematic of Vermont's character: community-minded, skeptical of authority, resistant to change and outside the mainstream. Once an Orthodox congregation that disassociated from a particular branch of Judaism at some unknown point, it has been housed since 1906 in a simple, blue-gray-shingled synagogue that looks like a house. No one here knew the last rabbi, who lived above the synagogue and left a handwritten Torah. What they do know is that the congregation slowly waned in the 30 years after his departure, only to be reborn in the 1970s through volunteers and many new residents.

Despite the presence of visiting rabbis and a congregant who is a rabbi (she would occasionally fill in), members did everything, including leading services and raising money, to reach out to Montpelier's interfaith community. Congregants would switch off each week: a Reform member would conduct a service one week, a Conservative the next. They organized Montpelier's first Jewish cemetery, established a hospice volunteer program and took Friday services to nursing homes and the elderly. Congregants even formed a Hebrew school, whose teacher was the temple's only paid employee.

The temple was thriving, but its members were starting to tire under the added pressure of having to run a synagogue. Many congregants also wanted a permanent person to perform events like weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs or to turn to in times of uncertainty or crisis.

So in the mid-1990s the congregation began exploring whether it should appoint a permanent rabbi. The idea was met with skepticism, and was eventually discarded.

"There was a fair number of people who hungered for a rabbi," said Bob Barasch, who has been a member of the synagogue with his wife, Sue, since they moved here from Alabama in 1972. "It's a community of lay leaders, and there are memories of rabbis they didn't like. They had stereotypical views of what a rabbi is, which is authority."

But the idea did not go away, and the makeup of the congregation changed over time. Many people, burned out from balancing the needs of the synagogue with work and family, began to think that relinquishing autonomy might not be a bad idea. A poll was taken, Barasch said, and about two-thirds of the congregation voted to appoint a rabbi.

"We got to the point where we were just missing a central teacher and leader, someone who could teach us how to be Jewish," Barasch said. "We were all teaching each other how."

While volunteers loved what they did, members were feeling that void more and more as the congregation tried to grow. "We had a good time doing everything ourselves," Sue Barasch said, "and it is a remarkable job of lay leadership. But we were missing having a core of learning. It really took some soul searching."

A search team sought someone like the congregation: untraditional. Beth Jacob needed someone who could lead a congregation with different denominations, perform civil unions, accept its large gay population and allow the members to retain some autonomy.

The search committee found Margolin, who had spent 15 years building a small congregation in Belle Meade, N.J., into a thriving synagogue and a Hebrew school. Beth Jacob just "felt comfortable," Margolin said, the type of place where she and her partner, Sheri Berger, also a rabbi, and their 3-year-old son, Cory, could make their home.

Most members said they were comfortable with Margolin's sexual orientation, saying it made her a good fit with the diverse congregation. Margolin plans to allow lay members to lead services and play an active role.

"I wouldn't want that to change," she said. "It's such an important part of the shul's identity, and I don't want anyone to feel like they're being pushed out of the way. "

She also hopes to shore up community groups at the synagogue, including a social justice group.

At services on a Friday night and at a Torah service on Saturday morning, three weeks after Margolin's appointment, most members said they believed that the appointment would benefit the congregation. But others still said they were not sure the congregation was moving in the right direction.

"We didn't really need a rabbi, " said Deborah L. Markowitz, a congregant who is the Vermont secretary of state. "Part of the resistance to having a rabbi is when you have a rabbi you give up responsibility. "

Markowitz said she thought the Friday-night service was more like a performance by the rabbi rather than a participatory service.

Emily Kaminsky, on the other hand, said she thought Margolin's appointment was bringing in new members. About 85 people packed the Friday night service, overflowing the main room and forcing some people to sit on folding chairs, and about 16 attended the Torah service on Saturday morning.

"They're coming out of the woodwork, " said Kaminsky, 30, a member since March. "I feel much more connected to the Jewish community here because more people are coming to services. "

(c) 2004 New York Times