Rabbi Alvin Marcus, second from right, and his wife Marylin, second from left, were honored for 40 years of service to Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob & David at the West Orange synagogue’s annual dinner on March 30. Photo courtesy Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David
April 24, 2008
When Rabbi Alvin Marcus and his wife Marylin arrived in West Orange in 1968, there was only one Orthodox synagogue in town, and the congregation met in a church.
“We had the feeling this was going to be the future,” he said.
He remembered the bits of early infrastructure of Jewish life in West Orange: a Newark baker, who set up shop inside the synagogue for a time, and a local kosher butcher. Only later would restaurants and other kosher shops open. When he arrived people brought in their own kosher food from other towns. There was no eruv, no mikva, and barely even a daily minyan. Interstate 280 and the NJ Turnpike were not yet connected.
Forty years later, Marcus has seen his dream realized.
“Every year was a high point. Every year we were working and trying to reach another goal. We built an eruv, a mikva,” he said. And in the 1970s, as families left Newark and moved from New York City to the suburbs, the area began to thrive.
“They were looking for an Orthodox community and they found us,” he said.
The Marcuses were honored on March 30 by Congregation Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob and David, the synagogue they served for those 40 years, including his last 10 as rabbi emeritus following his retirement in 1998.
The annual dinner also celebrated Israel’s 60th anniversary and honored Bobbi Raskin and Michael Luxembourg. Sheba and Stanley Mittelman received the Keter Shem Tov award; the young leadership award was presented to Alyson and Ariel Fournier.
The dinner was an occasion to remember the congregation’s infancy. In 1968, Ahawas Achim B’nai Jacob was “a small group of very determined people” that had just merged, two years earlier, with B’nai David to become Ahawas Achim Bnai Jacob and David, a congregation of about 100 people. Marcus, now 80, earned rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University and worked at synagogues in Paramus for two years and Buffalo for 12 years before coming to West Orange.
“We used the church on Saturday as a synagogue, and a [nearby] house for daily services. The church was remade into a synagogue after the baptismal font was removed,” Marcus recalled in a recent telephone interview.
Organizers of the dinner spoke of those early days in a prepared statement.
“The Rabbi employed some of the usual tactics [to build the community] — word of mouth and weekend invitations but he also used some unorthodox methods, like going to the local gas station and talking to anyone he found there wearing a kippa.”
Marcus started a youth group, insisted on a weekly Kiddush, encouraged adult education attendance, and involved himself in the preschool.
Eventually, the community grew.
Marcus reflected on the encouragement of several early members, including Morris Ravin, a local attorney.
“All of these things Mr. Ravin said we would have. He said, ‘We must build a synagogue,’” said Marcus. “Mr. Ravin said, ‘There will be a time when there will be a place for these institutions in suburbia.’”
Although he had a stroke the year he retired, he still attends synagogue “as best I can,” he said.
And he likes what he sees these days, from the synagogue under Rabbi Elizer Zwickler to the full-service Jewish community beyond.
“When I look around and see so many synagogues, ken ayin hara, and Rabbi Zwickler he is doing a fantastic job, the bagel store, Reubens [kosher market], a Chinese restaurant, bakeries…this is wonderful.
“Please God, it should grow and continue,” he said.
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