‘A 100-year-old startup’
Montclair’s Congregation Shomrei Emunah looks back, and forward, on its centennial

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

When Congregation Shomrei Emunah decided to kick off its 100th birthday celebration, there was little debate over what would be the most appropriate symbol of the event.

While members of the Conservative congregation in Montclair will celebrate at a Centennial Shabbat Retreat in January and a concert series is planned, the central celebration will be the creation and purchase of a Torah scroll.

“The Torah is the nexus of what’s come before and what will be carried forward,” said Sylvia Cohn, congregational past president and chair of the centennial celebration. “This is a celebration not only of the fact that we’re old but that we’re in a wonderful position to go forward and are really looking toward the future.”

The 100th birthday celebration began Sunday, Oct. 23, with a visit by Rabbi Kevin Hale, a sofer, or scribe, who spent the day at the synagogue, demonstrating the art of sofrut — first to the children in the religious school, then to the adults.

Over the year, Hale will complete a Torah scroll purchased by the congregation and deliver it in time for Simhat Torah 5767.

Throughout its 100 years, the congregation has evolved with the demographics of Montclair, from a quiet synagogue in a town with few Jews to a home for a growing Jewish population in a diverse community. The congregation, now numbering about 250 families, has had its share of celebrations — new Torah scrolls, new buildings, anniversaries — as well as its share of struggles, including a rift in the congregation that nearly dissolved it. Today, there’s a sense that, as Rabbi E. Noach Shapiro put it, “we’re on the precipice of a whole new phase, God willing, of life in the community.”

The congregation was conceived in death; that is, in the fall of 1905, a resident of Bloomfield named Kurnick gathered 18 friends together to enable him to say Kaddish. The group decided that not only would they help Kurnick, they would form their own congregation to serve the residents of Montclair and Bloomfield. Jews from those towns had until then traveled to East Orange for worship, according to the history included in Shomrei Emunah’s 25th anniversary journal.

The new congregation held its first meetings in October 1905. They gave themselves a name, borrowed a Torah scroll from Congregation Anshe Russia in Newark, and by December had begun holding services in the rear of the place of business of one of the founders, Max Moses, who went on to become the congregation’s first president. The first year’s membership dues were 40 cents.

The congregation developed at a quick pace, purchasing a Torah scroll, moving to Central Hall in Bloomfield, and making a first attempt at forming a religious school. By 1914, the congregation purchased land and moved a building onto it. Committees were formed, cemetery plots were purchased, the religious school was established and reformed. In 1919 Shomrei Emunah affiliated with the Conservative movement and in 1920 hired its first full-time rabbi, W. Mendelsohn. The 25th anniversary journal calls him their first “real spiritual leader.”

By the time the synagogue observed its 25th anniversary in 1930, it boasted 110 members, and there were already murmurings about the need for a new building. (In 1949, they would finally lay the cornerstone at the current location, 67 Park St. in Montclair.)

During the 1930s, the congregation hired Rabbi Irving Lehrman, who remained with them until 1951, when he left for Miami Beach and eventually founded that city’s landmark Temple Emanu-El.

Shomrei Emunah member Jack Kravitz, whose family joined the congregation in 1938 when he was 10 years old, remembers Lehrman and the community during that period.

“The congregation was still in Glen Ridge in a small building; it was two stories. Upstairs was the sanctuary; downstairs was the social hall and Hebrew school. It was a very small Jewish community in Montclair. Most members were merchants with small mom-and pop stores on Bloomfield Avenue, where the trolley car ran to Newark.” By that time, Friday night services, which had gained momentum in the late 1920s, were more popular than Saturday morning services. In fact, according to Kravitz, sometimes on Shabbat morning, “they had to count me before my bar mitzva” to make the minyan.

Kravitz attended Shomrei Emunah religious school three days a week and Sunday mornings, and remembers what Lehrman was like in the classroom. “He was very strict. If we misbehaved, we got rapped on our knuckles.”

Despite Lehrman’s severity in the classroom, Kravitz said he remembers him as an “excellent” sermonizer. “He was magnetic and electrifying. He was the Billy Graham of the Jews.”

During Lehrman’s tenure, the congregation moved to Montclair. The gothic lines of the new building have a distinctly church-like appeal. According to Cohn, the idea was to fit quietly into a community where it was still not clear that Jews were welcome, something that did not begin to change until the late 1950s and early 1960s. Just five years before Cohn moved to town in 1960, she told NJJN, Jewish neighbors had used an intermediary to purchase their home, fearing the owners would not sell to them.

A caring community

Shomrei Emunah was still the only synagogue in the area when Dr. Jeshaia Schnitzer took the helm in 1951. He stayed with the community as rabbi emeritus even after retiring in 1979 and left a legacy that included the creation of the community’s chaplaincy and the inclusion of women in Shabbat morning services in 1975. He also was instrumental in upholding the community’s values during the civil rights era, and embracing women’s rights — as well as the divide that nearly ended the congregation.

“Rabbi Schnitzer understood from the moment he came to Montclair that bikur holim [visiting the sick] and, later, professional chaplaincy were the cornerstones of a caring community,” said Cecille Asekoff, director of the Joint Chaplaincy Committee of MetroWest, Central New Jersey, and Greater Monmouth County.

Added Kravitz, Schnitzer “was very caring, always there in time of need, and he was a trained psychologist, a family counselor.” It was these traits, combined with his pastoral expertise, that led him, together with Rabbi Zev Segal of Young Israel of Newark and federation executive Saul Schwartz, to create the chaplaincy program in Essex County in the late 1940s.

For Schnitzer, however, the most memorable event of his rabbinate, according to an interview he gave Kravitz, was not the chaplaincy but a 1963 incident reported in The New York Times as well as in the local papers. The synagogue’s religious school had planned a picnic at the Preakness Hills Swimming Club in Totowa. Among the group was an African-American Jewish family whose daughter attended the religious school, as well as an unaffiliated African-American family. “The Negroes were first refused admission to the club grounds and later to the pool,” according to an article in the Newark Evening News. “The picnickers then left en masse and held their outing in the backyard of one of their members,” according to the Times.

“He did a heroic thing in a time of unrest, turning us around. No one went in,” said Kravitz, recalling the incident.

Later in Schnitzer’s tenure, however, congregants began to itch for a younger, more dynamic leader. In 1978, the congregation took a vote. Schnitzer stayed. But those who opposed his rabbinate left and formed Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist synagogue also in Montclair.

“The congregation was facing the gravest crisis of its history,” recalls the 1983 synagogue journal in a piece called “The Past Is Prologue,” five years after the split occurred. “The split in the community…had left in its wake depressed spirits, shrunken finances, and a general sense of drift that threatened the very existence of the synagogue.”

New rabbis, new blood

In 1979, Schnitzer became rabbi emeritus. The congregation hired Rabbi Samuel Kieffer, who stayed two years, and new, young blood was pumped into the board. Then, in 1981, Rabbi Perry Rank came to Montclair. And although he stayed only until 1987, by many accounts, he breathed new life into the synagogue, giving it the momentum it would need to carry it through the next 25 years. “He was the catalyst for the rejuvenation of the synagogue,” said former president Todd Wieseneck, who joined Shomrei Emunah that year, still in his 20s. “He was young, dynamic, and brought a lot of life and energy to the synagogue. He created an atmosphere that was open and made our children feel comfortable.” As for Wieseneck, he found himself on the board within a couple of years, part of the quick substitution of young, potential leaders for those who had moved to other synagogues.

After Rank, the synagogue saw rabbis come and go. Former synagogue president Shirley Grill offered a brief commentary on each of the rabbis who followed: “Josh Chasen was the voice of social conscience; he stayed four years. Allan Meyerowitz, who stayed four or five years, gave the congregation his sense of fun and joy. Michael Ungar offered a good balance of scholarship and community building, and we were heartbroken when he suddenly departed in the midst of contract negotiations.” After an interim rabbi, “we hired Michael Monson, who brought with him the gravitas of a seasoned individual and scholar.”

During that period, the congregation merged with Nutley’s B’nai Israel and began a capital campaign to expand its facility. The gym was demolished, a social hall was added, the school building was expanded, and the congregation gained a parking lot. When the construction was finished in 1998, the congregation opened a preschool, an effort spearheaded by member Wendy Sabin. Beginning with 21 children, it now has 63, she told NJ Jewish News.

The congregation also gained a sense of independence. “On the one hand, it was very disruptive” to have so many rabbis, said Grill. “But for those who stayed, the congregation strengthened. We have survived buildings being built and taken down, rabbis coming and going. We are an independent congregation.”

“The core of the membership grew committed to the community and not to a particular rabbi,” added Wieseneck.

A new era

In 2004, Shapiro became the new religious leader, and the congregation appears to be settling in, readying itself for a new era. “He has an intuitive sense of working with us in a beautiful way,” said Grill. “Because of his own sense of self, he has been able to work in this environment. Now, we’re blending his rabbinical leadership with our congregational independence, and boy, is that powerful.”

The community has also changed dramatically from its early days, with a large influx of young people attracted to Montclair. As Sabin put it, “This is a comfortable place, very down to earth. It’s small and intimate. We’re spiritually alive, warm, welcoming. We feel very at peace and comfortable here.”

One aspect of the community many say reflects the spirit of Shomrei Emunah is its “mensch squad.” “The congregation is at its best when someone is in need,” said president Larry Yermack. “Support and concern come from every direction. People here live high-powered, professional lives. But when they’re needed, they’re there, from taking people to doctor’s appointments and shopping for them to providing rides to get to services. When the chair of the squad asked for volunteers on Rosh Hashana, by the end of the holidays over 40 names had been added to the list.”

There is a sense at Shomrei Emunah today, as in 1983, that “the past is the prologue.”

“There’s an excitement about the future and not taking anything for granted about what they have already built,” said Shapiro. “I often speak of Shomrei Emunah as a 100-year-old startup. It has a gift of history and roots in the community, but it really feels like so much is still in front of us. There’s a hunger you’d expect from a new synagogue — to be a better, warmer community — and an excitement that comes from the people who are joining.”

As Yermack said, “We’re not just looking back at our history but deciding what kind of community we want to build for our children going forward.”

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.

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