The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Home /  News /  Local

RSS Feed

New rabbi signals many changes coming to Beth El

By Leon Cohen

July 29th, 2010

The traditional model of a Conservative synagogue service is that “the congregation comes, and the clergy [the rabbi and cantor] performs,” said Al Simon. That will be changing at Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue.

“In the new model, the congregation comes, and the clergy and congregation interact” and participate together. “There are no spectators any more,” he said.

Simon is the president and a 50-year-member of Beth El, located in Mequon and having 500 to 600 members. He said in an interview on July 20 that the model service is just one of the things that will be transformed at that 89-year-old Milwaukee shul.

And such changes are just fine with the synagogue’s new rabbi, Tamar Crystal, who officially began full-time work there May 15.

This Brooklyn native said in an interview at the synagogue on July 20, “In my 20s, I had walked away from formal Jewish practice” precisely because she didn’t like “being sung and preached at.”

But she eventually discovered other synagogues, particularly New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun under the leadership of Rabbi Marshall Meyer (1930-1993).

“I had never seen joy like this,” she said of that synagogue. “I was fortunate to have been there. I carry that joy with me.”

And Simon added, “That is the energy we want here.”

Torah and music

Beth El is also changing it approach to synagogue music. Indeed, Crystal said, “I see everything in terms of Torah and music.”

Crystal and Simon said the synagogue plans to work with the people in the congregation who sing well, teaching them music for the service that will integrate “contemporary music and the [musical] history the synagogue has,” said Crystal.

Then these singers will be scattered through the congregation during services “so they will help others to learn and to sing just by sitting there,” Crystal said.

Moreover, said Simon, the synagogue’s board about seven months ago voted to introduce musical instruments to the Sabbath services “perhaps once a month” — an uncommon practice in Conservative synagogues.

This experiment had been tried for one service “about a year ago” and “People were crying… It was the most moving service I’ve ever attended in 50 years here,” he said.

Another significant change, approved this past June, was the creation of a “household membership” for interfaith couples.

Before this, the interfaith partner of a Jewish member was welcomed by the congregants and the synagogue culture, but not by the synagogue “as an institution,” said Simon.

Since an estimated 50 percent of U.S. marriages involving a Jew are interfaith marriages, “we cannot afford to ignore not only those couples but their children. We want to be a synagogue that really has a place for them.”

In “household memberships,” the non-Jewish spouse can be involved in all synagogue activities, save the ritual committee and the board of trustees, said Simon.

He added that Beth El is the only Milwaukee Conservative synagogue that has this kind of membership category, as well as now the first Milwaukee Conservative synagogue with a woman rabbi.

Diverse background

Crystal came to the rabbinate after a very diverse life in the secular world. She majored in speech and theater, but grew up as a dancer — her mother’s profession — and performed and taught dance for many years.

This very energetic person also worked backstage in theater, wrote for mass magazines, and worked in public relations.

She also maintained a parallel career of synagogue activity, serving as a lay cantor and teacher of cantillation, and putting her theatrical and writing skills at the service of synagogues.

Eventually, Crystal found that her secular activities were “fun, but not what ultimately matters,” she said. “What’s our purpose here? How are we supposed to live our lives? Secular society is wonderful, it offers huge benefits, but the ultimate questions remain.”

After learning with a long series of teachers — “All through this, I’ve been fortunate. When I was ready, the teacher appeared” — she finally decided to attend the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York, earning ordination in 2000.

She has since worked with four “transitional congregations” — synagogues facing “huge challenges” of different types, she said. She could have chosen to work with a fifth such synagogue in Perth, Australia, but she decided she couldn’t move that far away.

So she came to Milwaukee in 2008 to be a Bader fellow in the chaplaincy program at Aurora Sinai Medical Center. Then in 2009, she learned that Rabbi Yitzchak Berman, spiritual leader of Beth El since 2006, was leaving to go to law school.

Crystal went to Beth El to wish him well, and he invited her to read Torah at a Sabbath service.

“Several things happened that morning,” she said. “I was greeted by some of the nicest people I ever met, in a way I never had been greeted in any other place.”

And she impressed the congregation with the “fluidness” of the way she chanted the Torah and with other qualities, said Simon.

“We knew this was going to be a time when we are going to embrace change,” said Simon. “We were looking for someone to support and guide us in becoming innovative and relevant to both the present congregation and the community at large. We saw Crystal as being that person.”