There will be music, the writing of a new Torah scroll, the printing of a history, a cemetery rededication and more as Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun spends much of 2006 celebrating its 150th anniversary.
It is a celebration that doesn’t have one particular theme, according to spiritual leader Rabbi Marc Berkson. Instead, there will be “a variety of different activities and functions” that will “try to tap into the threads of our history,” he said.
And that history is practically congruent with the whole story of Jewish Milwaukee. EEBJ is the oldest still functioning synagogue in Milwaukee and likely one of the, if not the, oldest in the state.
In fact, according to EEBJ president Sandra Kohler Stern, “I think this 150th anniversary is really a celebration of Jewish life in Wisconsin…. This congregation has its roots in the first congregational life among Jewish settlers in Milwaukee.”
And according to Fran Meyers, who is co-chair of the celebration with her husband Ron and with Sue and Allan (“Bud”) Selig, EEBJ has also been “a leader in Jewish thinking and education and giving in the community.”
“We’ve always had a lot of leaders in the community belonging to our temple,” Meyers said. “For us to be reaching this year is very exciting and very memorable. It’s important to mark it.”
And the community-at-large is “a welcome part of what we do” in the celebration, Kohler Stern said. She added that non-members participated in the synagogue’s trip to Israel this past November, and that the community is invited to the big events scheduled for the coming months.
‘ Make Your Mark’
For example, the community is invited to participate in the “Lettering Our Legacy: Make Your Mark” program. This involves the writing of a new Torah scroll for the congregation by Rabbi Moshe Druin; and people who are interested will be able to fill in letters.
This project started on Feb. 12, and will continue with more visits by Druin and events on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 21-22; plus more in June and September, culminating with a dedication ceremony on Oct. 22.
Rick Conn, chair of the Lettering Our Legacy project, said the congregation decided there is “no more fitting way to celebrate this historic occasion than by creating a new Torah,” which would help the congregation “come back to what is the basis and central focus of our life and our community.”
Another open-to-the-public event will be a concert featuring renowned Jewish singer-songwriter Craig Taubman. This will take place Sunday, March 26, 7 p.m., at the Riverside Theater.
Emanu-El Cantor David Barash, who with Milwaukee clarinetist Joe Aaron will be among the local performers in this concert, said that the synagogue has commissioned Taubman to compose a song for the 150th anniversary that will have its premier there.
This song is “Lo Alecha” (“You Are Not Required”), a setting of passages from Pirke Avot (Sayings of the Sages) 2, including “You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it.”
Barash characterized this as “an uplifting song” that has “a Caribbean feel” and added that the congregation hopes to make it “the theme song for the next stage” of the synagogue’s history.
Other planned events include:
• A “Brotherhood Sports Night” on Wednesday, April 5, 6:30 p.m., featuring Emanu-El congregant and Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig.
• A “Heritage Shabbat” service on Saturday, May 6, 10 a.m., that will use the old Union Prayer Book of the 1950s.
• A special “Torahpalooza: Shabbos with an Attitude” musical service celebrating the second anniversary of that EEBJ project.
• A rededication of the Hopkins Street Cemetery, Milwaukee’s oldest Jewish cemetery, at a to-be-announced date in the spring.
• The publication at the end of this month of a history of the synagogue written by author and congregant Ruth Fromstein.
‘Divorce and remarriage’
In an interview from her Florida residence, Fromstein said the story of the synagogue is a complex combination of unions, splits and reunions.
What originally happened was that two of the synagogues founded by the earliest German Jewish immigrants to Milwaukee, Congregations Imanu-Al (1850) and Ahabath Emuno (1854) united in 1856 to form Congregation B’ne Jeshurun; and three years later a Congregation Anshe Emeth joined in.
However, B’ne Jeshurun was a more traditional, even Orthodox, congregation at first. Some congregants wanted a more liberal service. That group seceded in 1869 to form Congregation Emanu-El.
Both synagogues had buildings in what is now downtown Milwaukee, with B’ne Jeshurun where the Milwaukee County Courthouse now stands, and Emanu-El on what is now the corner of Broadway and State Sts.
But both had to leave to move further north; and it was the now Reform Emanu-El that constructed the building on Kenwood Blvd. In 1927, the two congregations reunited to form today’s EEBJ. “It was like a divorce and remarriage,” said Fromstein.
From the first, people who were leaders at the synagogue also were leaders in the general Jewish community and also in the general Milwaukee community. Some of the synagogue’s founders also were founders of what would become the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.
EEBJ spiritual leader Rabbi Joseph Baron was instrumental in founding the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning and the Hebrew Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Later Rabbis Dudley Weinberg and Francis Barry Silberg were active in local civil rights issues and were teachers at Marquette University; and Silberg was one of the founders of the Milwaukee Jewish Day School.
Cantor Ronald Eichaker was instrumental in persuading the Cantors Assembly, the organization of Conservative and some Reform cantors, to hold its national convention in Milwaukee during the celebration of the Jewish community’s sesquicentennial in 1994.
In the late 1990s, EEBJ constructed and moved to its current facility in River Hills, on the Joseph and Vera Zilber Campus on W. Brown Deer Rd. According to Kohler Stern, the synagogue now has a membership of about 500 families.
And it is looking forward to its future. The synagogue is working on plans to expand its facility and to “build on our strengths and find new strengths to carry us on in the next 150 years,” said Berkson.
For more information about the synagogue and its celebration, call 414-228-7545.
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