Rabbi Nachman Levine, spiritual leader of Anshe Sfard Kehillat Torah congregation, laughed when he recalled once seeing a sign on a synagogue in his native Toron “Closed for the summer for two weeks.”
The point, of course, is that synagogues don’t close for the summer. Public and religious schools may take a long break; but synagogue life continues, as seen in a sample of four Milwaukee-area congregations.
In fact, “some of our major events, social and fund-raising, take place in summer,” said Rabbi Gil-Ezer Lerer of Temple Menorah. “There’s a lot of stuff going on.”
Moreover, “what’s nice about summer,” according to Lisa Goldstein, director of lifelong learning at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, “is that [it] allows us to spend time doing creative stuff that we don’t have time to do during the [school] year.”
Some of this “creative stuff” involves religious observance and study. In the biggest single such item in this group of synagogues, on Aug. 6 Emanu-El and Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue will hold their second joint Tisha B’Av service, this year at Emanu-El.
This is unusual both as a collaboration between synagogues of two different denominations (Reform and Conservative, respectively), and because “it’s not so common for a Reform congregation to observe Tisha B’Av formally,” said Goldstein. “It’s a wonderful collaboration.”
Beth El itself will be holding “Friday night get-togethers” at the homes of different members, said spiritual leader Rabbi Gideon Goldenholz. “We start out with a Shabbat meal, then go to services as a group.” Beth El also has informal Friday night “come as you are” services that sometimes will be held outside. “It’s very heimish,” said Goldenholz.
Menorah began a new program during the past year, a “Chavurah Shabbat” on the second Saturday of each month, by which children earn “mitzvah points” toward prizes by attending specific services. This will be continuing through the summer, said Lerer.
Some synagogues will hold services outdoors during the summer, weather permitting. Emanu-El plans several, including “informal” services on the first Friday evening of the month and, toward the end of the summer, a “Shabbat Under the Stars” on Sept. 12. “We usually get a big crowd for this,” said Goldstein.
Education continues
Moreover, though formal school may be out, Jewish education also doesn’t stop during the summer, either for children or adults. Sometimes that includes such programs as Shabbat morning Torah study continuing, but some synagogues schedule special educational activities.
ASKT will be running its sixth annual “Kollel for Kids” this summer. “We take our own upper [level] high school and college kids who come to shul and they run the program” for “kids first grade and up,” said Levine. This program starts on Wednesday, June 25, and will continue for five more Wednesdays.
ASKT also offers Shabbat afternoon classes for women every other Saturday during the summer; and Levine teaches at his home on Saturday afternoons a class on “Pirke Avot” (“Sayings of the Sages”), a text that Orthodox communities customarily study during the summer months.
Menorah’s adult education program will be continuing this summer for the first time, said Lerer, with groups continuing their study of the Bible and Hebrew. “People want to learn,” he said.
Emanu-El will host Rabbi Herman Schaalman as scholar-in-residence this weekend. It also holds a series of “Summer Sizzlers” for families with pre-school or primary school children, featuring “cooking, singing, crafts or storytelling,” said Goldstein.
But summer is also a great time for socializing, for synagogue members to get to know each other better and have fun together. “A synagogue has to be something for everybody,” and “can be a social avenue” as well as a “religious avenue,” said Lerer.
Favorite activities include outdoor cookouts — Beth El has one scheduled for June 27 — synagogue picnics, golf outings and tailgate parties in the Miller Park stadium parking lot.
Lerer reports that Menorah held “the first minyan at Miller Park,” holding a mincha service in the course of its tailgate party there.
And Levine said that “a couple of years ago” ASKT had a tailgate party during the nine days before Tisha B’Av. This is supposed to be a sad time, leading to the commemoration of the destruction of the two Temples, with no eating of meat; but an exception is made for a siyyum, a ceremony marking completion of study of a Talmud tractate.
So Levine held a siyyum in the stadium parking lot so congregation members could have their barbeque. “It was something unique,” he said.
Summer is also a good time for fund-raising activities, such as rummage sales, which Menorah and Beth El both plan to hold: Menorah on June 27, 29, 30 and July 1; Beth El in the first week of August.
And Emanu-El will hold “A Garden & Art Walk” on Sunday, July 27 and Monday, July 28, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., that will feature “seven glorious residential gardens and 11 Wisconsin artists,” whose metal, stone and clay sculptures will be for sale. The gardens are those of members Susie and Robert Fono; Lynn and Harvey Goldstein; Betsy and Mike Green; Mike Mervis and Mary Ellen McCormack; Myra and Royal Taxman; Lee Temkin; and Eve Joan and Jim Zucker.
Finally, summer is frequently a time when people go synagogue shopping. “We do a lot of introducing potential members to our membership,” said Goldenholz. “A lot are people relocating from out of town; occasionally we get somebody who is unaffiliated who wants to strike roots.”
And all these are just the activities that members and the community can see or attend. Summer is also the time for sprucing up synagogue grounds and for planning for the coming year.
“The programs I’m going to run next year pretty much all get planned during the summer,” said Goldstein.
In fact, according to Lerer, “If your summer is not successful, your coming year could be a disaster…. The summer is when you do most of the work.”
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