At Historic Synagogue, a Congregation at Last

The following is a beautiful story about a Shliach in Connecticut which is going to be published in the Sunday’s edition of The New York Times. The piece in the Times is the result of a similar story that appeared on Chabad.org’s news site, which we here at CrownHeights.info ran, two weeks ago and caught the attention of the editors at the NY Times. This article follows a long stream of similar successes by the Chabad.org/news section.

MILFORD, CT — THE Hebrew Congregation of Woodmont is 81 years old, but when its members lighted a menorah on the Milford Green on Tuesday night, they were celebrating more than the first night of Hanukkah. They were also celebrating Hanukkah for the first time as a congregation.

Built a few hundred yards from Long Island Sound in 1926, their temple, a one-room wooden building with stained-glass windows that faces the water and has been on the National Historic Register since 1995, served for decades as a place of worship for hundreds of Jews from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York who spent their summer vacations in Woodmont, a small borough on the southeastern edge of Milford.

“It was one of the only communities around here that allowed Jews back then,” said Schneur Wilhelm, hired last spring as the synagogue’s first full-time rabbi. “It was nicknamed ‘Bagel Beach.’”

Orthodox services were held weekends from July to September and were run by the members, although rabbis were hired for the High Holy Days. The minutes of early meetings at the synagogue were recorded in Yiddish, and an original copy of the rules, in Yiddish, hangs on a wall.

The congregation began dwindling after World War II, however, and in the past few years, about 10 people, mostly older men, would show up. Some weeks, there were not enough to form a minyan, a quorum of 10 men required to hold services. There was talk that the synagogue, for years the only one in Milford, would have to close.

It was then that Joel Levitz, 62, the synagogue’s president, who joined the congregation when he moved to the nearby Pond Point section of Milford from Fairfield three years ago, convinced the board of directors that the only way to keep the congregation going was to hire a rabbi and hold services year-round.

“It was the only way the synagogue could have a future,” he said.

Mr. Levitz contacted the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Brooklyn, the Orthodox Hasidic group, because he said it had a reputation for establishing congregations throughout the world and for including every type of Jew, “whether they are orthodox, conservative or reform,” Rabbi Wilhelm said.

The movement, in turn, dispatched Rabbi Wilhelm, 26, from Brooklyn, and his wife, or rebbetzin, Chanie, 24, who grew up in nearby Orange, and whose father, Sheya Hecht, is a rabbi and the regional director of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the New Haven area.

“At the time, it happened to be that he was thinking about starting Chabad in Milford,” Rabbi Wilhelm said, referring to his father-in-law. “So it worked out that this synagogue called at just the right time.”

Mr. Levitz said some in the congregation were concerned that a rabbi from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement would insist on strict adherence to Judaic laws. Those worries grew when Rabbi Wilhelm required that the synagogue for the first time put up a mechitzah, a partition separating men and women during services, even though the women had always sat on the left and the men on the right.

But Mr. Levitz said that since Rabbi Wilhelm and his wife arrived in late May and began knocking on doors, making phone calls and sending out mailings to revive interest in the synagogue, the congregation had grown to nearly 30 members. And services on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur this year attracted overflow crowds of more than 130 people, many of whom live in Orange, Woodbridge and New Haven and who had attended the temple when they were children.

“It’s been an unbelievable experience,” said Mr. Levitz, who owns the Duchess chain of fast-food restaurants in the state. “The rabbi and his wife made it exciting to come to services. They are very exuberant.”

And Mr. Levitz said that members who had been concerned about the rabbi no longer were.

“Whatever problems they thought they would have, after meeting with the rabbi for the first time and attending a service for the first time, they went away,” he said.

Rabbi Wilhelm said he was proud that it had become a community synagogue, “instead of 10 people that were just holding services for half of the year to make sure that doors didn’t close.”

Because the building is not winterized, the congregation has been holding services, as well as classes and Sabbath meals, at the Wilhelms’ home in Woodmont since October. Rabbi Wilhelm said he had been meeting with architects and engineers to see if the synagogue could be heated; once the total cost is determined, the congregation will discuss how to raise the necessary funds.

“We’re dealing with a historic landmark, so that puts restrictions on what we can do,” he said. “And we also understand that for many of the people who come to the synagogue, their parents and grandparents also came here, so there is sentimental value.

“And we don’t want to take that away by making great changes to the building.”

Rabbi Wilhelm said the only long-term alternative might be to hold winter services in a separate meeting hall next door.

Joseph Satin, 62, a businessman from Orange, who, along with his wife, Phylis, has belonged to the synagogue for 30 years, said the temple had been special to him from the moment he stepped inside.

“It was very different; I had never seen a synagogue like it,” Mr. Satin said. “Its simplicity was what I was always searching for in religion — no frills. It was a small congregation that had a focus on God.”

Mr. Satin said that while he was one of those members who had early doubts about Rabbi Wilhelm, he said he now fully supported the rabbi and was hopeful that the synagogue would survive.

“It’s going to take money, and I don’t know what will come first — the money or a bigger congregation,” Mr. Satin said. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens. It’s tenuous.”

However, he added: “If it makes it, one of the reasons will be the rabbi.”

Members of the congregation who braved the cold and were on the green Tuesday night said the menorah lighting made Hanukkah even more special this year.

“We don’t have to rely on the warm weather anymore,” said Steve Finson, 56, of West Haven, who has belonged to the congregation for 10 years. “We can stay together and keep praying.”

Mr. Levitz said that while Hanukkah was also a celebration of the Maccabees’ military victory over the Syrians, this year, it was also a victory for the Hebrew Congregation of Woodmont, “because we can establish ourselves.”

“This is a synagogue that a year ago looked like it was going to have to close for good,” he said.