By Dan Aznoff, JTNews Correspondent
Her words traced the 350-year history of Jews in America, but the stories were a reflection of the 36-year span of the community that has grown up around Temple B’nai Torah and its spiritual leaders.
Author Deborah Dash Moore shared portions of her research on the American history of the Jewish people during the Shabbat weekend festivities celebrating the Double Chai (36 year) anniversary at B’nai Torah in late January. The history lesson also gave congregation members a glimpse into the three-and-a-half decades since the temple was founded by Rabbi Jacob Singer and a small minion in a Mercer Island living room in December of 1968.
“Before they came to America, Jews—especially those from Eastern Europe—practiced their religion at home, behind closed doors,” Dash Moore explained during Friday night services on Jan. 21. “Religious freedom in America allowed Jews to be more open about their religion and their traditions. This was a totally new experience for most of the immigrants, in particular the ones who immigrated during the 1900s.”
The biggest factor in that freedom, according to Dash Moore, was the constitutional separation of church and state.
Individual Jews played significant roles in the creation of the new nation, but the religion reached a new level of acceptance in America during the Civil War when Jewish chaplains became a standard part of the Union Army.
“Jews seemed to be more willing to invest in life and their religion again,” said Dash Moore. “We were able to make ourselves over, stand up for our own belief in one God, and re-create the Jew in our own image.”
The litmus test for the federal government’s pledge to respect people of different religions was war, by showing who served side-by-side in the Armed Forces.
“World War II was a milestone for all faiths. That is when the military separated soldiers by faith out of respect to all religions, but assigned soldiers without any discrimination or favoritism,” she said.
Every soldier was issued a set of dog tags for identification. Protestant soldiers were identified with a P, while Catholics had a C embossed on their dog tags. Jewish soldiers were identified with an H, which stood for Hebrew.
Three out of four eligible Jewish men volunteered to serve in the U.S. military during the Second World War, Dash Moore said, including many immigrants who went back to Europe in the uniform of their adopted homeland. Dash Moore has written about some of the Jews who were disappointed when assigned to serve in the Pacific in the fight against Japan and not in Europe to fight Hitler and Fascism.
“World War II was different from the First World War for Jews, because Jews were all on the same side fighting a common enemy,” said Dash Moore. “It was not uncommon for Jews to be fighting Jews in the first war.”
Speaking to the B’nai Torah Sisterhood on Saturday afternoon, the visiting professor credited gender as a factor in the emergence of Judaism as a major religion in America. The freedoms guaranteed in the constitution allowed Jewish women to take the practice of mitzvah from the home to the American spotlight of social action.
Her research led to the realization that the “whole process of assimilation involved women adopting more religious responsibilities, especially vis-‡-vis children, because those were the bourgeois Christian norms.”
Dash Moore predicted the future of American Jewish life can be glimpsed in the type of communities and political activities that flourish in the fastest growing centers of Jewish population.
Reading from her book GI Jews during a lecture at the University of Washington on Sunday afternoon, Dash Moore went on to talk about the moral decision Jewish soldiers faced during their first few hours in the Army. Most decided to forgo Kosher dietary laws, in part to fit in with their fellow soldiers.
Although ham and eggs were a daily part of every breakfast during training camp, the military went out of its way to accommodate Jewish holidays and religious traditions. Dash Moore explained that many unaffiliated Jews suddenly became religious when given the option of leaving the front lines to attend High Holiday services.
World War II was also responsible for opening the vast expanse of America to Jews who had lived their entire lives in urban areas within walking distance of the local synagogue. It was not uncommon for veterans to move with their extended families to areas in the South or the West in regions close to the camps where they had received training for military service.
When Conservative Jews were granted the right to drive on the Sabbath in the 1950s, it opened up the suburbs and new possibilities for establishing Jewish communities many miles away from the neighborhoods where many Jews had been born and raised.
The Bat Mitzvah was another major milestone in the evolution of an American version of Judaism, Dash Moore said. The professor described the Bat Mitzvah as the first step toward leadership roles for women in the congregation and the ordination of the first female rabbis.
A professor of religion at Vassar College, Dr. Dash Moore is the author of numerous books on the historical role of Judaism in American society. Her first book, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews, was published in 1981. Subsequent books have focused on the role of Jewish women and the movement of Jewish families out of the big cities into suburban America. Dash Moore was also the co-editor of Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia.
Her visit to the Northwest was made possible by the Hermine Pruzan Scholar-in-Residence Endowment Fund at Temple B’nai Torah.
The early days of Temple B’nai Torah
The renewed image of Judaism in American society was a familiar theme during the Double Chai celebration at Temple B’nai Torah, which began with a Shabbat Initiative dinner and Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night. The transformation of religious ideals echoed in the message that Raida Singer shared about her late husband and the early days of the temple.
Rabbi Jacob Singer and the 46 charter members of B’nai Torah held services in the Mercer Island Presbyterian Church from 1969 until a permanent sanctuary was built on the south end of the island in 1974.
Many of the 900 families who now belong to B’nai Torah are unfamiliar with the details of the arson fire that burned down the first synagogue in June of 1977. A painting on the northern wall of the sanctuary in the current building captures the image of Rabbi Singer rescuing Torahs from the fire.
Like the renewed life of Jews in America, the ‘Little Synagogue in the Woods’ was rebuilt and served as a crowded center for worship and study, until 1998, when the congregation moved to its Bellevue home adjacent to the Jewish Day School. The move was marked with a 10-mile walk from Mercer Island, when members of the congregation carried the sacred Torah scrolls across the I-90 bridge to their new home.
The Friday night tribute to the temple’s leadership highlighted the role of Cantor David Serkin-Poole, who stepped forward to serve as spiritual leader following the death of Rabbi Singer in 1982.
Membership at B’nai Torah began to mushroom when Rabbi James Mirel was selected as the temple’s second rabbi in June of 1985.
Rabbi Mirel has been instrumental in guiding the Reform congregation in what scholar-in-residence Dr. Deborah Dash Moore described as the Judeo-Christian doctrine that has evolved in America.
—Dan Aznoff