ADATH ISRAEL'S MERGER, 2006

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New Jersey Jewish NewsGreater Middlesex County Feature
Woodbridge’s last synagogue merges with Metuchen’s Neve Shalom
by Debra RubinSpecial to NJ Jewish News

With sadness for what was and hope for what will be, a throng of people gathered in Metuchen May 21 to mark the merger of Congregation Neve Shalom of Metuchen and Congregation Adath Israel of Woodbridge.
The celebrants held Torah scrolls under a huppa and a bright blue sky, in what for many was a bittersweet moment. The Woodridge synagogue made the decision to close its doors after 99 years in northern Middlesex County, where population shifts have led to many synagogues’ closing or merging with others.
Woodbridge Township, which once had four synagogues, now has none.
Adath Israel is the last of those synagogues to be absorbed by the Conservative Neve Shalom, which recently also welcomed congregants from Congregation Ohev Shalom of Colonia.
Neve Shalom president Priscilla Glinn welcomed the Adath Shalom members: “I know this is a difficult thing because it happened to us three years ago,” said Glinn of Colonia, who came over with the Ohev Shalom merger. “Three years ago almost to the day we left a beloved shul. We truly understand, and I want you to know we support you.”
Glinn said she expected that Adath Israel’s members, like those of the Colonia congregation, would find a welcoming family and a home where “the Jewish community could be strengthened for future generations.”
Glinn and Adath Israel’s president, Estelle Marcus, each carried a Torah scroll into the sanctuary, where another huppa had been erected to symbolize the marriage of the two congregations.
Marcus then walked over to Rabbi Gerald Zelizer. “Rabbi Zelizer, I am honored to present you with this sefer Torah,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. The rabbi then passed on the scroll to be placed in the ark.
Adath Israel brought six other Torah scrolls to add to Neve Shalom’s 12 or 13.
It also brought along 146 family units, about half of whom were associate members who lived out of the area, said Marcus. About 60 families have so far joined Neve Shalom’s 463 families, she said.
The Woodbridge synagogue once boasted a membership of 350 families. Today, Marcus said, “we had no one to come to services. We got four or five people. We didn’t even have a minyan on Friday night.”
However, Marcus told the gathering, “I am delighted to stand here and see so many welcoming open arms at Neve Shalom, which will really be the center for Jewish life in Middlesex County.”
Although sad over the demise of a longstanding Jewish community, Marcus said she looked forward to “a rebirth” through the association with Neve Shalom.
Marcus will remain on the board of directors and executive board of her new synagogue; she said she would work to ensure the newest members of Neve Shalom will have a voice in the congregation’s future.
Marc Bressler, who chaired the merger committee for Neve Shalom, said the new members will “bolster the most participatory full-service synagogue in this county.”
Zelizer said that in a sense, the merger reflected the Torah reading from the day before.
“The Torah includes a moral instruction to the people of Israel that ‘when your brother stumbles you shall strengthen him. He shall reside with you,’” he noted. “Congregation Neve Shalom is today strengthening a brother, Congregation Adath Israel, to whom we have been close both geographically and through personal associations since the inception of our shul.”
Zelizer, in recalling the Ohev Shalom merger, reiterated something he said to those members at the time.
“Realistically, today is bittersweet because it is for you a dislocation from a familiar location, analogous to moving from one’s home of many years,” he said. “But that melancholy can be mitigated by the knowledge that throughout the years, this union further strengthens and guarantees our future together as a shul in northern Middlesex County.”
And despite having to leave its synagogue on Amboy Avenue in Woodbridge, many of those attending seemed happy to join in the festivities.
“I think it will be the rebirth of our synagogue,” said Irene Hutt, who said her husband’s family were founders of Adath Israel. “To everything there is a season, and this is the season for Neve Shalom.”
Sandy Goldberg, the first woman president of Adath Israel and a former president of its sisterhood, acknowledged that the day was very emotional for her. “But I know this will be for the better,” she said. “Things change. But Neve Shalom’s people have made us feel extremely welcome.”
Before the sanctuary ceremony, Cantor Sheldon Levin sat outside playing his accordion on a sunny spring morning, while synagogue members took turns holding the Torah scrolls. Some carried children while others clapped. More children came out of Sunday morning religious school classes, some holding their own plush play Torah scrolls.
After filtering inside, between speeches, more accordion playing, singing, clapping, and dancing around the sanctuary, there was also a three-person shofar-blowing moment, or more accurately, two men and a 12-year-old girl blowing the shofar.
That girl, Whitney Schulman, said it was her first stab at shofar-blowing after a lesson by Zelizer.
“I played the trumpet for a number of years,” she said, but admitted, “I was a little bit nervous.”
Jonathan Baliff, a Neve Shalom member from Metuchen, noted his synagogue’s history of being an open and warm environment. “We welcome this new community of Jews who are very much in the spirit of Neve Shalom — Conservative traditional, egalitarian,” he explained. “We are a synagogue that makes everybody feel at home.”
Then the newly joined congregants went off together to do what Jews do after any celebration — gather around tables to eat lox and bagels together.

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