Allan Appel Photo
The restored Orchard Street shul near Yale-New Haven’s St. Raphael campus.
The season has begun for Jews to contemplate “returning” — though the Hebrew word is often misunderstood.
Mendy Hecht, the rabbi of New Haven’s reborn Orchard Street Shul, made that point in a mini-sermon about the current Jewish month of Elul, a period of reflection that leads up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
It’s an extended period of doing “teshuvah,” a Hebrew word often translated as “repentance” for sins. In fact, he said, it means “returning.” “Elul is about thinking about returning to ethics, to our core,” he said. “Elul is about recalibrating and getting back to who we are as people,” to “try to align yourself and your goals with the coming year” and reconnect to God, to family, to community.
Hecht has been engaged in one form of community return by acting as the spiritual leader at the Orchard Street Shul, a 102-year-old congregation that pretty much went out of business at the end of the 20th century (after Jews fled the Hill and West River) only to be revived over the past six years. Jews haven’t yet returned in large numbers to the surrounding neighborhood. But over 100 members have brought weekly and holiday services and special events back to the beautifully restored historic building at 232 Orchard.
Paul Bass Photo
Janette: barrier breaker.
Hecht and two other key members of the synagogue (formally named Congregation Beth Israel) — President Judi Shanok Janette and congregant Zalman Alpert — spoke about that on an episode of WNHH radio’s “Chai Haven.” For Hecht and Alpert, participation in the shul marks a literal return. Alpert attended the synagogue and became bar mitzvah at Orchard Street while growing up nearby in the Hill. He has moved back to New Haven after retiring as a librarian at New York’s Yeshiva University, and he is praying again at Orchard Street.
On “Chai Haven,” Alpert recalled how central a role the shul played in his neighborhood and in his own world in his childhood: When his father picked him up from school on Nov. , 1963, and told him the “president” had been shot, young Zalman responded: “Who would shoot Mr. Schiffman?” Mr. Schiffman was the shul president.
Mendy Hecht prayed at Orchard Street as a child, too. His grandfather Maurice was the rabbi. Now the grandson is at the revived pulpit.
In addition to preserving the past, the congregation is building a future. That job is overseen by Janette, the first-ever female president in the traditional Orthodox congregation’s history. (Her great-grandfather Sam Neveleff used to daven at the shul.) With a new apartment complex filling up nearby at the edge of downtown, the shul is the closest option for many observant Jews new to town. The congregation has enlisted stirring hazzanim to lead services. A “sushi and shots” session follows monthly Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday nights. A kiddush committee prepares lip-smacking weekly Sabbath afternoon kiddush lunches. Special events are bringing people from throughout the community into the preserved treasure of a building, which turns out to have remarkable acoustics.
Those acoustics will be on display this Sunday, Sept. 18, when a quartet called Bivolita performs a klezmer concert at the shul. The public’s invited. The concert begins at 4 p.m.; tickets cost $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Children under 12 and seniors over 65 get in free. (Click here for more information about the concert or about the shul.)
The annual concert, which takes place during Elul, gets people in that reflection zone — the teshuva zone. Inside a sacred space to which Jewish New Haven has returned.
Rabbi Hecht delivered his mini-sermon on the season of teshuva at the end of the radio program. Click on the video above to watch him deliver it.
Click on or download the above audio file to hear the full episode of “Chai Haven.”