For the past two years, I’ve been working to develop Connections, a program for preschool-aged kids on the autism spectrum. I started Connections because of my older brother, Matthew, who is on the autism spectrum. When he was young, there were very few social opportunities available, especially during the summer when most kids were at camp having fun. Recently, he commented on feeling as if he missed out on many regular childhood experiences. I started dreaming about a program that I thought he would have loved, to give more kids the chance to have fun, bond with peers, and step out of their comfort zone. This dream gradually became the reality of Connections.

After a lot of advice from mentors and careful planning, I received a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington to fund the program. Next, I had to find the right place to hold the program, and Temple Sinai was the ideal place to do so. I sat down with Rabbi Goldstein to brainstorm details about Connections, and at first it seemed like a crazy, far-fetched idea. With the help of an incredible Occupational Therapist, Speech Language Pathologist, and Special Education Teacher as well as the dedicated Temple Sinai staff, we brought this to life. The few programs that exist for children with autism are primarily therapeutic. Connections was made with a different focus: I wanted our kids to learn, connect, and grow through play and for the synagogue to become a safe and familiar place. We made sure it was free of charge so that it was accessible to any family that wanted to participate.

We held our first session in August, and it was a fantastic week. We had circle time, read books, sang songs, and ran through obstacle courses. We played in water, rice bins, and with paint. Throughout the week, I saw a tremendous shift in the kids: their faces lit up when they saw their new friends and they jumped straight into new and unfamiliar activities. By the end of the week, the kids were inseparable and were running around the synagogue as if they had been there forever, as well as engaging eagerly with all the kids in the Temple Sinai camps.
I want to thank the Connections families for trusting us with their wonderful kids during our inaugural year. Our team loved seeing the kids every day and excitedly looked forward to helping them navigate the challenges of a complex world in a nurturing, safe environment. I’m proud to report a huge transformation in everyone touched by this program, especially the temple. This program helped further Sinai’s mission of inclusion and acceptance. What unlocked this potential was a committed and experienced staff, a welcoming, open-minded atmosphere, and the children’s willingness to grow. It’s difficult to embrace a new idea and a new program, yet the children, their families, and Temple Sinai did so with grace and sensitivity.

Now I’m dreaming again, and this time about next summer. I hope to expand Connections to serve more kids. This will require hard work to secure funding and support from new sources. No matter what, it will be worth it. I can’t wait to see what will happen in the future.
Coordinator’s Note: This is the second in a series of Sinai Stories by or about Temple Sinai youth.

– Sophia Lager

September marks the start of school and, shortly after, Temple Sinai Religious School. The end of Summer’s “lazy” months brings a hectic period of chauffeuring our children to and from secular activities like travel hockey, baseball, and school clubs, along with religious school, Chug Ivrit and now bar mitzvah preparation.

I won’t deny that we endure complaints from our 12 and 10 year-old sons about studying Hebrew or attending class at Sinai.  Going to religious school, observing high holidays and family traditions, honoring the concept of tzedakah, becoming a bar mitzvah—those are actions that we as parents have experienced and that we now “require” of our children. But how do children really claim their own identities in the face of the principles that parents impose?  How do they identify as Jews?  What does it take to own that identity, and, hopefully, embrace it?

These difficult, often painful, times in our country have pushed us to focus on the concept of identity. Who is American and who is not? Who belongs here and who does not?  I suspect that this tension prompts almost all of us to reflect on our own identities and how we fit into the reckoning that our country is experiencing.

My husband, Andrew, and I often share our family stories with our boys, in effort to foster an appreciation of our Jewish heritage: Your mother’s grandfather and his brother fled Kiev nearly a century ago—first to Paris before settling in Chicago. His parents were later shot and killed at Babi Yar. Your father’s grandmother, a nurse who grew up in Kitzingen, Germany, left for Palestine in the early 1930’s after seeing Nazis beat up Jewish doctors. Your grandmother came here as a little girl on a boat, watching the Statue of Liberty appear on the horizon.

Last December, we stood inside a rebuilt synagogue in Kitzingen. Andrew’s great grandfather was a leader there before the Nazis burned it to the ground on Kristallnacht. This, we thought, will resonate with the boys—surely they will feel the history and weight of their Jewish identity. Instead, as we posed for a photo in front of the doors, one son punched the other in a trivial dispute.

We can’t force an identity on our children simply through sharing family history or even by visiting the old country. We can create opportunities, have conversations, answer tough questions and allow them to explore. They must come to define and embrace who they are as individuals through their own experiences in the world. Together we process the daily reports of otherness, separation, exclusion, and hatred. We remind them that we, as Jews, have experienced this before. They ask us questions; they reflect; they interpret the events of the day.

This summer, as I made my annual purge of schoolwork brought home from the past year, I found several autobiographical assignments from each son. It struck me their work included a Star of David, a description of our family Seder, and even a mix-tape with a song entitled “Going to Temple.”

As the great Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim wrote, “Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell. Children will listen.”

-Katie Herman

Like me, many in our congregation “belong” to two temples: our beloved Temple Sinai in northwest DC, and the temple of our youth—where we attended services with our families, went to religious school, became a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and perhaps learned a few Jewish songs. We may or may not still visit that temple, but it remains in our memories and our hearts.

At the age of 68, the reform synagogue of my youth—Temple Beth El of Closter, NJ—was laid to rest on June 14, 2019. After membership dropped over 50% and finances withered under a large mortgage, the building was bought by a Korean church; the house of so many rituals and gatherings—my 1977 bar mitzvah included—is no more. On Saturday, the congregation marched its Torahs six miles to another failing temple that will absorb the remnants of Beth-El and try to survive, and perhaps, someday, even grow.

Closter, NJ sits in Bergen County, which has a large Jewish population and a number of temples in the area that survived the decades and even thrived. So why did Temple Beth-El perish? Simply put, Temple Beth-El failed to understand changes in the Jewish community at large and adapt to its needs. (For example, even in 2019, Beth El’s rabbi will not perform interfaith marriages.) Unwilling or unable to change, the temple made itself unappealing to potential new members. Couple that with poor financial decisions by a temple leadership unaware of its looming loss in membership revenue, and the patient succumbed.

And what of Temple Sinai—so young at 70? Are there similarities? Thankfully, no. As a member of Sinai’s board, I see a temple led by professionals, and volunteer leaders with strong professional backgrounds, who understand how to run a non-profit, a business, and a community organization, all rolled into one. And as a temple member and parent of three religious school students, I see clergy deeply engaged with our children, our Jewish and secular communities, and the issues of the day. From September to May, you can’t find an open meeting space on a weeknight; temple events, educational programming, community programs, and holiday services fill the building with energy and enthusiasm. It’s perpetually springtime at our shul.

Loss provides opportunity for reflection and appreciation for what we have. As Temple Beth-El took its last breath this weekend, I feel especially grateful for the warmth and vitality at Temple Sinai. And I am comforted in knowing that my children always will be able to return here, regardless of any other Jewish community where they also may belong. Because of its dedicated clergy, vibrant congregation, and committed professional staff, Temple Sinai will thrive for generations to come.

-Michael Sussmann

I’ve always been an idealistic but organized activist. I began in my college years in the 1960s as a civil rights supporter and opponent of the Vietnam War, especially while serving as Editor-in-Chief of the University of Pennsylvania’s Daily Pennsylvanian (“DP”) newspaper. In our first DP editorial, we adopted an old Kansas newspaper editor’s motto that our job was to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” So we reported civil rights and anti-war protests on campus and in Philadelphia, sent a reporter in March 1965 to cover the famous march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and in Jan. 1966 editorialized against escalation of the Vietnam War by President Johnson and called on the UN to intervene in Vietnam.

Later, I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in the Fiji Islands; as leader of DC’s “Group 83,” an Amnesty International “Prisoner of Conscience Adoption Group;” and then served as chair of the Committees on International Human Rights of the American and Federal Bar Associations.

But from February 1988 on I was primarily focused on my work as an attorney at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and on supporting my growing family. My main extracurricular work at the time was as an adjunct professor of media law and later First Amendment law at the Institute for Communications Law Studies at the Columbus School of Law, Catholic University of America, where I taught between 1985-2013.

As luck would have it, it was just a few days after I retired from the FCC in February 2016, that Barbara Kraft, then chair of the Temple’s Social Action Committee, called me. It was a call that reactivated me to fight for gun violence prevention (GVP), a great departure and far more satisfying activity than the typical political and economic battles at the FCC. In the process it also helped me to re-engage with Temple Sinai and with its many wonderful and talented clergy and congregants.

My family and I had been members since 1994 when our younger son Jeremy started in the Temple Sinai Nursery School. He and his older brother Zachary both went on to become B’nei Mitzvah and then confirmands at the temple. But except for my brief service on the TS Library and Social Action Committees and my wife Justine’s service as co-president of the Sisterhood in 2009-2010, I did not feel very connected with the temple and actually debated leaving the congregation.

Barbara’s call was to invite me to a demonstration at the Realco Gun Store in District Heights, MD. This store had been identified by the organizers of the protest as the seller of nearly a third of the guns recovered from DC crime scenes.

Following that first GVP encounter, Barbara encouraged me to form the GVP Working Group. The group now has over 75 members. Join us. It has been a truly satisfying endeavor for me and engaged me as never before in the life of the temple. For a listing of GVP activities please see the temple website or contact me directly at steve.klitzman@gmail.com.

-Steve Klitzman