Synagogue merger creates Congregtion Beth Ohr of Bellmore

The Bellmore Jewish Center and Congregation Beth-El of Massapequa were each founded in 1959, amid Nassau County’s post-World War II building boom. For the next five and a half decades, the two synagogues lived separate lives.

On July 1, they married their fortunes together, as Paul Simon might sing, in a merger that combines the membership and financial resources of both “Conservative egalitarian” houses of worship. A month later, all is well, according to the new synagogue’s co-presidents, Tina Baron, of Bellmore, and Marc Miller, of Plainview.

The new congregation has been renamed Beth Ohr, which translates in Hebrew to “House of Light.” After the merger, it now boasts more than 300 members –– 180 from the Bellmore Jewish Center and 127 from Beth-El. Congregants come from Bellmore and Merrick, Wantagh and Seaford, and as far away as Farmingdale, Lindenhurst and Babylon.

“It’s just amazing,” said Baron, who has lived in Bellmore for 27 years. “We’re really like the synagogue of the South Shore now. We have members from all over the place.”

The new congregation will be housed at the former Bellmore Jewish Center, at 2550 Centre Ave. in Bellmore. A formal ceremony, attended by more than 100 congregants and well-wishers, marked the merger. Elected leaders, including State Sen. Michael Venditto, of Massapequa, attended. Dahlia Bernstein, the Bellmore Jewish Center’s rabbi since May 2013, is now Beth Ohr’s spiritual leader.

The merger ceremony, Baron said, “was almost like a wedding, showing a marriage between the two congregations … It was very emotional … It was very powerful.”

The ceremony began in Beth-El’s sanctuary and continued in Bellmore. Two of Beth-El’s Torahs, sacred Jewish texts that lay out God’s law as revealed to Moses, were brought by car to within two blocks of the Bellmore Jewish Center and then carried into the synagogue.

Brunch in a tent outside Congregation Beth Ohr followed. Bagels, with cream cheese and lox, were served. It was “the whole schmear,” Baron joked.

A change in Massapequa’s demographics necessitated the merger, Miller said. Many longtime Jewish families have moved out, often down South, as they have retired, he said. At the same time, fewer Jewish families have moved in.

“We had not been attracting new members, young families,” Miller said “Essentially, we were an aging congregation. Our numbers were dwindling. We were not able to maintain certain aspects of the congregational functioning.”

Beth-El had been without a rabbi for two years, and Friday evening services often attracted fewer than 10 congregants, though more came to Saturday and High Holy Days services, according to Miller. With a shrinking congregation, there were fewer members to assume leadership positions, he added.

Congregants, he said, “were feeling burnt out. There weren’t enough people.”

The synagogue, nevertheless, was financially sound, Miller said. A decade ago, Beth-El had merged with a Lindenhurst congregation. The Lindenhurst synagogue was sold, giving Beth-El a sizable fund that has enabled it to carry on, despite low membership.

“Every year we were tapping into that and spending it down,” Miller said, adding that Beth-El could have survived financially for another six to eight years.

A number of South Shore congregations have merged over the past decade and a half, as membership numbers have declined across the region. According to the UJA Federation of New York, though, significant Jewish population centers remain in Valley Stream, West Hempstead, the Five Towns, Oceanside and Long Beach. Merrick has a large Jewish population as well, with five synagogues and temples, while Bellmore has three. And there’s the Chabad Center for Jewish Life, a center for Jewish studies that is based in Merrick and serves families in Bellmore-Merrick and Wantagh-Seaford.

Many of the South Shore’s synagogues and temples were built in the 1950s and 1960s, when the region’s Jewish population peaked, Miller said, noting that upkeep of the aging structures is expensive and difficult.

Beth Ohr leaders are planning a major renovation of the new synagogue in the coming year. Stained-glass windows from Beth-El’s sanctuary, depicting the 12 tribes of Israel and the Jewish High Holy Days, will be moved to Bellmore.

Beth-El had started seeking another synagogue to merge with over a year and a half ago, Miller said. In the end, the choice was between the Bellmore Jewish Center and the Merrick Jewish Centre.

Beth-El’s leadership felt comfortable with both congregations, Miller said. The decision boiled down to numbers. The Merrick Jewish Centre, he said, is a “much bigger congregation. We would have been swallowed up by that large congregation.”

Both Miller and Baron emphasized the similarities between Beth-El and the Bellmore Jewish Center. “Because we have so many similarities,” Baron said, “it’s been a very easy transition to the new merged congregation … We made friends already.”

New York’s Jewish
community by the numbers

New York has the highest Jewish population of any state in the U.S., though it is now less than half of what it was in the mid-20th century. The 2001 National Jewish Population Survey put the number of Jews living in the greater New York metropolitan area at 2.5 million in 1950, 1.67 million in 1981 and 1.41 million in 2001.  

That number now ranges from 909,500 to 1,036,000, according to the American Jewish Population Project, at the Steinhardt Social Research Institute.

According to the project, 7.1 million Jewish adults and children lived in the U.S. as of December 2014, including 4.3 million adults, or 1.8 percent of the total adult population.