Message From President Peter Ullian
I am honored to serve as the new president of BHA’s executive board. I’ll do my best to fill the shoes my immediate predecessors, Betsy Solomon and Bill Smith, as well as our other past presidents who have all done so much for our community. I am grateful for their leadership and for leaving BHA in such good shape for the current board.
5772 is shaping up to be an exciting year for BHA. In addition to a new executive board, we’re welcoming a new Rabbi, Brent Chaim Spodek. Rabbi Spodek is a rabbi in a different mode — he lives permanently in Beacon, and is able to be much more involved with BHA than has been the case in the recent past. Hiring him was a deliberate decision to help BHA grow, a project that will involve all of us in different ways. I’m excited to be working with the new board and the new rabbi, as well as with the cantor, the teachers, and all of the BHA committees, chairpersons, and volunteers, on this important project.
Of course, BHA is nothing if not a community effort, and it’s that spirit of fellowship and welcoming — of extended family — that has brought so many to our shul, and continues to sustain and nourish us. As BHA moves into the future, we need our members more than ever to make our shul as vibrant, exciting, and welcoming as can be. Whether the contributions we make as individuals are of time, energy, finances, creativity, or some combination, BHA will continue to thrive thanks to the efforts of all our members.
In a vibrant and evolving Mid-Hudson Valley with a growing Jewish population, BHA is uniquely poised at this time to welcome new members while continuing to serve our current ones. In that spirit, I’d like to take a moment to address those who are not yet BHA members, but are part of the broader Mid-Hudson Valley Jewish community. I think I speak for everyone at BHA that we welcome you to our shul, hope to see you at services and celebrations, and hope you will become part of our community.
As BHA moves forward, some things will inevitably change, but change occurs even when standing still. The challenge we face is to manage change in a way that embraces the values shared by all. I believe BHA is up to this challenge. I humbly request your help in meeting it.
I look forward to seeing everyone this year at services, school, and special events!
At this point, my predecessor, Betsy Solomon, would usually conclude with an appropriate phrase in Hebrew. I confess that a facility with Hebrew is not one of the strengths I bring to this job. As I learn and grow in this position, I’m excited to also learn and grow Jewishly. And, hopefully, I’ll pick up a few useful Hebrew phrases along the way! Sincerely, Peter Ullian
Introducing Rabbi Brent Spodek
Dear Friends:
In the tumult of the late 1960s, many Jews left Brooklyn for what they hoped would be a calmer environment. Many Orthodox communities decamped en masse, establishing new centers of Jewish life in Munsey, New City and elsewhere — but not Chabad, the Lubavitch Hasidim. They stayed put in Crown Heights, and are there to this day.
They stayed largely because their Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the great Jewish leaders of the 20th century, said that “in the neighborhood where [a person] lived for days and years, he also had a fixed spiritual inheritance.” It’s a remarkable idea that the institutions of a community are places where spiritual wealth is accumulated. A building is just a building, but a community is a place where spiritual wealth, the wealth of people coming together for a common purpose, can be built and shared. The spiritual wealth of community is a wealth like no other. It’s the wealth of love.
For many Jews in the Beacon area, Beacon Hebrew Alliance is the community where spiritual wealth has been built and shared. It’s been the place where our prayers were uttered, our Torah was learned, and our connections were made to other people, to our past and to the Divine. It is a spiritual inheritance of insurmountable value. For others of us, our spiritual wealth has been built in other institutions and gatherings — in tashlich with homemade honey, Passover puppet seders and living room Talmud groups. This community’s wealth of spiritual resources is a blessing many times over.
I am immensely excited and humbled to become the rabbi of this community and to help further its spiritual growth. I also look forward to working with our new president, Peter Ullian, and the board to bring the disparate elements of the community together, so that we can share our spiritual wealth with each other.
In the words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, I look forward to Beacon becoming a place where the old will become new, and the new will become holy.
Bivracha/with blessings,
Rabbi Brent Spodek
Former President Betsy Solomon’s Address at the Dedication of the Sadie Jane Cahn Perennial Gardens (July 31, 2011)
Fifteen years ago, Keith Milkove worked with fellow Beacon Hebrew Alliance members Sadie Jane Cahn and Tillie Shapiro to record their recollections of the history of BHA. I would like to share some highlights with you.
In 1894, Samuel Beskin, an uncle of Sadie’s late husband Dr. Simon Cahn, became the first Jewish man to settle in Southern Dutchess when he moved to Fishkill Landing. That community united with Matteawan in 1913 to become Beacon. In 1917, after building the largest department store in Beacon, a brewery, and a bottling factory, the wonderful family man and community activist became Mayor of Beacon.
Responding to ads in The New York Times for businessmen to come to this area, many Jewish pioneers arrived. In 1921, Beacon Hebrew Alliance was incorporated. Two years later, BHA’s Ladies Aid Society purchased a Torah for $130 so the families wouldn’t have to keep crossing over to Newburgh for religious services. Soon, BHA hired Rabbi Levine to lead services, teach Hebrew School, and be the community butcher. Congregants took turns housing the Torah between services that were held at various halls until BHA contracted with James Lynch and Son to build our synagogue for $10,447. (Ultimately, with area friends donating some labor and brickyard manager David Strictland donating all the bricks, the final cost was apparently $10,000 even.)
Much has changed in the 75 years that Sadie Jane Cahn has been a member of BHA. (Imagine, 75 years in a synagogue that was built 82 years ago!) Sadie has tended both the funds and the weeds at our 81-year-old cemetery while nurturing all kinds of projects and fellow congregants at our synagogue. Beacon Hebrew Alliance is, in many ways, a reflection of Sadie’s beauty, both inner and outer, and her love.
With thanks to our congregants Laura Liebeck and Joan Pirie for the concept, Ellin Feld for helping make this a reality, and Klaus Solomon for designing the plaque, it is therefore my pleasure to formally present the Sadie Jane Cahn Perennial Gardens at Beacon Hebrew Alliance by reading the dedication. The plaque reads:
"Dedicated in 2011 on the 100th birthday of Sadie Jane Cahn,
whose life reflects beauty, as do these gardens." |
