High Holy Days means ‘Simchat Torah’ for Chelsea-ites

The Simchat Torah chorus belts out a tune during this year’s Rosh Hashana services, held at Town Hall, while Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum (center) stands at the podium.

By Diana Britton

On a recent Friday night, amid a hushed crowd of 600 Jewish worshippers ushering in the new year at a Rosh Hashanah service at Town Hall, a middle-aged man made his way down the center aisle toward the large stage serving as the pulpit to take part in an age-old ritual, lifting the Torah and placing it back in the ark, a large wooden archway flanked by an Israeli, an American and a rainbow flag, the latter a symbol of gay pride.

As the chosen congregant walked toward the pulpit, an audience member noticed a small baby strapped to his stomach. “The baby’s going too?” she asked the person sitting next to her.

Moments later, taking a wooden handle in each hand and slowly lifting the torah as high as possible to avoid hitting the baby, the man turned toward the audience just as the baby lifted his tiny hands and reached for the wooden handles, as if mimicking his caretaker, causing the audience to laugh and “ahh” in expected unison.

The charming scene unfolded as part of a High Holy Day service of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the largest LGBT-friendly synagogue in the world and a significant part of Chelsea since its founding in 1973. But the 2007 New Year’s services, which were free and open to the public, were characteristic of the synagogue’s openness not only to the LGBT community but to people of all backgrounds, traditions and ages, including young children, which Simchat Torah is trying to accommodate in ever greater numbers this year as the demographic of its congregation shifts.

“We don’t define things just on sexual orientation,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Simchat Torah’s senior rabbi.

The proof is in the apples and honey: The synagogue’s Rosh Hashanah services held at the Town Hall, which lasted two days and nights, drew about 1,600 people on its biggest evening, while the Yom Kippur services, held at the Javitz Center, welcomed approximately 3,500 people last Friday night.

These numbers reflect the kind of openness and diversity nurtured by the Simchat Torah community and Rabbi Kleinbaum, who says the radical religious right—of all persuasions—has turned many people off to religion with discrimination and bigotry. One of the goals of Simchat Torah is to reverse that way of thinking, starting with economics.

Growing up on the upper west side, Steven Fruh, a member of Simchat Torah for 18 years, remembers not being able to attend High Holy Day services at Congregation Ansche Chesed as a kid because his family could not afford membership and had to share one ticket. The experience “left kind of a bitter feeling with me,” Fruh said.

When he became a board member at Simchat Torah later in his life—a post he held for seven years—the 63-year-old Fruh repeated his story like a mantra to persuade fellow board members not to give in and begin charging for tickets, even as the budget for the services reached $200,000 this year.

“I just feel so strongly about it,” he said.

As Kleinbaum put it: “What we’re trying to show is a religious community that’s radically different. We’re not interested in creating the same barriers for others which have been created for us.”

Such thinking has been part of the synagogue’s philosophy since its inception.

In the early ’70s, when founder Jacob Gubbay came up with the idea for a gay synagogue, he got permission to use one of the back rooms at Chelsea’s Church of the Holy Apostles, which abuts the Penn South housing complex on Ninth Avenue and 28th Street. The unusual alliance came about, in part, because of Penn South’s large Jewish population, which sprouted as International Ladies Garment Workers Union members began moving into the complex back in the 1950s.

According to Michael Levine, 63, one of Simchat Torah’s past presidents, Gubbay placed an ad in The Village Voice publicizing the congregation’s first meeting in February 1973. It started as a “traveling synagogue in a shopping bag,” Levine said, because Gubbay literally showed up with a bag of candlesticks, cups, wine and bread. That night, about 15 people showed up to the small mission house of Holy Apostles and sparked a movement that would continue to grow year after year.

By word of mouth, the congregation reached approximately 200 members by 1975, outgrowing the small space at Holy Apostles and forcing a move to a larger space that now serves as Simchat Torah’s offices on Bethune Street in the West Village.

But the synagogue has come full circle. In 1999, Simchat Torah moved back into Holy Apostles to use the main sanctuary for their Friday night Shabbat services, and the congregation has been there ever since. Rev. William Greenlaw, of Holy Apostles, said he was delighted to have the congregation meet there, especially since they share a similar stance on gay issues. Holy Apostles has two openly gay clergymen.

“That’s who we are,” Greenlaw said. “It’s a very fruitful and positive experience for both our lives.”

Muriel Moore, a 72-year-old Holy Apostles congregant, remembered participating in a ceremony to hang the Mezuzah, a Jewish symbol, on the door when the congregation moved back in. The assembled group sang a Hebrew prayer, which was written out phonetically so all could follow along.

“We hadn’t a clue what were singing,” Moore said with a warm chuckle. “It was a fun night.”

The two congregations formed a symbiotic relationship, one needing the space and the other needing the income for the upkeep of one of Chelsea’s oldest churches.

“It suited us perfectly,” Moore said.

State Senator Tom Duane, who himself lives in Penn South, said the relationship with Holy Apostles was not surprising given Chelsea’s all-inclusive and tolerant history.

“It’s been sort of a headquarters for spirituality of all kinds,” he said. “There’s something beautiful that it’s being used by people of all faiths and all incomes.”

State Assemblymember Dick Gottfried, who has spoken at Simchat Torah in the past, agreed, saying the synagogue has been a pillar for the LGBT community in Chelsea, which constitutes a large portion of the synagogue’s members.

“Institutions like Beth Simchat Torah are a sign of the growing strength of the community, as well as contributing to that strength,” he said.

As the second-oldest thriving gay organization in New York City, according to Rabbi Kleinbaum, the synagogue and its members have been actively involved in the political discussion on gay issues by taking part in protests and other events put on by the gay community.

“We’ve been a part of the fabric of Chelsea in changing the citywide and national debate on gay issues,” Rabbi Kleinbaum said.

But Simchat Torah member Mickie Trester notes that, up on the pulpit, Rabbi Kleinbaum talks about being gay not just writ large, in sermons on big issues like AIDS, but in an everyday way that relates to the lives of real people. Furthermore, the synagogue has changed some of the language it its liturgy to be more friendly and accommodating to transgender people.

“It makes it very normative,” Trester said. “It’s just so liberating.”

The services themselves are also “very gay,” Trester said, referring to the amount of singing and the use of more artistic elements.

In addition to all this, many people at this year’s High Holy Days services commented at the growing number of children present: 118 at the service on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, all of whom were invited up to the pulpit to receive a blessing, compared with 65 kids the year before, according to Eric Rosenbaum, the synagogue’s president. Rosenbaum attributes this spike to the diversification of Simchat Torah’s children’s programs, and to the increasing number of gay couples having kids and straight couples feeling more comfortable in the synagogue.

“For the first time, I really felt like we got the formula right,” Rosenbaum said.

Neal Hoffman, 44, and his partner celebrated their first Rosh Hashanah at Simchat Torah with their 9-month-old daughter, Shirley. Most touching, Hoffman said, was being able to listen to the blowing of the shofar, or ram’s horn, with his daughter by his side. At the end of a series of short, melodic blows, shofar blower Ann Macklin let out the loudest and longest blow, lasting for almost 30 seconds.

“It was really interesting to see how entranced Shirley was by the sound of it,” Hoffman said. “A child is establishing her own place in our community.”

As Shirley embarks on her religious life, Hoffman believes the members of Simchat Torah will play an important role in raising her.

“It takes a village,” he said.