Blogfinger

This  19th century Victorian house which was part of Temple Beth El in Rutherford burned to the ground this morning.  August 8, 2025.  Thank G-d that the rabbi and his family survived.   News photo.

News photo in Rutherford early this morning.  Beth El fire.

Beth El. 5:30 am news photo 8/08/25 Click once to enlarge.  News photo.

Beth El: What it looked like before. The addition is not shown.    Beth-El history drawing..

By Paul Goldfinger,  MD, Editor,  Blogfinger. net.  8/8/25.   Re-post.

Some years ago I attended a Rutherford High School reunion.   Margaret Andler, classmate and divine cheerleader, came up to me and said, “Paul. Do you remember that we used to ride a bus together after school?   You were going to Hebrew school and I to Catechism class.”

She was correct.  At the end of the line I got off  and walked across the tracks to East Rutherford where the old synagogue was.

But somehow, in 1953,  the members were able to acquire a sprawling   home on a lovely property on Montross Avenue in Rutherford  and they converted it into a synagogue.  Evidently a doctor’s family owned the property before Beth El.

It is a beautiful neighborhood in a wonderful  New Jersey residential town  near the former Fairleigh Dickinson University.    People referred to the town as a “New York bedroom community.”  90% of my classmates went to college.

There were  few member families in the congregation then, so services were held in the old living room.

Today I imagine seeing myself leading a service in Temple Beth El one Saturday in 1954 Rutherford.  And today the memory survives even stronger..

Paul and Mom in Rutherford (Hastings Gardens.) Leaving shortly for Temple Beth El.

In 1954 I had my bar mitzvah there.  I recall entering the large foyer, and off to the side was the sanctuary.

There were about 30 people there that Saturday  and they were mostly family.  I recall both grandfathers sitting with their siddurs  (prayer books)  open,  ready to see if I would make any mistakes.

I looked across the room and saw my uncles, grandmothers, aunts, cousins and my parents.  And  my younger brother Mel was there, always with the jokes.

After the service, I could say, “Today I am a man! ”  But I didn’t feel like one at the age of 13.

In the foyer my mom had set up a luncheon buffet, and after everyone congratulated me, we all  went out and made sandwiches.  There was no party.

We lived in an apartment in Rutherford’s Hastings Gardens.    So I loved to visit that old Beth El  house, now the shul,  and to walk around the property with its big old trees. .

During the high holidays, a renta-cantor  from Brooklyn would stay in one of the upstairs bedrooms.  There was a big staircase going up.

A few years later the congregation built an addition in the back where services were held.  I loved it because they installed a full court basketball set.  Dad attended Men’s Club meetings on Sunday mornings and then came over to watch me play.

I recall one Rosh Hashanah when we went to services while the RHS soccer team was having opening day.   Art Rogoff and I, both on the team,  went outside and complained to each other.

I haven’t been back in years, but I was shocked to learn  that the fire this morning was in that old Victorian house which had become the Rabbi’s home.

As I looked at the images of the  synagogue  burning today, I could not but recall how, during the Holocaust , thousands of synagogues in Eastern Europe  were burned to the ground, often with Jews inside.

It is heartbreaking to see this now, but  my grandparents  had  escaped to America, and we are forever grateful for this great nation. And today we marvel at the firemen who came from all over the region to battle a blazing synagogue conflagration.

“When the Temple is Rebuilt”.    Israeli folk song.  Ami Shavit and Giora Feidman