While standing in front of the new entrance sign to our Synagogue, I thought about the meaning of its message to us:
“Inspired by our past, investing in our future”
The Baron de Hirsch Congregation has lived as a Jewish family at least 125 years and even longer prior to its formal incorporation. The Beth Israel Synagogue Building has stood here for over 50 years. During all of this span of time, our Congregation has seen it all. I am thinking of the history of the previous generations of Jewish people who lived here and those who passed through Halifax. They carried with them the legacy of their past, mirroring the ever-turmoil fate of Jews throughout the Diaspora.
Most of them were G-d fearing Jews who felt it was worthwhile, and even a necessity, to exert much effort and to invest alot of resources to build and maintain a Jewish community including the construction of several synagogues over the years, especially the magnificent building we have today. Its structure and size indicates the mass of people and events that took place here and that would be required for many years to come. This was the centre of Jewish life in Halifax! It still remains as such for regular daily services, for large communal events, and for many religious events including for Mikveh purposes.
At the onset of the 125th year, our incredibly vibrant community finds that while its numbers have decreased there really is much more to the Beth Israel than what meets the eye; beauty lies beyond the numbers. The other side of the coin to building a long-standing Jewish centre is the belief that it is the only center in which fellow-Jews would be welcome. In the dark Halifax past, a number of clubs were barred to everyone of Hebrew origin. I learned this not from a thorough research of the history of Jewish Haligonians but from hearing it over and over again from our own members who well remember what it was like growing up in Halifax under such limitations and circumstances.
This sheds a novel perspective over the use of our Jewish centre nowadays. I conclude that nowwhen those who do participate in its activities, we do so out of our own personal conviction to do so. Contrary to previous generations, although we have various places to attend, we choose to meet at a Jewish Centre out of free choice and not because we have been excluded from these other places. We acknowledge and choose to connect to our Jewish heritage and to be with other Jewish members of our community, preferring kin over prestige.
Each and every one of our participating members exemplifies that the investment of the previous generations bore fruit. In this light, I find that each and every one of our dear members is an inspiration.