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Field Trip to Lead to African-American Shul in Philadelphia.........posted Nov 17, 2007

A contingent of Tikvat Israel members, led by Rabbi Howard Gorin, will travel to Philadelphia on Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 to observe Shabbat with Congregation Temple Bethel, an historic African-American synagogue.

TI members will spend the entire Shabbat with their hosts and return to Rockville on Saturday night. Between six and a dozen congregants are expected to make the trip.

Congregation Temple Bethel congregants will offer home hospitality and will serve dinner on Friday night before candlelighting as well as a continental breakfast and lunch on Shabbat. Bethel's custom is to spend the entire Shabbat day in synagogue.

TI members will travel by private car-pools to the shul in North Philadelphia.

According to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice newspaper, Congregation Temple Bethel was founded more than 50 years ago by a group of African Americans who converted to Judaism. They believed their ancestors were originally Jewish and they were rediscovering their heritage. They started their own synagogue in North Philadelphia and when they outgrew that space, moved to West Oak Lane, their current inner-city locale.

Once the synagogue located on West Oak Lane, its current site, the congregation formed a relationship with Rabbi Sidney Greenberg (now deceased) who at the time lived across the street from Temple Bethel. Greenberg was instrumental in helping the temple buy its Torah scrolls, and he donated prayer books for their use. The congregation had trouble purchasing its own Jewish books and Torah scrolls because of racial discrimination.

Rabbi Debra Bowen, the spiritual leader of Congregation Temple Bethel, is the daughter of the congregation's founder, Louise Elizabeth Daily.

Currently Temple Bethel's membership has more than 300 families, according to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice. Services resemble those in Conservative Judaism, but their practice is closer to Orthodox Judaism. Saturday services start in the morning, and many congregants stay the entire day until the completion of the evening Havdalah service.

Temple Bethel members previously participated in a religious exchange program last year by visiting to Tiferes B'nai Israel, a a Reconstructionist synagogue in suburban Warrington, Pa. The latter shul hosted Temple Bethel members for a joint Kabbalat Shabbat service.

The event represented the first joining together of black and white Jews in prayer in the Delaware Valley, according to the local Jewish newspaper. One congregant said: "Together we had an emotion-filled evening of worship, song and prayer."

The Temple Bethel website is http://bethel-ph.org/aboutus.htm.