 So today's talk is on the Jewish community of Amherst, the founding years, and it's a story of how a widely diverse group of Jews new to Amherst wished to connect to each other for the sake of their children's Jewish identities and their own. Word of mouth connections led them to establish two different Jewish communities that coalesced to form the present Jewish community of Amherst. Our speakers today are Linda and Irv Seidman. Linda was a librarian at the University of Massachusetts becoming head of the Department of Special Collections and Archives in 1993, and she retired, I believe, in 2003, and she is currently the volunteer archivist at the Jewish community of Amherst. Irv was an administrator and faculty member at the College of Education at the University of Massachusetts, and he has written the Jewish community of Amherst and has generously provided copies of it to the Historical Society to sell for its own benefit. So please join me in welcoming Irv and his wife, Linda, to the podium. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you all for coming. I wanted to introduce, if you don't know Sarah Thompson, she proofread for the book. Iris Brody was the editor for the book. She helped me make my sentences clearer, more simple, broke up complex sentences into simple sentences, taught me a lot about writing, and she's been a wonderful editor for me for a number of projects. And my wife, my wife, Linda. Thank you for your introduction and the invitation to speak to the Amherst Historical Society about our book, The Jewish Community of Amherst's Deformative Years, 1969 to 1979. I want to also acknowledge Jim Wald, who while I was still working on the book, planted the seed of talking to the Historical Society, and Barbara Pristren, who brought the published book to the attention of Mr. Norton. Copies of the book are donating some to the Historical Society, and other copies are available at the collective copies, and the JCA, and Amherst, and Shown Books in South Deerfield. When I speak of the Jewish community of the JCA, I'm referring to the organization that was formed in Amherst in 1969, and is housed today at 742 Main Street in the Sanctuary and Social Hall of the former Second Congregational Church of Amherst. Linda and I were not founding members. We were early members. We joined in 1972. The organization was founded in 1969. There is a wider Jewish community in Amherst, involving a not insignificant number of people who identify as Jewish, but who are not associated with the JCA. The fact that the organization calls itself the Jewish community of Amherst bespeaks of its early goal and wide-ranging proclivities regarding worship, prayer, and Jewish traditions. How did this book come to be? Some 20 years after we purchased the Sanctuary and Social Hall of the Second Congregational Church, Frida Howard was exploring the storeroom in the balcony of the Old Social Hall. She came across a number of two-by-four feet cardboard boxes full to the brim with unsorted and unorganized newsletters, minutes of meetings, letters, incorporation documents, and newspaper clippings. Frida realized that these were the early archival records of the JCA. She sensed their value and drafted Linda, who had been head of archives and special collections at the Boys Library at the University, and the late Elaine Tree Hub, who had been the archivist at Mount Holyoke College to begin organizing the JCA's early papers. Linda's follow-up archival work made it possible for me to spend more than a year exploring the early documents of the JCA. As the archivist of the papers, Linda enforced strict rules, probably even more strict for me because she knows my work habits. No, I could not bring a box home. No, documents could leave the room. Do not lick my index finger and thumb when I pick up the documents. Any time I took a document out of a photo, I had to put a marker to show where the document had originally been filed. I learned a lot about the work of the archivist and the excitement of making connections among documents and between documents and interview material. I also interviewed JCA founders about their experience and was able to connect their stories to the documents. Finally, I did secondary reading on the history of Amherst and the history of the university to prepare for writing for the book. As I researched and then wrote, I became even more fond of the JCA, more admiring of its founders and what they accomplished and more appreciative of the vital role that the town of Amherst played in the existence of the JCA and its development. What follows is a sketch of the history of the formative years of the JCA, which I recount more fully in the book. During this talk, Linda will read passages from the book that we trust will illuminate the issues and developments I recount. An article published in the Amherst Bulletin in 1988 reports on a survey of religious affiliation in Amherst published in the Amherst Record in 1938. So we have an article in 1988 reporting about a religious survey in 1938. It lists seven Hebrew families in Amherst. I wondered about those seven Hebrew families and put the article aside in a folder marked for further consideration. As I continued to explore the archives, I came across a report by David Berlin, written when he was an Amherst High School student and also I found a senior honors university thesis by Edward Mainzer that helped me name those seven Hebrews and led me to the Jones Library to find out a little more about them. There, Cynthia Harbison, head of the Jones Library Special Collection and her assistant, Adrian Zimmerly, cross-checked street directories and business lists with me. We found out a little more about the seven families, what they did and where they lived. They were David and Jenny Gordon, Joseph and Rose Ginsburg, Max Goldberg, Isaac and Sarah Landis, Ida and Meyer Novik, Robert and Rebecca Wagman, tailors, shoemakers, dry cleaners, clothier salesmen, faculty member, housewives. Max Goldberg, named above as one of the seven there, was a former student at the Massachusetts School of Agriculture and later a faculty member as the institution transitioned to a state college and university. In a 1980s interview with Harriet Zuckerman and Frida Howard, Professor Goldberg said that the Jews in Amherst then were not necessarily a community. Sometimes they bickered, sometimes they competed with each other, but in an emergency they stuck together and could count on each other. Why were there so few Jews in Amherst during those early years? In contrast, Northampton, a mere eight miles distant from Amherst, had a substantial and growing Jewish population in the late 19th century. I believe Greenfield also did. There is an excellent chapter by George R. Taylor in the book Essays on Amherst's History, which describes the rise and fall of manufacturing in Amherst. Lumber was widely available in Amherst, but water power was limited. Amherst produced children's wagons, sleds, small carriages, axe handles, and palm leaf hats. But Amherst is not on the Connecticut River. Among other factors, its distance from the river allowed competitors in river towns to distribute the same goods at cheaper prices and manufacturing gradually began to disappear in Amherst. Nor was Amherst a market town or the home of county or state courts. There were not ample opportunities in Amherst to make a living in the traditional trade and businesses that Jewish owners traditionally occupied. Amherst's Jewish population remained low through the first half of the 20th century. In 1957, 19 years after the 1938 survey, another survey of religious affiliation was conducted in Amherst. How little a role Jews played in the consciousness of Amherst in the 50s was reflected in the fact that they were not even included in the 1957 survey. But that was all to change with the growth of the University of Massachusetts. The end of the Second World War and the advent of the GI Bill brought tremendous growth in admission applications to what was then called Massachusetts State College. At one point in 1946, the demand was so high that the State College opened a satellite campus at Fort Devons. In 1947, to allow for the growth of the student body and to provide a wider curriculum, despite and with the cooperation of the private colleges in Massachusetts, the legislature passed legislation and Governor Robert Bradford signed the bill in record time that transformed Massachusetts State College to the University of Massachusetts. In 1947, the university student population was 2,400 students. By 1969, 22 years later, it had grown to 18,000 students. In 1950, the faculty numbered 287. An intense period of faculty recruitment began. By 1976, the faculty had grown to over 1,400. Among those over 1,000 new instructors and staff were a number of young Jewish faculty and their families. Amherst, which had been in the late 1940s a village of about 7,000 people, almost all white, mostly Republican, in effect, some would argue, governed by a cooperative balance of power between the town and Amherst College and very proud of its Yankee heritage. For the newly arriving Jewish families, there were few public signs of a Jewish presence in Amherst, except for the on-campus office of Hillel, which served Jewish students at the university. In interviews I conducted, retired university professor Lewis Maynard said, when he arrived in Amherst in the 1950s, that you could put all the Jews in Amherst in a telephone booth. Frida and Nerve Howard arrived in 1965. She said it seemed like a great place to raise kids, but they could find no Jews and no Democrats. Shelly Goldman, a new faculty member in political science, remembers articles in the Amherst record about cows loose on Route 116. And that respect perhaps not much has changed. Heim Gunners said soon after he and Jaffer arrived in Amherst, he met Jean Podosch on the street. He asked her about Jewish life in Amherst. She replied, if you want to have a Jewish life in Amherst, you have to make it for yourself. Most of the Jews coming to Amherst came from cities where they had lived in significant Jewish neighborhoods. Their neighborhood with stores selling kosher foods, elders speaking Yiddish, multiple synagogues organized on the basis of which old countries the founders had come from, told them they were Jews, even if nothing else in their makeup did. Jewish university faculty staff and their families started to seek each other out in an attempt to figure out how they could support a Jewish life in Amherst. In good weather they might meet on the street and ask about where to buy Sabbath candles, get kosher food, find a challah, a traditional Jewish bread for the Sabbath. The answer to most of these questions was Holyoke, Springfield and sometimes Northampton. It was a significant event in the history of Jews in Amherst when Atkins and Southamers began to bake and sell challahs on Friday. The Amherst Jewish Committee was formed by some faculty at the university, Jewish faculty, who began to have lunch together. They had to have a name because in order to make reservation at the faculty club they had to have an official name, so they called themselves the Amherst Jewish Community. They held meetings monthly on topics of Jewish cultural and historical interest to support their adult sense of Jewish identity. To recruit new members every fall they sponsored a popular deli dinner with food brought in from Springfield to which they invited all Jews in the area. Then how to support their children's developing sense of identity became paramount in their mind. Jewish parents were concerned that Amherst schools had earlier so few Jewish students that the schools' consciousness of their growing presence had to be raised. Jewish students, they thought, they felt, they argued, should not be penalized for missing school in the fall on the Jewish high holidays. The Christmas celebrations in schools had to somehow take into consideration their Jewish students. To get a basic Jewish education, the kids had to be driven to Northampton to attend the Sunday and Hebrew schools at the conservative B'nai Israel synagogue. For some that was a solution, but for many it was not. Jewish parents wanted to open their own Jewish Sunday and Hebrew school in Amherst. To accomplish this, in 1966 they established and incorporated the Amherst Jewish Education Committee. Their incorporation papers indicated that their location, when they began, was in the Masonic Hall in downtown Amherst. Barbara Elkins described what it was like to have the Amherst Jewish Education Committee school there. Classes were held in the auditorium, she said, in the kitchen in halls and stairwells and the principal's office was in the stairwell too. At least 50 children were enrolled. At some point the fire chief learned that we were holding classes in that building. He inspected and decreed that not only could the school not continue there, but that if he had known we were holding classes there, he would not have allowed it at all. So we had to look for a new place to meet. Arrangements were made for us to hold Sunday school classes at the School of Business Administration on the university campus and midweek Hebrew classes at the Newman Center. Our children were never sure whether everybody traveled as much as they did to pursue a religious education or whether another definition of being Jewish was to be a nomad, but they adjusted. Elaine Tree Hub also described the early years of the predicament. We got a little school going. We met all over the place. We were the original wandering nomads. I remember Pastor Koenig of the Lutheran Church. He was eager to give us his sanctuary to meet in, but the sanctuary had an enormous cross and I looked at it and he looked at it and he said, this is probably not the place for you to meet. Let me show you our social lounge and that was where we met. Having been booted out of Nassana Call, the school wandered to different locations throughout Amherst. For six years, the school moved from place to place. Classes were held, as Lynn said, in the Newman Center of the Lutheran Church, the Common School and Hampshire College. The early principals, Barbara Berlin and then Diane Chages, who served 18 years as principal, had to worry each year about where they would be the next year. They, the teachers and boarding parents, would have to take boxes, schlep boxes of curricular materials and school supplies back and forth from where the school was meeting that year to their homes. At first, the moving from place to place was a challenge. Great spirit, great support from everybody. Later it became a burden that had to be remedied. In 1969, Arthur Elkins, then a faculty member in what was then referred to as the business school at the university, proposed that the two committees, the Amherst Jewish Education Committee and the Amherst Jewish Committee, joined forces. They appointed an ad hoc committee to propose a mission and a structure for the new organization, which would be called the Jewish Community of Amherst and for short, the JCA. The ad hoc committee did a very smart thing. Rather than restrict the approval of a new unified group to current members of the two committees, they invited all Jews and Amherst in the surrounding areas to a meeting to be held on Sunday evening, April 6, 1969. The founders hoped to provide an organization which reformed conservative, orthodox, and secular Jewish families would feel comfortable. From the beginning, there were widely disparate views of the identity of the JCA, but there was unanimous agreement to the proposal for a new unified organization. Thirty-one individual and family units made a commitment to the JCA and its financial obligations of $50 per year dues and more joined after the first night. They formed in the spring, they got their committee structure going in the summer. The Jewish High Holidays were coming early in September that year. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the newly established board, knew that the High Holidays would be an important introduction of the JCA to the wider Jewish community, but they had no place to hold services, no high holiday prayer books, no tours, no art, and no rabbi. The religion committee in the summer of 1969, with the holidays less than two months away, had to start from scratch. Could they pull it off? Amherst College made the Venerable Johnson Chapel available for services, free of charge except for custodial services. Their generosity gave a sense of dignity to the efforts of the young JCA. Northampton Synagogue, Bene Israel lent us a portable ark. Temple Beth Elohim of Wellesley lent us a Torah. The New England offices of the reform movement provided a rabbi, Rabbi Stanley Shayed. He was a nationally known scholar. The sense of the community concerning the newly formed JCA rested on this important first impression. How did the services go? What kind of start did the JCA have? Combing through the archives, I found an answer to that question in a little story written by Elaine Trehub. Remember, I said that there were seven Hebrew families in Amherst at one point. Jenny Gordon and her husband David were one of those seven Hebrew families. Mrs. Gordon came to the first service with her grandson. Elaine Trehub wrote this little story. Amherst's cleansers was owned and operated by the venerable and formidable Mrs. Gordon. I never knew her first name. Once she had confirmed that we shared Jewish roots, she told me often and at length what it had been like when she and her late husband were, she assured me, the only Jews in town. What she described was both interesting and unique, and no one in the years since has provided for me a picture of the American Jewish experience through quite the same lens. She was a native of North Adams and had taught grade school. She and her late husband were welcomed at meetings of the Elks, she said, where her pure Yankee-inflected English would have blended seamlessly with the voices around her. Still, she confessed she did not feel among my people. Later, she came to the first High Holiday Services we conducted as a community in Johnson Jet. Amherst College dignitaries, presidents, upright New Englanders all watched from their portraits with great interest and surely with some amusement as we practiced our exotic rituals in the autumn sunshine that came through the tall windows and warmed the white pillars and polished pews of the classical Protestant congregational interior. Mrs. Gordon sat proudly in the row ahead of us with her grandson and Amherst College undergraduate from Ohio who had come east to the college with his father that his father had attended as a Jewish boy from the town. I lost track of the number of times she nudged her grandson, occasionally glancing back at me, saying, can you believe this is happening in Amherst? Can you believe it? From 1969 to 1975, the JCA did not have a home of its own. The Lutheran Church, as Linda read before, offered the use of its social hall to hold services. Pastor Koenig, who was learned in Hebrew and his congregation bent over backwards to offer support to the JCA as it wandered around Amherst. Our school moved to four different locations in the first six years. Committee meetings were held in people's homes. Communication among the members, membership was difficult. Finally, the burden of wandering became too heavy, and the JCA committed to spending $75,000 to either build or buy a home. They looked at different sites without success for two years. Discouragement began to set in among the members. Some thought that they should buy land and build a utilitarian building. But just as the JCA was about to make an offer on a piece of land, the Board heard that the buildings of the Second Congregational Church were for sale. The church membership had dwindled to approximately 20 families. They realized they could no longer support the upkeep of their sanctuary, social hall, and parsonage. With great regret, they made the decision to sell their treasured buildings. At the same time, they expressed their strong desire that the building should continue to serve a spiritual and religious purpose. The Second Congregational Church offered their three buildings and land to the JCA for $95,000. One inflation calculator I consulted indicated that would be about $430,000 in today's terms. They had rejected higher offers from potential owners who wanted to turn the building into commercial use. The price was $20,000 higher than the JCA had allocated. The Board was afraid that if they spent the $95,000, they would have no funds left to repair and maintain the buildings. There were many members of the JCA who felt that they could not afford the purchase. There was this disagreement. A consensus could not be reached. Discussions were intense. But then one of the founding member families, the Greenlebaum family, offered to buy the parsonage. That would reduce the price of the sanctuary and the social hall to what the JCA could afford to buy, repair, and maintain. The problem was that the three buildings were all on one lot. And to separate the buildings would require dividing the lot into two. And one of the lots would become non-conforming. To be allowed to purchase the building, two things had to happen. First, the Amherst Historical Commission would have to determine that separating the parsonage from the social hall and the sanctuary would not diminish the historical significance of the property. Then the zoning board would have to determine the non-conforming lot was without detriment to the public good and would in fact provide a reasonable means to promote the public good. In 1957, the town had hardly been aware of its Jewish citizens. Now, two important civic organizations whose job it was to protect the basic nature of the town was being asked to decide on whether the Jewish community of Amherst could have a home on Main Street. I report on the story in Chapter 7 in the book. The Amherst Historical Commission would also have to have a voice in the matter because separating the parsonage from the church and the parish hall could be perceived as deleterious to the historical integrity of the site. Two important Amherst groups. The Historical Commission whose mission was to prepare the historic character of Amherst and the zoning board whose mission was to protect the contemporary character of the town would decide whether the second congregational church of Amherst would become the home of the JCA. The ZBA hearing took place on August 26, 1976. Stephen Keady, the trustee and attorney Stephen B. Monson represented the second congregational church, the petitioner. Keady presented the rationale for the church's appeal. Although the church had a long and important history in Amherst, the congregation had dwindled in numbers and financial resources. He added that the few remaining members were searching for another church with which to merge. Keady stressed that the church could no longer adequately maintain its buildings. Most important, the members were deeply concerned that the sanctuary and parish hall continue in their appearance and beneficial use to the local community. For the JCA to be able to purchase the second congregational church, the Historical Commission's support would be crucial. The commission had reviewed the histories of the buildings thoroughly and had spoken with church and JCA representatives. In its report to the ZBA, Kristen O'Connell, the commission chair, first asserted the historical and visual significance of the buildings. She wrote, The second church and its associated buildings were among the first buildings in town to be placed on the commission's inventory of the town's historical and architectural assets. They are significant historically representing an important stage in the town's growth and diversification in the post-revolutionary period. The church is also architecturally and visually significant as a major reference point of the eastern Main Street area. Then O'Connell went to the heart of the matter. The historical and aesthetic value of the buildings will not be adversely affected by alienating the personage from church ownership. Whereas the church and parish hall are structurally connected and unified in design, the personage is a completely separate building of somewhat later date and completely different style and less distinguished. The purchase of the buildings by the JCA will ensure the preservation of the church and parish hall in their current excellent condition as well as the continuation of the historical role as the center of religious life in Amherst. The JCA's bid for a home had passed a necessary but not final hurdle. Stanley Herzbach, a future president of the JCA, Lewis Greenbaum, the chair of the building committee and Stanley Holt, the then president, also spoke to the ZBA about the JCA's specific plans for the church and parish hall. Their presentation led to the ZBA's assessment that the Jewish community of Amherst planned to leave the exterior of the two buildings unchanged in agreement with the expressed wishes of the second congregational church, the Amherst Historical Commission, and others in the community that in the view of both religious groups, the continuation of this site as a place of worship for religious education was thought to be the best and highest use. Two people appeared at the hearing to object to the proposed division of the property, but there is a record of only one of them speaking. That individual raised questions about the adequacy of parking on the premises. He said that a better division might be devised and other buyers found. He accused the Jewish community of not living up to their oral representations and said there was no guarantee the group would not change the historical character of the church. Stephen Monsen countered and denied those assertions. The meeting became contentious. At that tense and critical moment, David Carlson, the ZBA chair, intervened. He said that much of the object's charges and the replies of Stephen Monsen were irrelevant to the board's deliberations. In essence, they were not germane to the criteria upon which the zoning board had to make its decision. The ZBA then concluded that the unique historical and a special character of both the land and buildings were agreed to by all. It was further the opinion of the zoning board that to insist on the perpetuation of the property in its undivided state would indeed produce a substantial hardship on the second congregational church, both financial and otherwise. The church's wish to sell to another religious body seems reasonable, especially one that will preserve both the use of the property and the visual character of the church sanctuary and parish hall. The ZBA found that the proposed variance not only was without detriment to the public good, but rather provided a reasonable means to promote the public good. Therefore, it voted unanimously to grant the variance that would allow the personage to be separated from the parish hall in the sanctuary. As a result, the JCA could purchase the church and parish hall without the personage. That reduced the JCA mortgage to a summit could afford and still meet maintenance and unanticipated repair costs. The Amherst record published in Editorial Celebrating the Decision, the records editor Michael Desherbenen wrote, It is not too much to say that Thursday night's meeting of the zoning board represented a high moment in Amherst history. Here was second congregational church with a history of almost 200 years as a worshiping community, asking approval to sell its property to the Amherst Jewish community, which could be characterized as Amherst's newest religious group. The church passed up offers by other prospective buyers who would have converted the 139-year-old building into offices or apartments. From their side, the members of the Jewish community had been looking for two years to find the right kind of building for their cultural, educational, and religious program. What stood in the way was the fact that the buyer did not want to acquire the personage along with the church. Years ago, both were built on the same property, splitting the land made at least one lot non-conforming, so ZBA approval was required. Now the Jewish community will start its activities right away in the building, using classrooms in the basement for its school and the sanctuary for its ZBA services. Important too is the fact that this classic New England work in wood will be maintained as it was in the beginning, serving as an artistic and cultural anchor in Amherst's past. The zoning board acted in the best interest of the town, getting to the heart of the issue and approving the variance. The purchase of the Second Congregational Church in 1976-77 allowed us to stop our wandering, physically come together, and have a home in Amherst. A next important step was the appointment of Rabbi Achille Lander as a part-time Rabbi. He was already the Rabbi serving the students at Amherst College and Smith College. Since the JCA's formation in 1969, Norman Berlin, a founding member, had stressed that the JCA must fulfill its ultimate obligation to provide a final resting place for its members. It was not an easy sell to the membership. If for no other reason than at that time, most JCA members were in their 30s and 40s, some in the 50s, and not yet focusing on mortality. Norman encouraged the board to look ahead to what was inevitable. The board committed funds for the purchase of land for a JCA cemetery. The search for land was a frustrating process. The JCA had much earlier approached Wildwood Cemetery to see if they would set aside a Jewish section. Such a set aside was inconsistent with their policies. Now they looked at land in South Amherst, adjacent to the Amherst Cemetery there. They looked at land in Pelham. They would approach making a purchase, but something would not go right. Different reasons were offered for not approving the sale of land for a Jewish cemetery. After my book was published, Barbara Elkins told me how we finally acquired our land in Shootsbury. She said that after we had been refused, turned away, or just couldn't come to terms for a piece of land a number of times at Walter Jones, heard of our troubles having a finding land for a cemetery. He was known as the third-largest landowner in Massachusetts. He decided that he would offer a plot of land he owned in Shootsbury to the JCA. The deal was made. The Shootsbury Board of Health approved that town meeting members in Shootsbury voted yes. And the establishment of the JCA Cemetery in Shootsbury reportedly, reputedly, after one town meeting member assured them that the occupants would make good neighbors. So by 1979, the first ten years of the JCA, we had sustained and strengthened the Sunday School, acquired a home on Main Street in Amherst, established a strong voluntary service tradition, hired a rabbi, and developed the JCA Cemetery. The members of the JCA of that first decade built a foundation upon which the JCA could and has continued to build. To the founders, we owe a deep debt of gratitude. 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the JCA. 2019 also reflects a dramatic transformation of Amherst. From a village to a town, a town whose awareness of and responsiveness to diversity has challenged and changed its ways as it goes forward. The JCA is proud to have contributed to and is honored to have benefited from that challenge. In one of the archival boxes, I found an essay by Ruth Miller written for the 10th anniversary of the JCA that would have been in 1969-79. I think it may best convey the meaningfulness and responsibility that our presence at 742 Main Street carries with it. We would like to end our talk by sharing excerpts from Ruth's essay. Stewardship is defined as managing property with proper regard for the rights of others. The word takes on special meaning, however, when the property is a house of worship. A house of worship that was the home of the Second Convocational Church of Amherst for 138 years before it became the home of the Jewish community of Amherst in 1977. I had never been in the Second Church. To this day, I remember the night when members of the Church unlocked the doors of the sanctuary and ushered in our JCA committee that was searching for the new home. We first entered the vestibule, which was small and plain. Then we stepped up into the sanctuary proper, and I knew that something special was happening. Was there a chance that this beautiful building, so perfect for our needs, might actually be available? Touching the pews, viewing the altar, noticing the worn places in the soft green carpet where so many people had walked to prayer and fellowship, I knew that this edifice was everything for which we could have hoped. Today, the carpet in the sanctuary is a soft rose color. Steps and thresholds have been replaced. Both the sanctuary and social hall have been painted inside and out. The organ has been repaired. Walls fixed. New roofs built. Electrical work done. A new furnace installed. The original press tin ceiling repaired. On Friday nights, people gather to worship at 742 Main Street. Their specific words may be different from those spoken at congregational services, but their hopes and concerns about family and community, indeed, mankind, are in many ways similar. We in the JCA share a bond with every person who has ever prayed, gained insight, or found peace and love and friendship in the buildings which it is our privilege to call home.