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AUGUST 27, 2020 OCTOBER 29, 2015| The | TheJewish JewishHome Home
There are hundreds of cars that pass over the Atlantic Beach Bridge every day. In the summertime, the cars line up on the 878 to pay the toll, as passengers look forward to their weekends at the shore. Summer, for many, means catching the sun’s rays and the ocean’s waves. For some, though, the beach is their home. This week, we spoke with two rabbis in the Long Beach community to hear more about the frum community nestled near the shore.
Challah, Crockpots, and Lots of Creativity Rabbi Benny Berlin of the BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach Talks about Leading His Shul During This Time BY SUSAN SCHWAMM
Rabbi Berlin, you came into your position as rabbi of the BACH in a very unusual time. Yes. My first official day on the “job” was June 1, so yes, it was truly unusual. At the time, it was before we were going to be having minyanim altogether at the synagogue. Then, on June 3, we had our first minyan – that was held outside, limited to just 10. Later, as restrictions were eased a bit, we were allowed to have more people attend minyanim. Then we slowly moved inside for some minyan days. We’re still, obviously, wearing masks and being socially distant at minyanim. Being a rabbi mid-pandemic has certainly not been what I would have expected, but in some ways, it actually has made me a better rabbi and a better community member. It’s taught me how to think outside the box to create a community when we can’t be physically together. But my motto has been – and I’ve repeated this constantly to the congregation – that we’re physically distant, but we’re socially together.
How have you been able to achieve that? One of the things that’s been on my mind right now – because we were doing this recently – was that when I thought about being a rabbi, I was looking forward to a community-wide havdalah. The same way we usher-in Shabbos together, kabbalas Shabbos, I wanted to be able to do a community havdalah. I really enjoyed doing that when I was a rabbi on a college campus. I enjoyed everyone singing together and enjoying together. Because of the pandemic, we weren’t able to host a community-wide havdalah. Instead, we had to be creative. Now, we have a community-wide virtual havdalah on Facebook Live and Instagram Live. By the second week, we had more than 375 people joining in, so that’s been really successful. Even though we can’t be together during havdalah, people feel really connected.
Wow, that’s really nice. It’s beautiful. Just so you understand, our shul has around 100 families
