The History

of

Beth Am Temple

Beth Am Temple

60 E. Madison Avenue

PO Box 1200

Pearl River, NY 10965

 

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Part 1

The Early History

     Beth Am Temple was founded in April, 1963 with the encouragement of Rabbi Louis Frishman of Temple Beth El in Spring Valley. He felt that this area was in need of a Temple and therefore called a few couples from Pearl River who, in turn, called on a few more couples and set a night for a meeting. Rabbi Frishman brought Rabbi Davis, from the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the UAHC (now the URJ) to this meeting. Rabbi Davis' job was to travel around to different areas to help set up new temples.

    The UAHC sent literature pertaining to the different aspects of Reform temples, which provided us with the essentials needed to start a temple. By this time, many more families were contacted and many were interested. We held an open meeting for the public and were delighted with the response. We knew then a Temple was in the making.

     By the beginning of the summer we had a temporary chairman and different people to do the many jobs necessary in getting started. We had to find facilities to use for worship and also for a school, and then a name for the congregation. Many names were suggested and, after a while, the name Beth Am was selected because it means "House of the People" and we felt it applied very well to us.

     The UAHC helped us set up a dues program for the year and advised us how to contact their school to obtain a Rabbi and we were fortunate to get Rabbi Milton Weinberg, who, in turn, helped us get the religious school organized.

     There were many committees to be formed by the adults who were interested in the different phases of the Temple and the Religious School:

• A Ritual committee, whose job it was to meet with the Rabbi and set up things needed for our services - for instance, to obtain a Torah and an Ark. The Ritual Committee had to purchase prayer books, and much more.

• A Board of Education was formed to set up the curriculum and hire teachers for our school. This was a very important and time-consuming job, and when all was finished we had a fine school running with 140 pupils in it.

• A committee helped write a Constitution for the temple, which established officers and a Board of Trustees which govern the temple.

• A Building committee was established to locate a suitable piece of property to purchase for the congregation's home.

• Other standing committees were established to handle the many other needs of the congregation, including Budget & Finance, Publicity and Fund Raising.

     Our first service was in September 1963, right after Labor Day. Our first president was Al Loeb, the Vice-Presidents were Sanford Katz and J. Baron, the Treasurer was Dr. Herman Waldman. We started with 23 original families and by November 1963 had grown to 76 families.