Dear Family,
Last week, a good friend, Rabbi David Auerbach, died after an illness. He was the rabbi emeritus at Bet Shira (which means House of Song) Congregation. It was four blocks down 120th street from St. Louis parish in Miami.
In the mid-eighties Rabbi Auerbach gathered 200 families and formed the congregation. By May 1988 they had built their synagogue. During the latter part of the construction, four teenagers defaced the building before it was even completed. At first everyone thought it was skinheads or someone else weird. Imagine their surprise when they found out they were teenagers from the neighborhood, good families, etc. etc. etc.
Anyway it was on our street and somehow I wanted to do something. So we made a big Star of David and placed it on front of the Church on the 120 Street side. When the vandalism occurred, Archbishop McCarthy was one of the first to show up as well. I had been involved with the local chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, later renamed the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) but I could not recall being at a Jewish worship service.
A day or two later I got a call from Rabbi Auer¬bach and he invited me to the temple for the Friday evening service to thank us. I said that really wasn’t necessary at all. He said, “You don’t understand. For centuries Jews have stood alone. Now you said, ‘You are not alone.’” Wham! So of course I went and so did some of my parishioners.
That began the relationship that saw us preach in each other’s worship spaces. They gave me a kippah (the cap that looks like a bishop’s zucchetto) and on it was embroidered ‘Father Jim’ on one side and my name in Hebrew on the other. It’s a red, almost maroon color. Archbishop McCarthy later told me that I should take good care of it because that was as close to getting a red hat as likely I was to come.
When we invited Rabbi Auerbach to St. Louis he told me later that it was the first time he had been in a Catholic Church for worship, much like myself. We used to do an Interfaith service at Thanksgiving with ourselves and some of the Protestant churches in the neighborhood.
I’d like to go back to the NCCJ for a minute. When it was founded in 1927, it was formed as a response to the anti-Catholicism that was becoming a part of Al Smith’s candidacy for the presidency. As time passed it took on more issues and by the mid-nineties changed the name to broaden its greater inclusion of social and religious questions. It was pretty clever to keep the initials NCCJ. Probably saved a bundle on monogramed note paper.
The current rabbi at Bet Shira is Rabbi Mark Kula. I know him because in Rabbi Auerbach’s time Mark was the cantor. He later was ordained a rabbi and came back to his longtime community as their leader. It reminds me of when I was an assistant pastor at St. Louis and later came back to be pastor. I hope Mark will have as many years being the leader as I did.
Speaking of St. Louis, I was there last Sunday. (Thanks to Father Brohammer who once again came to celebrate here while I was there.) St. Louis dedicated their new Fellowship Center which is a combination of gym and stage. It can seat 963 which is more than the worship space and will be a blessing allowing a greater space for a huge community. As I looked around I thought, “I wonder if it has a kitchen.” Then I remembered we built that 20 years ago. It’s amazing how many names I forgot in six years but they still smiled and that was a great blessing for the day. Moral: keep smiling,
In Jesus,
