Who We Are

The congregants of West End Synagogue are engaged in an ongoing, passionate dialogue about Judaism -- pondering the values of tradition versus transformation, balancing spirituality with everyday life.

We are privileged to count among our congregation people who have spoken and written about numerous issues in Judaism in general and Reconstructionism in particular. Here are some of our congregants and samples of their work:

• Gila Gevirtz is a writer and executive editor at Behrman House, a publisher of Judaic textbooks and supplementary materials for Jewish classrooms. She wrote the textbook Living as Partners with God, co-wrote Making a Difference: Putting Jewish Spirituality into Action, One Mitzvah at a Time, and edited The New American Haggadah, co-written by Reconstructionist movement founder Mordecai M. Kaplan. Here is a Dvar Torah, or commentary on a weekly Torah portion, that she delivered at West End Synagogue in June 2001. The occasion was her and her husband-to-be's aufruf, a ritual held at a synagogue on a Saturday shortly before a bride and groom are married.
  
  
• Deborah Dash Moore is professor of religion at Vassar College. A historian of American Jews, she specializes in twentieth century urban Jewish history. Her book At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews explores how the children of immigrants blended elements of Jewish and American culture to create a vibrant urban society. To the Golden Cities: Pursuing the American Jewish Dream in Miami and L.A. tells the story of influential post-World War II Jewish communities. Moore co-edited the award-winning, two-volume Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Moore is now working on a study of Jewish GIs during World War II. Click here to read her article "Today's Ruth," about intermarriage, or here for another article, "A Century of Jewish Women in American Politics."
  
  
• Mel Scult is professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College. His book Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century is the first biography of Reconstructionist movement founder Mordecai M. Kaplan. He is co-editor of an anthology of Kaplan's work entitled Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan. Scult is also editor-in-chief of the Kaplan Diary Project, which will publish a three-volume selection from Kaplan's 27-volume diary. The first volume, Communings of the Spirit: The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan, Volume One: 1913-1934 was published in 2001. Here is an article drawing on Kaplan's diaries, originally published in The Forward. Click here to read an essay Scult wrote about a visit to his son who lives in Mea Shearim, an ultra-orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem.