By Stacey Dresner

WEST HARTFORD – Several former spiritual leaders of the Young Israel of West Hartford be in town on Sunday, March 22 to join in the celebration of the Orthodox synagogue’s 50th anniversary at a gala dinner to be held at Tumble Brook Country Club in Bloomfield.

Noting the evening’s theme, “Celebrating Our Past-Building Our Future.” 

“We wanted to honor the synagogue, but we are clearly acknowledging the support and the legacy of those individuals that took us on that journey,” said Sidney Ulreich, chair of the anniversary celebration committee. 

“It’s a celebration not only for Young Israel, but for the entire community. The greater Hartford community has been very supportive of our synagogue over the years,” he says. “We are also reaching out to people who have left the community. There is sort of a kinship, a bond that we have with those people who have been here before, who raised their kids here and either went to Florida or other points. We’ve maintained those relationships.”

That covers the past.

In terms of the future, Young Israel is working on plans to expand the synagogue building on Albany Avenue to make room for its growing congregation.

“We are in the midst of an incredible time of growth where we have almost doubled our membership in the last four years,” says Rabbi Tuvia Brander, the congregation’s spiritual leader. “On the High Holidays we have a service upstairs in the main sanctuary and then we have to have one downstairs in the social hall because we have basically outgrown the sanctuary. And on any given Shabbat, the place is pretty full. We continue to grow in leaps and bounds.”

Young Israel is at the forefront of efforts to attract young Jewish families living in other cities to settle in West Hartford. 

Last December Brander and several Young Israel members manned a table at the Orthodox Union (OU) Jewish Community, Home and Job Relocation Fair in New York, working to promote West Hartford to Jewish families looking for a more affordable place to raise their families. Their effort, says Brander, was focused not only on the Young Israel community, but also on others from across the Jewish spectrum.  

Young Israel of West Hartford was founded in 1968 after a split between members of the Young Israel of Hartford who wanted to remain in the shul’s original home on Blue Hills Avenue in Hartford, and those who wanted to move to West. After splitting from the Hartford shul, Young Israel of West Hartford’s fledgling congregation moved into a small house located at its current address on Albany Avenue. 

“The group bought the house and the synagogue moved in dribs ands drabs from the building in Hartford to the building in West Hartford,” says Mark Trencher, a longtime member. (Young Israel of Hartford eventually relocated to Trout Brook Drive – though no one can recall the exact year – where it was based for many years.)

Trencher and his wife, Sandy Trencher, joined Young Israel in 1976 after moving to town from New Jersey when he got a job at Aetna Insurance Co.

“We came up here on a Sunday and drove around and met the president of the synagogue, and he welcomed us and took us around to meet the families,” Trencher recalls. “It was a very small congregation, somewhere around 40 families. We liked the community; we liked the warmth of the people and the service. So, we instructed our real estate agent to find something within reasonable walking distance since we walk on Shabbat and we had a two-year-old at the time.”

The Trenchers raised their three children at Young Israel, where he has served on the board as treasurer and president.

“My wife and I are currently number three in terms of seniority in the shul. When we moved here I was Number 43 – the youngest person,” says Trencher, with a laugh.

Dr. Robert Harris and his wife, Evelyn, moved from Oklahoma City to West Hartford in 1967.

“That first year we rented a house on Sequin Road and I walked to Young Israel on Blue Hills for a year before it opened on Albany Avenue and we joined the West Hartford synagogue. It was a very small congregation back in 1968 and it was pretty crowded,” Dr. Harris says. “It has been our spiritual home. Our kids were brought up in that synagogue and most of our friends are members of Young Israel.”

The congregation grew, and in 1978 the house Young Israel of West Harford originally occupied was torn down for a new synagogue building.

Stu Miller, a member since 1982, said that that new building was pretty bare bones. 

“It was never quite completed,” he notes. “It had cinder-block walls. It was really un-aesthetic; no furniture – We were sitting on folding chairs. That really says it all.”

After a fire in 1983, Miller chaired a rebuilding committee with Larry Gelb. Miller and Gelb, who later became president and vice president respectively, were part of a group of active leaders in the 1980s that included members like Norbert Lis and Bob Patel. 

“We were on the ground floor for the growth and the growing pains of an evolving congregation, Miller says. “We were a small congregation with a part-time rabbi, and we weren’t sure if we could afford a rabbi much less rebuild the shul.”

Rabbi Mendy Rosenfeld, who came on board part-time in the mid-‘80s, led the shul during the rebuilding of the synagogue building that stands today. Ten years later, he left and Rabbi Daniel Cohen came on board, becoming Young Israel’s first full-time rabbi. 

“There was a spike in growth under Rabbi Cohen, but mostly we have seen steady growth,” Miller says.

Today, the congregation is outgrowing its space at a rapid pace. 

“We have had an influx of young people. It’s very exciting and of course we have a lot of children; we have a lot of youth,” says Trencher.

Rafi and Ronit Kaufman and their two young children are a part of that growth.

Rafi, who works at Aetna, and Ronit, a professor at Yale, joined Young Israel in 2018, moving from New Haven with sons – Yoni, four, who will start kindergarten at the New England Jewish Academy in the fall; and one-year-old Shai.

“Rafi had been commuting to Windsor from New Haven for about three years before we moved,” explains Ronit. “We loved our visit to Young Israel of West Hartford when we came in the summer of 2017 for Shabbat… we were overwhelmed with the friendliness of the entire shul. We had been living in a community with very few small children and during our first visit to West Hartford, Yoni, two and-a-half and kind of shy at the time, was embraced by the kids in the community. He spent an entire afternoon having the time of his life at the summer backyard Seudah Shlishit [the third meal just before the end of the Sabbath].” 

The Kaufmans became members of Young Israel soon after moving to West Hartford.

“We love that the community is both large enough to have interesting people with a diversity of opinions and actions, while at the same time feeling small enough to provide an opportunity for everyone to matter and anyone to make a difference,” says Ronit.

Stu Miller credits both Brander and the entire Young Israel community for the uptick in membership.

“The day school, the shul and the Orthodox community work hand-in-hand and I think what Rabbi Brander is successfully doing is tapping into the talent that works in these various parts of the shul community to bring more younger families in. He is dynamic, effective and I think he is going to help us grow considerably,” Miller says. “It’s also really about a community that is coming of age; that has a lot more people…with larger tentacles all over the Northeast.”

Brander said that Young Israel’s growing congregation will be well served by the new expansion. The plans call for an increase in the size of the sanctuary – and moving the mechitza – the separation between men and women – down through the middle of the sanctuary. The mechitza now divides the front and back. 

The plan also will add needed office space, and elevator, and classroom space for Young Israel’s educational programming, like its YI Kidz Club, an active NCSY (the Modern Orthodox community’s national youth group), the Mussaf & Munch teen Shabbat service, and its Dor L’Dor family education sessions.

Besides the shul’s growth, Brander is also proud of Young Israel’s outreach into the local Jewish community. 

For several years Young Israel has been partnering with the Mandell Jewish Community Center to organize the community Yom Hazikaron program held at the JCC. Young Israel has also brought to Hartford the program Amiel BaKehila, an initiative of Ohr Torah Stone and Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs that brings delegations of Israeli speakers and educators to connect not only with Young Israel, but with organizations around the community. And Young Israel is partnering with the Jewish Federation and its Jewish Community Relations Council on programs like last week’s “Lessons from the Israeli Startup Ecosystem,” with Israeli entrepreneur Ilan Regenbaumm held at the Upward Hartford, the co-working space that is home to several local tech entrepreneurs.

“We’re really proud of where our synagogue is today, spiritually as a place where we can give a spiritual home to so many people in the congregation, but also beyond the congregation,” Brander said. “We have a saying: ‘We’re more than a synagogue. We’re a community.’”