TORAH TORAH TORAH | Congregation Beth El Binah’s rabbi, Stephen Fisch, and its former president, Diane Litke, hold two of the synagogues’s torahs in front of the ark. The synagogue has called the Resource Center home for 22 of its last 30 years. (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)
Congregation Beth El Binah, a Jewish synagogue with an outreach to the LGBT community, began when a group of friends gathered at the home of Mike Grossman and George Amerson for a Passover Seder in 1984. Members of the group attended services at other temples, but liked to celebrate holidays together by breaking the fast after Yom Kippur and with Purim, Hannukah and Sukkot parties.
As the group grew, it began performing its own Shabbat service once a month. In 1992, the congregation joined the Union for Reform Judaism, becoming the seventh predominantly LGBT synagogue in the U.S. to join the Union and the third largest (or the smallest — depends on how you look at it) Reform temple in Dallas.
In 1997, the congregation welcomed visitors from around the world hosting the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas. A few months later, they were one of several local hosts of the Union for Reform Judaism biennial at the Anatole Hotel. At that conference, the more than 950 member synagogues voted to begin same-sex marriage with only a few dissenting votes.
Along the way, Congregation Beth El Binah was a founder of The Vogel Alcove–Jewish Coalition for the Homeless, which runs a state-of-the-art daycare facility for children of the homeless in Downtown Dallas, has sponsored an exhibit on gays during the Holocaust at the Dallas Holocaust Museum, repeatedly won the “most creative” booth at the Jewish Arts Festival (until the Orthodox synagogues got pissed off and they canceled the competition) and, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, brought AIDS education to other synagogues in the Dallas area.
They’ve even helped other Reform temples get their start by lending one of their Torahs to a new congregation in Colleyville, and one to a new synagogue in San Antonio.
Rabbi Steve Fisch has led the congregation for three years, and the synagogue has called the Resource Center home for the past 22 years.
ROUND-UP SALOON
1980
CANDY MARCUM
1981 (began counseling practice)
BLACK TIE DINNER COMMITTEE
1982
This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition May 16, 2014.