Congregation Beth El Binah President Josh Manes holds the Philadelphia Torah, adorned with the synagogue’s Rainbow Star.
(David Taffet/Dallas Voice)

Jewish congregation invites Muslim friends to worship with them in their Methodist church home

DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
taffet@dallasvoice.com

Congregation Beth El Binah, a Reform synagogue that meets at Northaven United Methodist Church on Preston Road, celebrates Pride Month at its June 22 Shabbat service with Muslim and Christian friends.

The annual Pride service tradition began after the congregation joined the Union for Reform Judaism, North America’s organization of Reform synagogues, more than 25 years ago. Beth El Binah was the seventh and final predominantly LGBT congregation to join the union. After that, synagogues began changing their bylaws to allow LGBT couples and families to join as households or family units.

The service was originally billed as Family and Friends and was part of a congregational membership drive. The service quickly became one of the most attended each year.

Family and Friends, which has always taken place in June, morphed into Gay Pride Shabbat, which the congregation has dubbed “the ancient biblical holiday.” The service has become an interfaith service, co-hosted by the LGBT groups from the two large Reform synagogues in Dallas — Temple Shalom and Temple Emanu-el.

For this year’s Pride Shabbat, congregation member Linda Evans, who founded UNA-Dallas committee on refugees, invited a number of local Muslim refugees to be the congregation’s guests. Several have attended and told their compelling stories at Shabbat services over the past year.

Evans said considering the political climate in Washington, it’s never been more important to welcome people who are escaping war and other terrible conditions. When she brings some of the refugees she works with to the synagogue, she introduces them as warmly “our new neighbors.”

Cantor Don Croll, who is Beth El Binah’s clerical leader, called it a biblical mandate to welcome the stranger and said he always enjoys meeting the people Evans has brought to services.

Synagogue President Josh Manes said the Pride service has been important to the congregation for a variety of reasons through the years. About 20 years ago, the synagogue’s Torah was a loaner and overdue for return. At a Pride service, the president of the congregation called on anyone who knew of any Torahs that were available to let leadership know.

Torah’s are handwritten on sheets of animal skin that are sewn together and rolled onto wooden scrolls Many are antiquities that can cost $20,000 to $50,000, and they aren’t readily available. To have a new one commissioned can take several years.
Within a week of asking at the Pride service, the congregation had three Torahs.

One member asked his parents, who belonged to an old synagogue in downtown Philadelphia, about extra Torahs at their synagogue. That congregation was shrinking as people moved to the suburbs. The Pennsylvania synagogue offered to put one of their Torahs on permanent loan with Beth El Binah. That member flew to Philadelphia and picked up the 100 year-old scroll.

Another member had an uncle named Izzy who had been president of a synagogue in Long Beach, N.Y. That synagogue had closed as its members retired and moved to Florida. Uncle Izzy had two Torahs stored in a closet in his home in Delray Beach and offered them to the congregation.

Unfortunately, Uncle Izzy had Alzheimers, so the congregation had to pick them up quickly before he forgot. Fortunately, Croll, who’s now Beth El Binah’s cantor but was with Temple Shalom in North Dallas at the time, was in South Florida visiting his mother that week. He and his husband Jan ran over to Uncle Izzy’s house, picked up the Torahs and brought them home to Dallas.

Today, Beth El Binah has the Philadelphia Torah and one of the Florida Torahs. The other they put on loan to a new synagogue in San Antonio.

At this year’s June 22 Pride service, Temple Shalom LGBTQ Pride will host a pre-service reception in the Atrium at Northaven at 6:15 p.m. That will include activities for children.

The Temple Shalom group is several years old. Kimberly Kantor is active with the group and said they’re busy this month. In addition to the Pride Shabbat, they’re on the host committee welcoming the Turtle Creek Chorale to Temple Shalom to kick off the chorale’s four-state Friendship Tour.

Kantor said she enjoys participating in a service with Beth el Binah that celebrates families like hers and sharing that with people of other faiths.

Her wife, Lorie Burch, is a member of Northaven UMC.

“In a time where we feel so divided, it’s empowering to see different faith communities come together as well as showing their inclusion and support of the LGBTQ community,” Kantor said. “As a parent, it is especially impactful for my two girls to see other families like ours represented, embraced and celebrated.”

The service will be conducted by Cantor Croll at 7 p.m. Croll promised to keep the service to an hour. Manes, speaking on behalf of the board, said, “Yeah. Right.”

Temple Emanu-el LGBT will host the oneg Shabbat — the reception after the service — at 8 p.m.

Gay Pride Shabbat takes place on Friday, June 22 with pre-reception at 6:15 p.m., service at 7 p.m. and oneg Shabbat at 8 p.m. at Congregation Beth El Binah at NUMC, 11211 Preston Road. Everyone is welcome.