Temple Beth Rishon marks fifty years on Russell Avenue in Wyckoff as a warm, unaffiliated Jewish congregation that draws from the Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative traditions in equal measure. Founded in 1975, it has grown into a multi-generational community whose services blend traditional prayer with contemporary Jewish music, and whose campus hosts a preschool, a religious school, a thriving adult education program and one of the Memorial Scrolls Trust's rescued Czech Holocaust Torahs. Members describe it as an egalitarian family that welcomes Jews by birth, Jews by choice and interfaith households alike.

An Independent Voice in Bergen County Judaism

The congregation identifies as independent and egalitarian, recognizing both matrilineal and patrilineal descent and appealing to people who lean Conservative or Reform without committing to either denomination's national body. Rabbi Joshua Waxman, a 2003 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College who came to TBR in 2021 after fifteen years at Congregation Or Hadash in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, frames that openness as a matter of principle. He writes that the synagogue's role is to help "Jews and fellow travelers lead lives of meaning, purpose, and joy" and that "inclusive, nurturing, and vital communities" do this work best. Rabbi Emeritus Dr. Kenneth A. Emert, who served as senior rabbi for twenty-two years before retiring in 2017, continues to officiate lifecycle events from California and remains part of the community's life.

Friday Evenings, Saturday Mornings and Shabbat Kulanu

Shabbat at Beth Rishon is participatory and high in energy. Friday evening services begin at 6:00 pm and bring the congregation together for prayer, song and a thought-provoking sermon. After services, an Oneg offers dessert and a chance to meet friends, visitors and newcomers. Saturday opens with a 9:00 am Torah study session followed by the main Shabbat morning service at 10:00 am, followed in turn by another Oneg. Once a month, the community gathers for Shabbat Kulanu, a shortened, informal and family-friendly service designed to introduce young children to a positive Shabbat experience - wine, cheese, challah and juice appear immediately after the service. The High Holidays are marked by age-appropriate youth programs in the Educational Wing and the harmonies of the Kol Rishon choir, while Chanukah, Purim, Simchat Torah, Shavuot, Tu B'shevat, Passover, Yom Ha'shoah and Yom Ha'atzmaut all receive their own combinations of services, meals, candle lightings and family carnivals.

Music as the Language of the Soul

Music is woven into nearly everything that happens at TBR. The Sunday morning bagel brunch in the Religious School is animated by trope, holiday celebrations bring out their own melodies, and Shabbat services reach a steady crescendo under the direction of Cantor Educator Nancy Dubin. The Kol Rishon choir, made up of high school students and adults with open rehearsals on Monday or Wednesday evenings, rehearses extensively before the High Holidays and lends its voices to services throughout the year, including on Shabbat Shira, a musical Shabbat evening service that mixes classical and contemporary choral literature. The choir also travels to area nursing homes to perform for residents, sharing what the congregation describes as the healing nature of Jewish music.

Schools for the Youngest Members of the Community

Education is a second backbone of the congregation. The Andrew Friedland Early Childhood Learning Center is a fully licensed preschool serving children from eighteen months through age five, organized into Mini-Twos, Twos, Threes and Pre-K Superstars classrooms and enriched by Smartboards, weekly art, music, science and physical education, an outdoor playground and a fenced garden with a tricycle path. Extended day care is available through an Early Room and a Late Room, and weekly after-school "specials" on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons have included cooking, art, tennis, Spanish and soccer. Each summer, Camp Little Feet offers a flexible seven-week program for ages two to five with twice-weekly swimming lessons at Goldfish Swim School in Wyckoff, themed weeks and full-time camp counselors accompanying every bus ride.

The Addison M. and Elizabeth Opper Religious School runs on Sundays from kindergarten through the b'nai mitzvah year, with students in grades three through six ideally meeting twice a week as they work toward reading Hebrew and leading services. The seventh-grade year adds monthly meetings with the Rabbi and sessions with the Cantor and an in-house tutor, while high schoolers can continue into a Confirmation class and serve as Madrichim, the teacher-aide program for eighth through twelfth graders, earning community service hours and a stipend.

Lifelong Learning for Adults

Adult education at TBR is organized under the title Lifelong Learning and offers enough variety that a member can study week after week without repeating a setting. Rabbi Waxman's programs include Nosh and Drosh, a Saturday morning Torah study over bagels and coffee, and Learning for Life, three Tuesday-evening sessions a semester at 7:30 pm. Lunch and Learn meets five Wednesdays a semester at 12:15 pm in the Small Ballroom, where speakers address topics of general and Jewish interest while attendees bring a pareve or dairy lunch. The Distinguished Speaker Breakfast brings a renowned scholar to TBR each fall and spring under the patronage of the Fred Emert Memorial Fund. The Reader's Circle Book Club gathers on the third Thursday of each month at 7 pm over Zoom, and the occasional Trips series visits museums, exhibits and historical sites of Jewish interest around the New York metropolitan area.

The Henry and Elaine Kaufman Center for Jewish Living

In 2021, the congregation named The Henry and Elaine Kaufman Center for Jewish Living in honor of two of its longest-tenured members. Henry Kaufman, an economist who fled Wernigerode as a child and built a distinguished career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Salomon Brothers, sits on the board of Tel Aviv University and is a Life Trustee of The Jewish Museum. Elaine Kaufman, Honorary Chair of the Kaufman Music Center and a former member of the Jewish Museum and Whitney Museum fine arts committees, has shaped the center's programming through her lifelong devotion to music and education. The center opens concerts, lectures and conversations to members and non-members across Bergen County; past programs have featured pianist Itay Goren, the Americana duo Nefesh Mountain, soprano Lily Arbisser and pianist Dimitri Malignan performing works by Jewish composers of the Holocaust, and author Dan Grunfeld tracing a family's journey from the Holocaust to the NBA.

A Czech Torah's Second Home

Since 1984, Beth Rishon has been the custodian of Memorial Scroll #431, one of 1,564 Czech Torah scrolls rescued from a deteriorating pile in the Michle Synagogue outside Prague and now distributed around the world through the London-based Memorial Scrolls Trust. Scribed in the late nineteenth century in Ivancice, a Moravian town whose Jewish community traced itself to a synagogue possibly built as early as 956, the scroll was among more than 100,000 religious artifacts brought to the Prague Museum by members of the city's Jewish community after the Nazi deportations of 1942. Two trucks carrying the 1,564 scrolls arrived at Westminster Synagogue in early 1964. Beth Rishon dedicated its scroll on May 4, 1984, and in August 2016 installed a custom cabinet at the entrance to the sanctuary to protect it from further aging. The Torah has played a particular role in b'nai mitzvahs of grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and stands today as a visual link between the congregation and the vanished Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia.

Tikkun Olam and Caring for One Another

Tikkun Olam, the work of repairing the world, runs through a network of member-led committees. The Community Outreach committee coordinates food drives, cooks at area shelters, and supports hospitals over the holidays. The Caring Committee welcomes new members and families with new babies, calls congregants who are praying for someone who is ill and reaches out with condolences and a Shabbat meal after a loss. The College Connection package sends care and Jewish festival treats to students away at school. The Women's Club offers sisterhood programming, the Men's Club handles cooking at events and organizes social outings, and T'Green Olam has overseen a sustainability program that the congregation says has nearly halved the building's energy consumption over five years.

Facilities, Kosher Kitchen and a Wooded Backdrop

The TBR building is a contemporary single-story structure set on a partially wooded property with a pond and an outdoor patio. The sanctuary is flooded with light from a wall of stained-glass windows completed in 2022 and gifted by the Kaufmans; the lobby opens onto the Grand Ballroom, the Small Ballroom serves adult-education gatherings and the building's modern kosher kitchen accommodates events of nearly any size. The parking lot has ample room for celebrations, the building is accessible and facilities are available for handicapped guests. Members host bar and bat mitzvahs, auf-rufs, baby namings, birthdays and anniversaries in the sanctuary, and outside organizations rent the ballroom and grounds for weddings, lifecycle events and other private gatherings, drawn in part by the convenience of being only forty minutes from New York City.