About Us

 
 

It all started when…

During one of our last lunches together, in the spring of 2000, Ambassador Maxwell Rabb turned to me and said that the most important thing I would do in my life was to found a Reform Synagogue in Milan. Ambassador Rabb was the longest serving US Ambassador in Italy. Before assuming his diplomatic post he had served as President of New York’s famous Temple Emanuel for seven years. Max (Z’’L) and his wife Ruth (Z’’L) have been our  friends since the 1970’s.

While it is difficult for anyone to predict what their legacy will be or what their life will eventually mean, his words have been with me for the last 20 years as we have developed and grown Congregation Beth Shalom, through difficult and joyous times. As the founder of Beth Shalom, I will try in these pages to record how we arrived at where we are today.

Numbers don’t really explain the growth and meaning of a Synagogue but they do indicate how we have served the community and met the needs of the Jewish community in Milan—wherever they originally came from.

Just a brief summary:

  • We have celebrated 4 marriages, including the first ever marriage in Italy celebrated for an inter-faith couple under the Chuppah.

  • We have performed 7 baby namings including one boy who having moved with his family to the state of Washington as an infant, returned to Milan for his Bar Mitzvah at Beth Shalom with his Italian family.

  • Sixteen Jewish boys and girls have been called to the Torah as B’nai Mitzvah including two brothers who celebrated this important occasion in their hometown of Lugano. And let’s not forget Michael Golding, one of our founders and longtime Treasurer who at 82 years age decided to re-do his original Bar Mitzvah.

  • Beth Shalom has welcomed over 43 Jews by Choice into our Community, including 3 families of 5 each. And we currently have another group of young people ready to be converted.

  • Since 2006 We have been honored to have 16 American Rabbis (all members of the CCAR) conducting our services and serving our  Congregation.

We began officially in October of 2002, a group of Americans, British and Italians determined to practice Progressive Judaism in Italy. We were committed to being open, inclusive and friendly in the tradition of worldwide Progressive Judaism respecting the millennial history of Italian Jewry.

We made several important decisions from the beginning which we have followed to today. We adopted the Patrilineal line, recognizing Jewish fathers as well as Jewish mothers. We decided that having a spiritual leader or Rabbi was more important than a physical building—and were the first Reform Community in Italy to develop a Rabbi in Resident Program. And we adopted a ‘min chag’ which was a combination of ritual practiced by London’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue and the American Reform Movement. On our own, we produced a trilingual Siddur for Shabbat morning as well as Machzorim for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. And we designed our Haggadah which we have used successfully for Passover seders for the last 20 years.

But this doesn’t really explain what Beth Shalom has come to mean. One of the essentials of being Jewish in living in a community and feeling that you belong to one. Rabbi Goor, in one of his eloquent Rosh Hashanah sermons described this: “Synagogue provides us with a different model—a community based upon meaningful relationships. It is within a Jewish community that we share life’s special events—from the joy of birth to the celebration of Bnai Mitzvah to the marriages of our loved ones. It is in this community that we find comfort and meaning in our lives”.

In a truly memorable sermon, ‘Talk the Talk, Walk the Walk’ Rabbi Goor said

“Jewish tradition teaches us that we all need to pay more attention as to how and when we walk as Jews”. That is our greatest challenge that we have as Reform/Progressive Jews. The Rabbi continued “To be a good Reform Jew means that each of us must actively choose the path upon which we walk.

For our lives to have a purpose, for our spiritual health, in order to perpetuate a future for Judaism, for the communal health of the Jewish people… we must make the choice to walk the walk”

That is the choice that we made when we founded Congregation Beth Shalom—twenty years ago. And now the story begins.

By David Ross, Honorary President and one of the founding members of Beth Shalom