In the spring, Rabbi Janine Jankovitz decided to leave Congregation Beth El-Ner Tamid for Kehilat HaNahar.
She did not leave Broomall for New Hope until June 1, but the spring announcement allowed CBENT to start looking for Jankovitz’s replacement.
It didn’t take long to find her: Rabbi Michal Morris Kamil is moving to Broomall from Los Angeles this summer.
Marc Belitsky, the president of CBENT, said synagogue leaders like Kamil’s 30-plus years of educational experience along with her warm demeanor. The 61-year-old rabbi was ordained in 2022 by the Academy for Jewish Religion-California.
Kamil, for her part, said she only got to work with the older generation during her rabbinical school rabbinate at Ahavat Torah in LA. She wanted a chance to work with multiple Jewish generations. She also said she appreciated that CBENT, a Conservative synagogue, was trying to appeal to diverse groups of Jews.
The shul has implemented gender-neutral bathrooms in recent years, according to Belitsky. It no longer requires new members to write male or female on their personal information forms. It also now refers to bar and bat mitzvahs as b mitzvahs.
“She’s very interested in individuals, what their needs are, what their wants are, how to reach them spiritually,” Belitsky said of Kamil.
“I missed working with multi-generations, especially in those communities that have such a great awareness of wanting to respond to the challenge of being a religious and cultural community in the 21st century,” said Kamil of the synagogue. “CBENT is a wonderful community that is doing just that.”
As a 2022 Jewish Exponent story explained, “the roots of CBENT date to 1956.” That was the year when “a few congregants from Beth El in West Philadelphia moved to Broomall.”
Initially, they met at a local Presbyterian church, the Paxon Hollow Country Club and other locations. But as the congregation grew, members bought a property on Paxon Hollow Road. The synagogue eventually attracted hundreds of members.
But between 1992 and 2000, it merged twice. Then between 2013 and 2022, its membership dropped from 270 families to 160. In 2020, Rabbi Barry Blum retired after three decades on the pulpit.
In 2021, Belitsky and others formed a strategic task force to figure out the synagogue’s future. One year on from the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd’s death, they wrote up a new value system around inclusivity.
The mission can be found on cbent.org:
“Congregation Beth El – Ner Tamid fosters a welcoming, vibrant, and inclusive Jewish community blending the traditions of the Conservative movement with progressive teachings,” it reads.
The first two values in the “Values” section are “Community & Inclusivity.”
The changes to the bathrooms, personal information forms and b’nai mitzvah ceremonies followed.
Belitsky credits these changes for a 15-20% increase in membership over the last two years.
“We are much more aware,” he said. “We put ourselves in other people’s shoes.”
He acknowledged that Jankovitz helped increase the size of CBENT’s preschool and religious school during her four years. Both have tripled in size.
“We’re growing. The energy’s awesome. People are involved. We’re fiscally stable. We see ourselves as the center of the Jewish community in Delaware County,” Belitsky said.
And into that future walked Kamil.
In the spring, she visited the synagogue for her weekend-long interview. She attended Shabbat services, stayed for lunch and talked with preschool and Hebrew school parents.
“And there was an overwhelming excitement about her coming to our program. They just felt that they could really connect to her,” Belitsky said.
Ellen Glassman, the synagogue’s educational director, added that, “She really listened. She listened to what they said, and then she reflected back to them in a way that acknowledged what they said and questioned them further.”
That connection was important, according to Glassman.
“Our Mensch Making Academy (preschool and religious school) is based on giving parents some agency. They work side by side with kids to repair the world,” she said.
Kamil worked for more than 30 years in curriculum and development for educational organizations. She worked for schools, synagogues and even Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance organization.
But she became a rabbi to dig deeper into the spiritual.
“There is such a need today within our communities to provide both the personal and collective support needed in times of change, transition, threat, sorrow,” she said.
