Preparing video...
0:00 / 0:00
From WASP to Orthodox
1,100 views
Episode 11: Lower Merion Synagogue Philadelphia: See The Good Campaign Every thriving Jewish community eventually needs a place to call home. In 1954, a handful of families came together to build what would become Lower Merion Synagogue. Today, hundreds of families fill its halls every Shabbos. Children run through its classrooms, teens gather for minyanim, and Jews from every background walk through the same doors feeling welcomed. Buildings don't create communities. The people inside them do. And every generation has the opportunity to leave the next one something even stronger than they inherited. See the Good.
Categories:Jewish Community / Orthodox Judaism
Comments
Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
My deed of my house says, [music] "No
blacks, no Jews, no Catholics."
>> We are standing in the parking lot of
one of the largest shuls in
Pennsylvania. [music]
>> Yes.
>> Here in Lower Merion with Rabbi Fox.
>> Before we get to what you do, tell me a
little bit about this community.
>> This [music] is the Lower Merion
community, and it's about 70 years old.
[music] The fact that there's an
Orthodox stronghold on the what's called
the Main Line, which is literally one of
the historically WASPiest communities in
the entire world.
>> cannot buy here.
>> And cannot buy here. My deed of my house
[music] says, "No blacks, no Jews, no
Catholics." And the community is young,
and there is And the schools are
growing. There's been two new schools
that have opened in the last couple
years. And it's really exploding [music]
in terms of that type of of
youthfulness. They're so warm, and
they're so authentic, and they're such a
mix. [music] You can really find your
type of Judaism in what they call
Orthodoxy here. I grew up in Cincinnati,
Ohio. My My father's [music] family were
the founders of American Reform Judaism.
When I left that, really after high
school, I thought I was done with
Judaism forever. I went to the
University of Pennsylvania as an
undergraduate myself, and I was one
[music] of the first students of the
Ma'or program at Penn, which is an
all-male program. And when I graduated
and became from slowly, and once the
yeshiva I I started my family in Israel.
And then [music] when I relocated here
to to do the Ma'or Penn thing, we found
there was a beauty in this [music]
community and and an authenticity. I get
to go to campus every day and meet the
best Jews in the world, and I really do
mean that. These These young Jews at the
University of Pennsylvania
>> are wicked smart.
>> Wicked [music] smart, and And but not
too smart. Not weird. Not weird like at
Yale, right?
>> Yeah, or MIT.
>> Yeah. [music]
>> Or Harvard.
>> Yeah, or Harvard.
>> But
>> [laughter]
>> But if you're in any university near
Penn, say hi to Rabbi Fox. Come have an
amazing [music] Shabbos here.
>> 41st and Spruce.
>> On campus.
>> And then come here for Shabbos and see
what a [music] full observant
>> Even if you go to Yale, you can come.
>> Whoa.