Temple Touchstone

Here is the letter that Co-President Carole Sharoff wrote to Temple Beth El in Stamford, Connecticut, where she grew up.

December 27, 2007

A terrible thing happened in Gloucester, MA early on Shabbat morning, December 15. Temple Ahavat Achim, housed in a structure parts of which date back 240 years, fell victim to flames that had engulfed a neighboring apartment building and burned to the ground. Twenty-nine people lost their homes and most sadly, one man lost his life. My congregation has lost just about everything from the sacred such as our five Torah scrolls to the mundane such as the Rabbi’s favorite gray suit. At a service that morning in donated space, a dramatic moment was forever engraved in our congregational memories when members of the Fire Department marched one by one into the the sanctuary cradling in their arms what they could find: some of our bronze memorial plaques, frozen tallit and yarmulkes stained by smoke and ash, a few hearty siddurim and shared tears. They also recovered and returned one charred Torah and the Star of David that had graced the exterior of the Temple.

We are coalescing as a community without walls, homeless for the moment, but drawing on shared tragedy and all of our strengths, and comforted by the kindness and generosity of strangers and friends around the world.

I wrote to Rabbi Hammerman because as co-President of Temple Ahavat Achim I find myself reaching back to my childhood experiences at Temple Beth El. That is helping me relate to the Cape Ann families who grew up at Temple Ahavat Achim and have now lost so much. My parents joined Temple Beth El in 1949. My childhood was spent on Prospect Street at the Shul and at the Jewish Center next door. I remember some of the Beth El presidents who were my parents' friends and contemporaries. It is hard to believe that I am the age that they probably were then! I remember Sunday School and Hebrew School and finding my father at the Men’s Club lox and bagel breakfasts when school was over. When my parents died 3-4 years ago, it was so comforting to my brother Richard and me to know that their funerals would be conducted from the original Temple Beth El sanctuary that was home to them, that I could draw comfort from the familiar stained glass windows which I had memorized during services, that the prayers that I learned at TBE would now be said for them and that their parents’ Yarhzeit plaques would be lit bringing my family together spiritually in an multigenerational hug. My Gloucester friends, some of them 6th generation, some of them elderly, have lost that sense of peace and closure. The windows are all destroyed, the pews have burned and we must start over. The older children of the congregation are worried about where their Bar/Bat Mitzvah’s will be held and the younger children cry seeing the devastation which they can barely understand.

So here I am, standing next to my Rabbi in Gloucester, Samuel Barth, making some very tough decisions but positive decisions and drawing on my childhood experiences. We hope to save some parts of the building that survived such as the granite steps to reuse them or perhaps, in the style of TBE, incorporate them in a sculpture garden dedicated to our history at our future Temple.

I am lucky. I have Temple Beth El as my touchstone, but so many members of my Gloucester congregation have nothing. We are constantly updating our website, www.taagloucester.org. I hope you will take a moment to view some of the pictures and videos of Temple Ahavat Achim.

With love, Carole Sharoff.