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Family
Simchah

Notable female rabbis join
forces for special Shabbat
services at Beth Shalom.

Rabbi Cantor Marcia Tilchin with her daughter, Yaira, who will be celebrating a second bat mitzvah at Beth Shalom

Barbara Lewis | Contributing Writer

A

n international family with
Metro Detroit roots will have an
extra-special Shabbat Jan. 13-14
at Congregation Beth Shalom in Oak Park.
At late evening ser-
vices that Friday, native
Detroiter Rabbi Cantor
Marcia Tilchin, who holds
degrees and ordination
from both the Jewish
Theological Seminary of
America and the Ziegler
School of Rabbinic
Rabbi Cantor
Studies in Los Angeles
Marcia Tilchin
and now lives in Tustin,
Calif., will lead services
with her husband and children. Special guest
speaker will be her cousin Rabbi Miri Gold,
who grew up in Oak Park and gained fame
as one of the first non-Orthodox rabbis to be
recognized by the government of Israel.
A special oneg Shabbat will follow the
service, sponsored by the rabbis’ families, in
honor of their late mothers, Jeannette Tilchin
and Lillian Gold. The Tilchins were mem-
bers of Congregation Beth Shalom in its early
days, and Jeanette was a past president.
Lillian Gold and her husband, Ruben,
were longtime members of Congregation
Shaarey Zedek. In her later years, Lillian
joined Beth Shalom to be closer to her sister
Jeannette. She celebrated her adult bat mitz-
vah there at age 80 and was a stalwart of the
daily minyan for the last 20 years of her life.
At Shabbat morning services, Tilchin’s
youngest child, Yaira Spitzer-Tilchin, will
celebrate her bat mitzvah at Beth Shalom.
She will lead the prayers, read Torah and haf-
tarah and present a d’var Torah (teaching).

14 January 5 • 2017

degree from HUC-JIR.
Since her ordination, Gold has served as
the religious leader of Birkat Shalom, a small
regional congregation that serves Kibbutz
Gezer and the surrounding community.
In Israel, the designated rabbis of regional
councils are paid government employees.
But, until three years ago, the government
recognized only Orthodox rabbis. Even
though the region’s residents turned to Gold
for clerical services and recognized her as
their rabbi, their tax dollars were used to
pay the salary of a local Orthodox rabbi.
Residents had to raise additional funds to
support Gold.
Israel Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein
decided the case at the end of May
2012, recognizing Gold and 14
PIONEERING RABBI
other Masorti (Conservative) and
Miri Gold achieved worldwide
Progressive (Reform) rabbis. It took
recognition in 2005, when she and
until 2014 for Gold to draw her first
the Israel Religious Action Center
salary.
(IRAC), the legal arm of the
Weinstein’s decision also enabled
Israel Movement for Progressive
the regional council to use funds
Judaism, petitioned for her to
from the Ministry of Religious Affairs
Rabbi Miri Gold to build a 1,500-square-foot building
be recognized as the rabbi of the
regional council that includes
for the congregation, located at the
Kibbutz Gezer.
center of Kibbutz Gezer.
Gold has lived on the kibbutz in central
Gold and the other non-Orthodox regional
Israel since making aliyah in 1977. She and
council rabbis do not have the ability to
her husband, David Leichman, have three
officiate at Jewish ceremonies and have no
adult children, Eliora, Arishai and Alon.
authority over Jewish law.
A graduate of Berkley High School and
Gold’s visit to Detroit is part of a tour to
the University of Michigan, Gold decided to
raise awareness and funds for completion of
become a rabbi in 1993 after she officiated at the Birkat Shalom building. At Beth Shalom
her daughter’s bat mitzvah. She was ordained and elsewhere, she’ll talk about the accom-
by the Reform Hebrew Union College-Jewish plishments and challenges facing liberal Jews
Institute of Religion in Jerusalem in 1999,
in Israel, including her own case and the
when she was 44. She also holds a master’s
ongoing efforts of Women of the Wall.

Tilchin and her husband, Scott Spitzer,
decided to observe Yaira’s coming of age both
in Michigan and in California to accommo-
date family members unable to travel.
“Our son, Avi, had three bat mitzvah
celebrations in 2010-2011, one in Detroit,
one in Syracuse and one in California, so
the precedent is set,” Tilchin said. She and
Spitzer also have another daughter, Sheindl
Spitzer-Tilchin, who is named after her bub-
bie, Jeannette.
Yaira said she didn’t mind celebrating her
bat mizvah so far from her California home.
“I am grateful to Beth Shalom for opening its
doors to me so that I can celebrate this spe-
cial day in a place that was and is meaningful
to my family,” she said.

INNOVATIVE RABBI
Marcia Tilchin’s story is also impres-
sive. She enrolled in the cantorial school
at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America in the early 1990s and added
the rabbinic program a few years later.
After being ordained as a cantor, she
moved to California to take a position at
Conservative Congregation B’nai Israel
in Tustin, which she served for 13 years.
She transferred her rabbinic studies to
the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
at American Jewish University and was
ordained as a rabbi in 2015.
About a year ago, Tilchin left the
congregation and started the Jewish
Collaborative of Orange County (JCoOC),
a creative approach to Jewish engagement
that includes partnership with area syna-
gogues and agencies as well as a range of
mobile independent programs designed
to reach the underserved in her commu-
nity. “Some have called it a ‘Jew Truck’
without the truck,” Tilchin said.
Tilchin knew Beth Shalom’s Rabbi
Robert Gamer from her Jewish
Theological Seminary days. He was happy
to turn his pulpit over to her and her
cousin for Erev Shabbat services and to
invite the Detroit Jewish community to
hear Gold speak. The challenges of Jewish
pluralism in Israel is something that
every non-Orthodox Jewish American
should understand, he said.
“Our moms would be very happy that
we are doing this,” Tilchin said.

*

The service will start at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 13.
Beth Shalom is at 14601 Lincoln in Oak Park.