Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
Rabbi Abi Weber of Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel didn’t know she would end up in Philadelphia.
She and her wife were open to moving to New York, New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania to accommodate her wife’s position as a professor at Princeton University. When she took a virtual interview with the synagogue in Center City, COVID-19 was still rampant, and Weber wasn’t sure she would be able to get a good feel for the communities that were interviewing her.
Very quickly, it became apparent that Weber had found her home.
“I got a feeling, just from everyone I was speaking to via Zoom, that this was a community not just that I would serve, but that would also feel like my community, and that felt really important to me,” she said. “I didn’t want this to just be the people that I worked for, but also the people that I walked beside.”
Weber has been associate rabbi at the synagogue since the summer of 2021. Joining the community at that time has given Weber a deep appreciation for the work that goes into creating a thriving Jewish community. BZBI has been around in some form since the mid-1800s, but when Weber joined, the challenges weren’t all that different from those of a small, new shul.
“It was a slow rebuilding process. It didn’t happen right away. First, our services were pretty small, and then they steadily got bigger and bigger,” she said. “It was difficult, but over time it got easier and easier.”
Services are now back in full swing. A Friday night at Beth Zion-Beth Israel is busy: There is an early dinner at 5:30, a Kabbalat Shabbat after that and then a late dinner for the older crowd. Weber said that the synagogue also loves to hold speciality Shabbat services.
“Last week, we had our Teacher Appreciation Shabbat and we had something like 130 people come to the early dinner — it was toddler mayhem,” she said with a laugh.
Weber’s background in Jewish professional work is diverse. She worked in Chicago with Avodah, a Jewish service organization. She said that this work always felt to her like the kind that she should be doing.
“I do feel that my mission in the world is to support the most vulnerable, and Judaism very clearly teaches us that the highest value is to support those in need,” she said.
In fact, Weber said that for a short period of time, this work led her to believe that maybe she wasn’t meant to work as a congregational rabbi.
“I struggled with moving to becoming a synagogue rabbi because I’m not working all the time on behalf of the most vulnerable — I’m working on behalf of the whole community, which includes people from all walks of life,” she said.
She said that she reconciled this by deciding to use her position to better the lives of those vulnerable members of society. Beth Zion-Beth Israel works with a homeless shelter in its neighborhood, with volunteers from the shul cooking and serving food there. The shul also holds events to benefit the larger community, like a blood drive held in partnership with Tenth Presbyterian Church.
Weber said one of the best parts of the job at BZBI is that it has given her the chance to learn from Senior Rabbi Abe Friedman. Friedman has been with the synagogue since 2015 and has helped mentor Weber.
“I feel so lucky that I have had the opportunity to learn and be a collaborator and a co-creator with him of all these different programs, and just to learn from his experience,” she said. “[Whether it be] complicated family dynamics, just learning how to manage a congregation and the issues that come up between people, the families, community, staff, board, all the different parts that make synagogues so messy and complicated and beautiful.”
Weber was born in Havertown but grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Now she lives in Center City, not far from the shul.
“Philly is an incredible Jewish community, and I think one of the things that makes Philly special is it’s a big city that feels like a small town. We see people 20 times a day, just walking around the neighborhood, and the Jewish community here is so tight-knit,” she said.
The values that Weber sees in her neighbors, co-workers and congregants are the same ones she wants to pass on to her two daughters.
“There are people who go between the different movements and bridge the communities. It’s just a feeling of a very vibrant, alive, excited Jewish community inside our city even though it is very expensive to live in Center City. I think people are really fighting for a way of life, a way of life that’s walkable, that is committed to certain ideals, you know, to living in a diverse environment and having this observant Jewish community here,” she said.
Weber said that, at one of their first services at BZBI, she and her wife brought their eight-month-old baby, and the baby was immediately the star of the show. Before Weber knew it, her daughter was being brought up to the bimah for a kiddush with another congregant.
“Everybody loved her the first time we came here. By the end of the service, someone else was holding the baby. I remember looking over at my wife and [saying] ‘What is going on? What is our baby doing up there?’” she said. “It was so perfect — we immediately felt comfortable and connected.”
