When Rabbi Howard Cove founded Beiteinu to be a “synagogue without walls” over a decade ago, he was looking for a way to limit the barriers some people face to connecting with the community.

Now, the non-denominational synagogue has over 400 members and reaches geographic areas around the Philadelphia region, which Cove said allows him to provide educational classes and do b’nai mitzvahs, weddings and Shabbat services with a wide range of people.

“It was always intended to be a synagogue without walls, where I would be very versatile, very inclusive, where there would be limited barriers to connecting,” Cove said.

While Cove’s model of inclusiveness has always worked for his congregants, he said that one of the biggest changes he’s noticed in the last few years is the trend toward increased online participation. The synagogue doesn’t have its own building or a consistent physical meeting space, meaning that many people attend services and events virtually.

“Five years post-COVID, I had really thought people would come back to wanting to be in person, that ideally, that would be my preference. But this year [for the High Holidays], the statistics based on the numbers that our streaming service provided us, we probably had almost like a 50/50 split. We had a couple hundred people in person, and a couple hundred people connected through the streaming,” Cove said.

The streaming does expand the congregation’s reach. Cove said some regular participants tune into services while on vacation. His own children watched this year’s High Holiday services from where they live in Switzerland.

Cove added that because it has no physical location, Beiteinu is less expensive to run than a traditional synagogue, which makes it easier for some people to form a long-term connection.

“I don’t have the degree of expenses that congregations with an infrastructure have to support on a daily, monthly and annual basis … and so I think that people like the fact that, from an economic standpoint, what I asked for in compensation is a fraction of what they’d have to pay if they were going to a brick-and-mortar congregation,” Cove said.

Another innovation at the synagogue in the past two years has been programming to help young people navigate increased antisemitism.

Cove said that, after the Oct. 7 attack and the surge of anti-Israel sentiment that followed, especially on college campuses, he thought it would be a good idea to have classes for ninth and tenth-grade students.

“I asked parents, ‘Hey, once a month for about an hour, do you think your child would connect with me in a class where we could talk about Israel, Jewish history, Jewish identity [and] what it means to be a Jew, because they’re going to get to college campuses in a couple years,’” Cove said.

The rabbi said he led 10 educational sessions with the students, and during the last one, he took them on a visit to the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History.

Cove said he plans to do that same program again this year with another 10-15 students, and he remarked that the synagogue’s lack of a formal committee or board makes it easy to schedule events and quickly address immediate needs as they arise.

Cove is still trying to expand the reach of the synagogue across the community. He added that the synagogue is open to interfaith couples and that he’s never been busier with a long list of services, baby namings, weddings and other events.

He added that creating relationships across the greater Philadelphia community is another important initiative he’s working on. It’s part of the inclusive and broad-reaching style of Cove and his congregation.

“In this era of antisemitism, I think one of the better ways to try to respond is to broaden my community’s relationships with other people. The more we’re familiar with each other, the more the good people of all persuasions connect, the better it is for all of us,” Cove said.

bhamelin@midatlanticmedia.com