Two years ago, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day, was rolling around, and members of the Men’s Club and Ritual Committee at Congregation Tifereth Israel realized there wasn’t a big celebration in the area.
Tifereth Israel is in Bensalem, Lower Bucks County, and all the big celebrations were, as Bruce Toben, a member of both groups, put it, “out on the Main Line.”
That led to last year’s Israel extravaganza at Tifereth Israel, covered in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, and featuring art, food, speakers and representatives from a variety of American organizations that help Israel, including the American Friends of Magen David Adom, the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Foundation and others.
This year, as Yom Ha’atzmaut rolls around again, Tifereth Israel is bringing back its celebration. On April 19, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., the Bensalem synagogue will host “Israel at 78,” featuring music, food and trivia, but also offering the same deeper look at the Jewish state that last year’s event offered.
A representative from the Jewish National Fund will be on hand to discuss “what they do as an organization to help Israel,” Toben said. David and Sandy Berenbaum, TI congregants, have organized a Zoom conversation with family members who live in Israel, “to see how they’re celebrating amid the situation over there,” Toben added. Young TI members are going to make cards to send to an Israeli orphanage and a center for children with disabilities.
“We did not want to repeat what we had last year, but we wanted to have other things that attendees would find interesting and come out for,” Toben said.
A year ago, Hamas was still holding Israeli hostages, and the war in Gaza was ongoing.
Today, the hostages are home, and Israel is at a ceasefire in two different wars with Hamas and Iran.
In that April 2025 Philadelphia Jewish Exponent story about TI’s Yom Ha’atzmaut gathering, Toben described “a horrible cloud” above the Jewish community. A year later, the cloud has lifted … a little. Either way, the spirit of the celebration remains.
More than 125 people attended the 2025 event, according to Toben, and he hopes to see a similar crowd this year.
“What we wanted to do as a synagogue is to have a celebration of all the wonderful things that have happened since Israel was created. Yes, horrible things have occurred and are occurring, but we have to celebrate and think of the good times, and that is a lot of the spirit of why we’re doing this,” Toben explained a year ago.
“Our event is not a political statement. What we’re trying to do is celebrate the fortitude, the persistence, the zeal that those early Zionists had. The Herzls, the Weizmanns, the Ben-Gurions, that small group that was able to accomplish so much in celebrating the Jewish state. It’s very similar to July 4. We are celebrating the John Hancocks, and John Adamses, and Benjamin Franklins of that group. That really is the nature and the spirit of what we’re trying to do, to celebrate that early group to develop the Jewish state,” he said last week.
In this congregation with about 140 member families, the emphasis on Israel is not limited to Yom Ha’atzmaut. At a recent Passover gathering with 97 people, the synagogue devoted a space to the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Foundation, and it helped the organization raise money. (Levin’s family remains part of the congregation.)
“Every event, Israel is somehow connected to us,” Toben said.
Tifereth Israel, after all, means “glory of Israel.”
“If you take a look at the contributions of Israel in terms of medicine and science and the humanities, per capita, there are more award winners in those areas than in most countries. Yet if you talk to someone about Israel right now, I think most of the time their focus is on hostilities,” Toben said. “That shouldn’t be the first thing you think of when somebody is mentioning or talking about Israel. What we’re trying to do is show the broader picture.”