After graduating from Penn State University in 1998, Sahar Oz worked in marketing management. At the time, his mother was teaching post-b’nai mitzvah education at Delaware Gratz Hebrew High School at the Siegel JCC in Wilmington.
She told Sahar they needed some teachers, so he stepped forward. As a student, Oz had been an active Hillel participant who had founded pro-Israel organizations as well. Judaism meant a lot to him. He figured, why not?
It turned into the decision that set the course of his life.
Oz loved teaching those middle schoolers so much that he pivoted to a career in Jewish nonprofits. He worked for the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, the Katz JCC in Cherry Hill and other organizations before landing at Society Hill Synagogue in 2012.
Today, he’s the executive director, a role he’s held since June 2020. In that time, Oz has helped the synagogue increase attendance at Shabbat services, in Hebrew school and in its young families group.
He said the synagogue has a “huge number of empty nesters” and a “huge number of young children.” He also said it’s “growing in every age cohort.”
When COVID forced the synagogue to shut down in 2020, Society Hill had about 275 member families. Today, it has 420.
“We’ve worked to maintain connectedness and the depth and breadth of the bonds here,” Oz said.
The executive director described his leadership style as open. But through his openness, he also likes to emphasize tradition.
For example, after a year of focus groups with synagogue stakeholders, Oz and other synagogue leaders made the decision to move Hebrew school classes to Saturday mornings from Sunday mornings. Oz and the congregation wanted the students to spend some time in the sanctuary during Shabbat services.
“Shabbat is the beating heart of the Jewish community. We want it to be a fully and truly intergenerational experience,” he said.
Before Oz’s time as executive director, though, Friday night Shabbat services were not exactly a beating heart. They were sparsely attended, with the exception of a monthly musical service. To attract more members, Oz, Rabbi Nathan Kamesar, who was hired in 2018, and Hazzan Jessi Roemer, who was also hired shortly before the pandemic, decided to make the musical service a weekly event from September through May.
Society Hill Synagogue now attracts 60-70 people to those services, according to Oz.
“New people, new ideas,” he said.
The synagogue’s young families group started before Oz became executive director, but it has maintained its bottom-up approach under his leadership.
“It’s run with ideas from our members,” he said.
It has also grown, as it’s also now up to about 95 young children and adults, according to the executive director.
All of this work gives him the same feeling that teaching a few Hebrew school classes did a generation ago.
“I went into the classes energized, and I left the classes energized,” he said.
Oz was born in Rishon LeZion, Israel, about 15 minutes from Tel Aviv, and that’s also where he spent about eight years of his childhood, but his parents came to the U.S. to pursue advanced degrees when he was young.
The future executive director’s mother got her master’s in Jewish education at Hebrew College in Boston, and she taught at the JCC in Wilmington, so Judaism was important to the family. At the same time, Oz describes his upbringing as not particularly religious.
His own awakening started when he was in high school and college, when he began consuming more media and understanding how Jews and Israel were perceived.
“Seeing how the world perceived Jews and how the world perceived Israel certainly had an impact on me. I wanted to illuminate; I wanted to educate; I wanted to present a more real portrayal of Jewish life and learning,” he said.
As a student, first at Wayne State University in Michigan and then Penn State (he moved from Michigan to Pennsylvania with his family), Oz got active in Hillel and launched pro-Israel organizations. Yet, he still didn’t see a career on his Jewish path.
That was until his mother asked him to teach, and then he went out and got the job at the Rochester Federation. His first position there was to organize teen education and Israel trips.
“I loved it. It fueled my energy,” Oz said.
So did future roles that involved working with teens at Hillel at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, the Katz JCC, the Gershman Y and now Society Hill. At Society Hill, he started as director of education before moving up to his current role.
“I’m inspired by the ability to impact people. You see that impact in immediate ways. You also see it in ways that take much longer,” he said.