(tranquil music) - [Beth] I'm just always in my mind, I have that verse.

Not always, but whenever I am able to be conscious of this, teach me to number my days so that I may attain a heart of wisdom, and I'm still working on that.

- [Jonathan] Welcome to my synagogue.

- But I know one thing to be true and wise is that- - [Jonathan] That's my sister Beth, a cantor.

- It's all about the people and the connections as- - [Jonathan] These are my parents.

- And to be able to be here in the good times, in the bad times- - [Jonathan] Cross the aisle are the Kirshenbaums.

Dear friends who, in the most meaningful way, are family as well.

- Lived in this building and to be able to be here right now.

- [Jonathan] In this sheol, Temple B'Nai Shalom, in the small city of Benton Harbor, Michigan is where I grew up.

(singing in a foreign language) Beth leads us in Hineh Ma Tov, a song which, in Hebrew, means how wonderful it is for us all to be together.

It's true, it is wonderful but the emotions beneath are complex.

There's sadness, a sense of loss and even fear about what will become of the community my parents and grandparents and generations of Jews before me created.

And there's also a profound irony.

Our parents' generation forged us into becoming the people we are, all committed on some level to our Jewish heritage and faith.

And with all that, we ended up doing what they encouraged us to do.

We left.

And though we come back to visit, we cannot help but wonder, will it live on?

(Beth singing in a foreign language) (waves crashing) (serene music) I'm Jonathan Levin and as funny as it may seem, now I'm an immigrant.

Some years ago I moved with most of my family to Israel.

Now Haifa, the country's third largest city, is my home.

I'm a clinical social worker.

In the virtual age I work in the modern way.

I see clients online, the majority from the U.S., and can do that from just about anywhere.

(serene music) I've adjusted.

Life in Israel is another world from Benton Harbor, a place where being Jewish is a given, the norm.

I mean, over the course of my life I've gone from being part of a minority, now I'm part of a majority.

When I was young it was my family, my friends, and my synagogue that supported my Jewish identity.

Now it's my entire country.

A lot of that's comforting, but some isn't.

Becoming an Israeli has taken me far from my origins.

That distance is what got me to tell this story.

It just came upon me, the idea that my roots, my family, and my family friends, it all stems from this core connection to Benton Harbor.

A connection between my mom and someone who's really close to her, someone who from a long time ago was just another kid in the neighborhood.

- [Sondra] Aswalds lived next to you, right?

Right there, yeah.

- [David] Yeah, about somewhere in there.

- Do you remember the night that their house burned?

You remember the fire?

- Just vaguely.

- Somehow I remember being awakened.

It was wild.

- [Jonathan] On a hot July day, my mother, Sondra Levin, and her lifelong friend, David Kirshenbaum, take a walk with me on Thresher Avenue in Benton Harbor.

(upbeat music) This is where they grew up, right across the street from one another.

Amazingly, they were born just one day apart in December, 1938.

Was this your driveway?

- [Sondra] I'm thinking it could have been.

It had to have been.

Yep.

(upbeat music continues) - [Jonathan] That's David as a toddler.

That's my mom.

Just a baby.

Today, the old houses are gone, but as they walk the empty lots they can bring it all back.

- You were another kid on the block but you were special because you were Jewish.

and I liked you and we played ball together, basically.

And you were there.

- There was a certain energy because of the projects after the war, the fact that this was, not in most part, but in a large part, a Jewish community.

Kosher, I mean a synagogue.

- Orthodox synagogue.

- Another synagogue down the block, on Mary City of David there was another synagogue, which everyone forgets about.

- [Jonathan] It's almost hard to imagine today but these two.

- [David] I want to walk to that back lot.

- [Jonathan] Now pillars in a fading Jewish community grew up in a thriving one.

By the fifties many of the Jews in Benton Harbor owned retail businesses.

But well before that, in the early 20th century, Jews escaping Eastern Europe where they couldn't own land, were attracted to places where they could.

For some families here one of the things that brought their ancestors to the southwest of Michigan was farming.

- Yeah, that would be a strange thing, for the typical Jewish American kid to know anything about Jews and farming and those were skills that they may have brought from the old country and in some cases, I think, that they just adopted that when they got here.

(upbeat music) Grandpa was a farmer.

He was really a blacksmith.

And when he came over and landed in New York, he came with the skills of really knowing how to make mattresses.

Blacksmithing and those kinds of things, metalworking, and he elected to come to southwestern Michigan and to take up the only thing that he could here, there was not enough money in blacksmithing so he went into farming.

- [Jonathan] Benton Harbor and its neighboring city, St. Joseph, are along the fruit belt in southwest Michigan.

Farming was, and still is, (insects chirping) part of the landscape.

But less known is that for a good part of the 20th century, Jewish farmers and Jewish businesses that supported farming, were in the mix.

That included my grandfather.

- My dad's name was Maurice B Gelder and he worked in the family business almost all of his life.

He was the parts manager at Louis Gelder and Sons in Millburg.

He was the third generation of sons.

They sold tractors, spray rigs, anything associated with the physical act of farming.

At the synagogue, as we were there, we were at the Rosenberg brothers.

- There were probably 20 families with close association to the farming.

(upbeat music) - [Jonathan] But for some like, Mendel Kirshenbaum, patriarch of the Kirshenbaum family, farming was never a good fit.

- What I'd heard was that Mendel, my great-grandfather, I think on weekends, on Shabbat, convened the Jewish farmers for Talmud study, but not a lot of talk about farming skills.

So my grandfather didn't graduate, he didn't go past eighth grade, and he left to go work for a truck driver and as he talked about, we were cold and hungry and I think there might have been a feeling that they wished Mendel would've focused a little more on the farming and maybe a little less on the Talmud.

(upbeat music) - He didn't make enough money even to raise his family.

They all left.

My dad ended up a driving truck and went to the McAllen Valley in Texas for a while.

And it was hard.

It was just a hard life for him.

For all of them.

(orchestral music) - [Jonathan] Despite these hardships, our grandparents, like many Americans of that era, were a launchpad for the next generation.

They encouraged education and gave up a lot for their kids to get one.

My dad, Al Levin, was one of the few Jews from Decatur, a small town nearby.

My parents briefly met at a Jewish youth group during their high school years and like my mom, he went to the University of Michigan and for them, that's where it all began.

- And she actually called me and asked me to one of her dorm dances.

That's what kind of started our.

- Were you surprised to get a phone call from her?

- I would've been surprised to get a call from anybody from the opposite sex, to tell you the truth.

(upbeat music) - [Jonathan] That call led to a first date.

Within six months things were getting serious.

And do you remember a time during those six months of, "Huh, I'm in love with this guy," or, "I'm in love with her," do you remember that at all?

- I do.

- I do, yeah.

- It felt different?

- It felt different.

It wasn't casual anymore.

- Yeah I think, I remember one time, just when we were dating, we were taking a walk around campus or something and we had a very serious talk about where this was going and I think we realized (violin music) that it was gonna be a forever thing, right.

- That must have been exciting.

- It was.

When you realize that you're in love.

- [Jonathan] In 1961, my parents were married.

Around the same time, David Kirshenbaum was getting fixed up on a date in Chicago to a young woman named Elaine Shankerman.

- It was a really blustery, wet snow kind of a day and this cute guy comes to the door and sits down on the couch to wait for me to come out, I wasn't ready, getting dressed yet and I came out in my little outfit and with my little cutaway shoes that I got in downtown Chicago and he looked at me and he said, "Why are you in that kind of a shoe in this weather?

"That's ridiculous."

(everyone laughing) And I thought right away, I like this guy.

- [Jonathan] David and Elaine were married in 1963.

At the time, Southwest Michigan was a surprisingly good fit for young Jewish couples, especially those with family here.

Years later, Bob and Diane Yampolsky would get married at the synagogue and for them it was not a hard decision to stay.

- The heart of Benton Harbor was it's businesses, it had a lot of Jewish merchants, grocery stores, it was a strong community and at that time, I think at one time we had like, well throughout the county, we had 215 Jewish families.

And at one point, I know my folks belonged to all three congregations.

(upbeat music) - [Jonathan] As the couples joined, there was another union in the making but this had all the makings of an uneasy marriage.

So at that point, there were two main congregations in Benton Harbor.

Temple Bethel, which was reform.

And Children of Israel, which was conservative.

And as it turns out, my grandfather and my dad were part of secret negotiations to merge the two synagogues.

- I think we all realized that neither congregation was gonna grow that much all by itself so we put this together and we actually kept it secret from the boards of both congregation until they called meetings for both congregation the same night and presented the articles of a merger.

- [Jonathan] To non-Jews, merging two synagogues might seem like no big deal, but it was.

Jack Keller, a prominent local attorney and longtime member of the synagogue, was part of the merger deal.

- We were proud because I don't think there's a lot of communities where congregations of differences gelled and came together and I wanted to be part of that.

- And you helped create that.

- And that was my focus.

- [Jonathan] It worked.

(singers vocalizing) Even though the merger represented the shrinking of two congregations, it ended up creating a stronger one.

Temple B'Nai Shalom was dedicated on the corner of Broadway and Delaware in 1962.

- My aunts and uncles went there.

Bob and Sybil's brother went there.

- So it brought families together.

- It brought our family totally together and we could do more things.

Instead of having two separate Purim carnivals, both small, that we could have one really nice one, that is an example.

And I loved the service.

I mean, I had no problem with the service at all.

(singers vocalizing) - [Jonathan] By the time my generation came along there was definitely a sense that though we were a tiny minority, we were a strong, tight-knit group.

- So when I think about growing up here in this Jewish community, I think about, in a sense, being raised by a village in the way that we talk about it, the cliche of, it takes a village, and I actually had that.

So I've had occasion to actually try to describe the components of that, like how it was that I grew up feeling so taken care of by many families and how the way that the families of Temple B'Nai Shalom conceived of community for real.

(singers vocalizing) - What I talk about now a lot in my 30 years in the Jewish community, is that in some ways I have been recreating this in the community that I'm in now, that sense of, this is a place that can hold you, this is a place that can know you, and I learned it all here.

(singers vocalizing) - [Jonathan] For both the Levins and the Kirshenbaums there were multiple generations all in one place.

- When we moved back to Benton Harbor, I definitely entered into the Jewish life and belonged to the temple and Sisterhood Odessa.

- [Jonathan] In neighboring St. Joseph there was my Aunt Cindy, my mom's younger sister, my Uncle Andy, and their three kids, my cousins.

- It was a wonderful time to raise children.

It wasn't a big Jewish community.

The Sunday school classes were very, very small.

Did my children have Jewish friends?

Yes, a few.

(singers vocalizing) - I think it came very, very natural to us to see the progression of the kids from just going to Sunday school, doing their bar and bat mitzvahs, and then continuing on leading a Jewish themed life.

(singers vocalizing) It was wonderful being part of it.

It really was.

(waves crashing) (serene music) - [Jonathan] Haifa.

It might sound funny because Haifa is such a big and culturally different place.

6,000 miles away from where I was raised.

But for me, it's hard not to stand by the Mediterranean looking west and think about Benton Harbor.

Sometimes I think I'm looking out over Lake Michigan.

(serene music continues) There too is a parallel kind of natural beauty.

Benton Harbor sits along Lake Michigan where the beaches are stunning and the sun sets into the horizon over the water.

But there is more to know.

For many, Benton Harbor is more associated with its struggles than anything else.

Historically, it was a hub for manufacturing, partly in the automotive world, but mostly around one huge company, Whirlpool.

The headquarters of Whirlpool, a giant in appliance making, has remained in Benton Harbor since its founding but over time, white flight and changes in manufacturing left Benton Harbor with fewer resources.

- I think downtown Benton Harbor, back in the 1940s and fifties, and right through the early sixties, I would say 50% of the retail businesses were Jewish owned.

So it was very much, very much like what you read in books actually, about the Jewish downtown and the different family owned businesses.

It was still viable and going very strong when we first got married and moved back here but then it declined rapidly in the 1960s.

(serene music) - [Jonathan] By the seventies, Benton Harbor was mostly African American and lower income.

Just across the river, St. Joseph was mostly white and middle class.

In Michigan, the twin cities, as they were called, were known for their racial and economic divide.

(serene music) Through the years, a lot was done to turn things around and there have been successes.

But on a summer weekend, the contrast between the two communities is pretty stark.

As children, that complex history weighed on us.

- So growing up Jewish in this town was a strange experience, as we all experienced, the only Jewish kid in this class and that class and whatever.

But what I remember is that I was clear that I was anchored somewhere.

I remember like everybody else made the Christmas trees out of the felt and I was very clear that I was to say that I don't do that.

I don't have a memory of being embarrassed.

I have a memory of being clear.

This is who I am.

- The synagogue was always my favorite place to be (congregation singing in a foreign language) and I am probably one of the only people who enjoyed going to Hebrew school and Sunday School and immediately felt the importance of community and felt so safe and enjoyed the sense of belonging from as early as I can remember and just having so much fun with our friends and I just wanted to keep coming.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - Beth means the world to me.

When I turned 13 and she was 16, and I was her first bat mitzvah student.

- I did not know that.

- She'd just gotten her license and I was a really good bat mitzvah student, as she said, and we'd sit in the library and I would show her that I knew all my stuff and she'd be like, "Okay, let's go.

Let's go driving," and so we'd ditch the lesson, my parents never knew, and she'd like drive around with her new license and that was the beginning of our- - Of your long conversation.

- It was beginning of a long conversation.

(group chatter) - [Jonathan] That conversation has never been far from the central topic of what shaped our lives.

No doubt growing up, we had each other, but our parents wanted more for us.

- But we made sure, we tried to make sure, that you were exposed to other Jewish experiences like camp.

Camp was, to us, a Jewish camp was very important for you to go to and see how the rest of the world lived Jewishly.

(singers vocalizing) - [Jonathan] A bunch of us went to camp.

Mike Kirshenbaum and I were in the same grade.

Mike did other stuff, like going to teen conventions run by Young Judea, a Jewish youth organization.

- So the conventions were actually in hindsight, kind of meaningful in a way because it was during adolescence and it was like being around that many other Jewish kids, which just didn't happen, we were so small here and there was a part of it, like, oh, having a crush on a Jewish girl, there really weren't opportunities for that here with our age.

- How'd that go with the girls?

- Not well.

(everyone laughing) I thought about it a lot.

Never acted.

It's part of the deal.

- It is, until I was like 22.

- So, it did sort of open you up a little bit.

Okay, we were here in Benton Harbor, sort of comfortable in B'Nai Shalom, but then we did, you can speak for yourself, we saw that there was a different world, there's more out there, there could be more out there.

- And making those connections to other Jewish youth adolescents, it wasn't just, oh, the people I know in town, but this is something common I share with a lot of people around the world and this is a way to kind of come together around that, so that was meaningful in that way.

(singers vocalizing) - [Jonathan] For my brother, Bruce, camp was more than meaningful.

It shaped his identity and gave him something that other parts of his life could not.

It seems like it was almost more your identity and then going to school and everything else was sort of secondary in a way.

- It was, it was, I mean, all my friends were like, even from here were like, oh, we're not gonna see you in the summer because you're gonna be at camp.

We're not gonna see you on weekends.

And again, with the full support of mom and dad, sending their 17 year old, here take the car for the week and go to Ann Arbor, plan a convention and come back.

- It was never a question.

- It was never a question and I probably took it for granted that this is what people do.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] My sister Beth had other things to consider.

As a teenager, she certainly understood she was Jewish and she would learn she was gay, two attributes in a community with little of either.

Was there a sense that you were gonna come back?

Did you know right away that you weren't gonna come back?

- So, I have a deep love for Benton Harbor but I knew that I would not be able to have a life here.

So especially when we were growing up, this, and now as well, Benton Harbor did not offer, I mean, I'll speak for me personally, there was no gay community here.

There was not an LGBT community and I knew that I didn't feel safe on that front and that there wasn't, weren't gonna be people to meet and all of that.

So I knew I needed to be in a place that offered more, and then of course we know economically and everything.

I knew also that I wanted to work in the Jewish community and that there wasn't enough Jews here for that.

(serene music) - I can imagine, as a parent, what that must be like.

As a parent, not seeing your kids, you want them to be happy, you want them to prosper, you want them to follow their dreams and you don't wanna hold them back, you don't want them to be limited and I think that mom and dad, as hard as it was for them, encouraged us to not limit ourselves to being here.

- The cost is that.

- And the cost is that this community, this temple, may not survive because of that.

(serene music) - What are we doing for dinner tonight?

(group chatter) - [Jonathan] If you went through a list of most of the Jewish kids in Benton Harbor from my generation, most of us landed somewhere else.

Gayle Kirshenbaum settled in Brooklyn.

Her brother, Mike, in Washington State.

(family speaking in a foreign language) My sister, Beth, and brother, Bruce, both live in the Boston area and I'm in Israel.

It wasn't easy for our parents that we all moved away, but they never objected.

- I think all three of you, what you're doing is very Jewishly oriented.

Beth is the most obvious, but you and Bruce becoming social workers, I've always considered social work as being heavily influenced by the prophets.

I mean, they were the ones that told us to watch out for the widow and watch out for the stranger and the children and whether you knew it or not, you're doing that and we're very proud of what all three of you are doing.

You're carrying the banner of Judaism.

- And it's okay that it's not in Benton Harbor?

- It is, I mean, we'd love to have you in Benton Harbor, but we didn't really mean for you to go to Israel either.

But it's fine with us.

You're doing what you need to be doing and if you're happy we're happy and we're proud.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] As the kids from my generation took off to new destinations, the temple maintained a semi peaceful existence with just enough new members trickling in to keep things going, but even if the future was tenuous, the community was still making great connections.

- I came to Benton Harbor, served in, I think it was 1999, and I felt almost immediately at home.

- [Jonathan] Jan Katzew, a scholar in the reform movement, got an invitation to lead the High Holiday services in Benton Harbor back in 1999.

He accepted and for more than two decades he came back every fall to do the same.

- People from this shtetl, from this very small Jewish community, in many respects had an international network.

There were leading doctors.

There were surprisingly worldly lawyers and accountants and teachers and thinkers and I think that my perception, not just of small town Judaism, but of small towns in the Midwest in particular, was exploded by getting to know the human beings there.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] But if spirit was a strength, demographics were a problem.

For any synagogue service to take place, Jewish custom calls for a quorum called a minyan to have at least 10 members in attendance.

- We've lost, over the last couple of years, we lost several key people who attended services and it was difficult getting a minyan before the covid shutdown.

Now we have no idea whether or not, we figure on Friday night we will have a minyan.

Saturday is gonna be very questionable and it's gonna take some work to try to get at least 10 people every Saturday.

- Shabbat shalom everybody.

- Shabbat shalom.

- [Jonathan] Once covid did come, Temple B'Nai Shalom had to adapt, quickly.

For a period of time all services went online.

- [Diane] Let us turn to page 13.

- [Jonathan] On a Friday night my mother leads a Zoom service from the bench of her piano.

- The first two and the last two verses of the (foreign language).

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] The temple no longer has a full-time rabbi and though there are two part-time rabbis who help, services are now conducted mostly by lay leaders like my mom.

- [Diane] But every Friday evening, we have the opportunity to make the journey anew.

- [Jonathan] Diane Yampolsky co-chairs the ritual committee and co-leads services with my mom.

She recalls a time years ago when she was less involved and she didn't want to go to services.

But as she got pulled into other synagogue activities, she started showing up for Shabbat.

- And then I began to have a feeling from it, a part of belonging and not necessarily believe in all that I was praying, and I still don't, but there was a connection and it was like by osmosis, it became part of me.

(singer humming) And we became more of members of a community that we feel is like family.

I mean, I look at your parents, I feel like they're our family.

(singers humming) - We just have grown up together and had families together and shared the joys of our children together and it's a wonderful community.

- It's a gift.

(singing in a foreign language) - The emotions about family, community, and connection at Temple B'Nai Shalom are often raw, right on the surface and there's a simple reason for that.

When you think about it, it all comes down to what's been, so far, an unsolvable problem.

Membership has been in decline for several years now.

But one thing I found interesting, even unexpected, is when I ask people about the future of the synagogue, I got very different responses.

- You never write off a Jewish community because, or as I put it sometimes, don't say kaddish for the role and place of a synagogue in Jewish life because they will revive.

- David Nelson, a retired rabbi who leads services at Temple B'Nai Shalom, was characteristically upbeat.

- So I think that these communities, and this one especially because I have never seen a community that has the vitality and the dynamism, even with 15, 20 people, it's remarkable and it's gonna stay.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] The rabbi is not alone with that optimistic view.

My sister, Beth, who you could say was formed both personally and professionally at the synagogue, believes there's a way forward.

- And what I believe is that the Jewish community here will never go away.

I think that its roots are so deep and it has been through so much and has weathered so much that I think this is a hinge moment.

I believe that with the change of post covid life and people leaving cities more that people are gonna find this area and they're gonna wanna raise their families here and I think this is nearing the end of a chapter, but the book isn't over.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] Others aren't so sure.

For several years, David Kirshenbaum has been trying to figure out what to do next.

- And I don't like to look upon it as a balance sheet or just some cold statistics but we're running outta people.

We're flat out running outta people and young people.

- [Jonathan] One possibility, David explored, was to move the synagogue to another space.

The idea was to sell the current building, possibly to a church group, and just be smaller.

As he made a series of attempts to find a buyer, there were a flood of emotions.

- I've been in a slow, saying goodbye process to the community that I've known, that has held us all over time.

I think that when the possibility of the building being sold came up, I felt just a complete panic actually and immediate sorrow.

Like, no.

I see entirely how this might not make sense to have this building anymore but how could we lose that building?

- [Jonathan] Turned out a sale never materialized.

But oddly, in the midst of covid, David saw a glimmer of hope.

- I think one of the things that the pandemic showed us, there's ways to exist, and as a matter of fact, to thrive and when you have a way of operating that's tailor made for a congregation that's aging, in that you can get on the internet, even our oldest people were able to get on Zoom.

So yes, there is a way.

But for the pandemic, I would not be sitting here telling you that I think there's a way for us to exist.

A brick and mortar existence?

Probably not.

- Let's join together with a Shammah on page 41.

(Sondra singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] My parents, for their part, sound resigned to the future.

At the very least, they can look back and know they did everything they could.

- It's a painful subject to see something possibly ending.

Personally, I think that, as it is now, it would not survive but I have hopes that there are enough young people in the community, if they were to take an interest in it, it could be molded to become a synagogue for them.

It might not be anything like it is now, but it could become meaningful to them.

- I don't know how much more effort I want to put into this, I've put in a lot, I've fought a few battles in there and I feel happy with what I've been able to do, however, I don't see the level of enthusiasm that was there years ago when you guys were growing up in town and we had 40, 50 kids in the Sunday school, all this has passed as far as I'm concerned.

- What is the emotions that you feel with that?

- I'm sad, but I'm realistic.

(group chatter) - [Jonathan] Realistic.

That's my dad.

But on this summer's weekend he can be something else, happy.

(group chatter) The Kirshenbaum and Levin families are gathering for a cookout.

- Lunch is ready!

Are you hungry?

- [Jonathan] It's a good day.

We don't have to worry so much.

We can hang out, eat, and sing songs we learned in Sunday school and camp.

(singing in a foreign language) We experienced the joy, the power of our connected families, the feeling of just all being together.

(everyone laughing) (everyone applauding) But what we couldn't know was it would be one of the last.

(singer vocalizing) (congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] A Shabbat in August.

I'm back in Benton Harbor visiting for a couple weeks.

Diane Yampolsky, my mom's partner as lay leader, is conducting the Saturday morning Torah service.

(Diane singing in a foreign language) The removal of the Torah from the arc is a sacred part of the liturgy.

During this part, congregants are called up to the Torah to say a prayer as portions are chanted, then later interpreted.

(congregation chanting in a foreign language) I stand with my mom and say the blessing.

United with her and others who have come, these days almost all services are held in the synagogue's library because the much larger sanctuary would be too empty.

- Anybody on Zoom with any names.

- In the Zoom era, the library has gone high tech equipped with a couple TV screens and a camera.

Some, like my Aunt Cindy, chant sections of the Torah online.

There's just enough for a minyan today.

A total of 14 people from Zoom and in-person combined.

While I feel a connection with my hometown synagogue, there's also a deep sense of loss.

(singing in a foreign language) - I want to believe that I've shared with my children values that will make their lives more meaningful.

- [Jonathan] Just a year ago, I interviewed Jack and Julie Keller, key members of the synagogue.

For 12 years Jack battled leukemia, then, only months after I spoke to him, Jack got covid and died.

- We miss him, all of us.

The love of my life.

He had a great sense of humor.

No one could replace such a person.

He played the violin and the piano and practiced law.

He did everything, was involved in the community.

He was quietly wonderful and very appropriate at all times.

(singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] There would be more.

When I sat with my parents in 2021, my dad had been diagnosed with a neurological disorder called siderosis.

- He was getting weaker every day and had more and more trouble walking and it just, throughout July, it picked up its rate of change, I think it got worse, faster.

- [Jonathan] We brought him to a nearby nursing care facility where, for a while, he was okay.

But within just days of Jack Keller's passing, my parents got bad news from the staff.

- And then they came in and said, "Mr. Levin, you've tested positive," which was a huge blow.

So they retested, of course, and he was still positive.

He had covid and there we were.

(singing in a foreign language) At the end they give them morphine when they need it, which he needed very little by the way.

He was unresponsive.

He was peaceful.

For me, I wanted to talk some more.

- That was the hard part about the isolation.

- We didn't have that last talk.

I had it, but I have to think he heard it.

(singing in a foreign language) - Dad faced his challenges bravely, head on, with courage and with great dignity.

Always our greatest role model.

Dad, we will miss you and love you forever and we will forever cherish the gifts of your life.

(singing in a foreign language) - Before we do the Mourner's Kaddish, I'll read the (indistinct) for this week.

- [Jonathan] Jewish tradition calls for remembering those we lost on the anniversary of their deaths.

One year after their passing, Jack and Al, my dad, are on a list of names.

- Judy Frank, Eileen Martin, Dorothy Gobaum, Jack Keller, Al Levin, Julius Turk, Diane Kirshenbaum and Berdino.

(congregation speaking in a foreign language) - It's hard being back here without him, obviously, because he's so much of a part of our world here.

(congregation speaking in a foreign language) - It's hard to think what this community would've been without him and Jack Keller and all the leaders that sort of built this community.

The loss of the two of them two weeks apart, it's just sort of unbelievable and it's still just devastating for everybody.

It still feels like a nightmare and it still feels like unreal at times.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] The sudden loss of two pillars of the synagogue was a shock, a reminder, the institution and its members are vulnerable.

I met again with the two old friends, my mom and Dave Kirshenbaum, who had had his own struggles to deal with.

- 9-11 of last year, coming up on a year, I had a stroke at 10:45 at night.

I was only in the hospital for two nights but that put in motion a whole bunch of things that we as a family had to plan for.

And then in March of this year, Elaine had a heart attack and so the theoretical began to move into more of a magnified view of what the future looked like.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] At times that future has looked bleak.

The losses at Temple B'Nai Shalom were arguably not just reflective of one small town synagogue in Michigan, but part of a cultural, religious and demographic shift across the Jewish landscape.

Small town Judaism is, by some measures, disappearing.

Rabbi Jan Katzew quoted Simon Rawidowicz, Jewish philosopher and scholar.

- Rawidowicz is the one who spoke about the Jews as and ever dying people.

Well, if you're an ever dying people then you're an everliving people and because of this great concern about living on and will it go on, et cetera, that question is animating (serene music) the soul of the Jewish people.

- [Jonathan] One of the extraordinary things about my hometown is the way the sky can explode with color as the sun sinks into Lake Michigan.

To some extent, I had expected to come back to Benton Harbor ready to describe an ending, how the sun was setting on the Jewish community, but that's not exactly what I found.

- It just meant something to me that these people hung together in the face of everything.

So I became president.

- [Jonathan] Ruth Kremer is president of the synagogue board and has brought a renewed sense of mission.

- In Southwest Michigan, an organization dedicated to helping mothers and infants delivered 5,000 diapers to the county health department there.

- [Jonathan] She's made social justice a priority, making interfaith connections between the synagogue and local churches.

Just one example, she created a drive to supply infant diapers to people in need.

- Rosh Hashanah is Sunday, September 25th and we'll have a study session with Rabbi Katzew before then.

- For Ruth Kremer, the key to attracting new members isn't primarily religious observance.

- If I can build this temple into a focus of social justice, those Jews will come out of the woodwork.

By becoming a recognized and valued member of the community, it will be okay to be Jewish again and we can have, through this social justice action and that's my vision for the future.

- [Jonathan] That sense of purpose has been helpful to many, including my mom but it took her a while to find her footing.

After my dad died, she slowly returned to services in part because she knew he would've wanted her to.

Eventually she went back to leading them.

But she couldn't have done any of that without community support, particularly from David and Elaine Kirshenbaum.

- From my perspective, for a long time I needed taking care of and David and Elaine were there for me and I hope I can be there as much as I can, which I'm ready to be, for them.

I think we could become closer.

- Yeah.

Oh, for sure.

- I mean, it's in a different way too.

It's like you said, David, you appreciate the people that are left and want them to be as good as they can be and it feels good to do something for someone else.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) - For both my mom and David, loss brought about emotions they did not quite expect.

No doubt there is grief and uncertainty, but there's also determination and I think that comes from a profoundly Jewish idea passed on from generation to generation.

Let's say something bad happens, like a death before a wedding, in that case, if that happens, you have the wedding, you keep going.

And in the face of the losses at Temple B'Nai Shalom, it's the same idea.

(congregation singing in a foreign language) You just keep going.

- And if we do that, then we can do something constructive.

But if you just say it's all gonna die, it will.

If you say it, it's like wishing it.

I mean, getting Jews to agree on the synagogue and then what's the definition of being here and being present.

Sometimes it's just showing up.

And regardless of the fact that the numbers are what they are.

You just can't take an early exit 'cause the people are not gonna follow you that way.

- So keep showing up.

- Yeah, you gotta keep showing up.

(singing in a foreign language) - And I think being made to think has made it helpful as well as difficult, it's made me reflect on the whole history of Benton Harbor, not just our section of it, and I'm sure you feel the same way with your grandfather, that my grandparents helped build Temple Bethel and it went down for my parents and you had the same thing.

It puts things in perspective in a way that we're part of this and that's one reason that I'm optimistic about it is that I'm not gonna let it go easily.

Too many people in my past have worked too hard.

(singing in a foreign language) - [Jonathan] There's another thought, not a pleasant one, but also not unrealistic.

What would we say or feel if someday it turns out the community did not live on?

What to make of all of this if the cocoon of my childhood were to come to an end?

For Rabbi Jan Katzew, if that were to happen, there would be, strangely enough, something to celebrate.

- Then I ask myself, well, would it have been better if it had never existed?

No.

Would it have been better if the last 30 years of B'Nai Shalom had not existed?

Absolutely not.

So, Judaism is so much a this world centered faith that there is something and the faith to me adds to hope an element of the divine, an element of uncertainty, an element that recognizes nothing is certain in human life, other than perhaps death, but I'd like to think that the existence of B'Nai Shalom, as long as it does exist, will have been for good and to me that's more than good enough.

(singing in a foreign language) (uplifting music) (children playing)