by Sue Macy (Englewood, NJ)
This is a different sort of obituary, not for a person, but a place. The synagogue I grew up in, the Clifton Jewish Center of Clifton, N.J., held its last Shabbat services on December 21, 2024. The building is being repurposed to become a cheder for Orthodox girls. With the original members gone and their descendants moving away, the Center—the last Conservative shul in town—closed its doors.
It was founded in the late 1940s by nine young men who had gone to Clifton High School together. My parents joined the Center in the early 1950s. I went to Sunday School and Hebrew School there, and had my bat mitzvah. It was not just a place of worship, but of community. My mom joined Hadassah through the Center. My dad was on the temple board.
We had the same rabbi, Dr. Eugene Markovitz, for 52 of the Center’s 75 years. He was an Orthodox rabbi in a Conservative shul, which meant women didn’t have aliyot while he was in charge. It forever irked my feminist soul, but the rabbi had more depth than my younger self gave him credit for. In 1988, Rabbi Markovitz intervened when four local boys painted anti-Semitic graffiti on the temple building. Instead of allowing them to be sent to juvenile detention, he convinced the judge to sentence them to 25 hours of education about Judaism, with him, and 30 hours of helping around the synagogue. CBS made a “Schoolbreak Special” about the incident. Hal Linden played the rabbi.
Although I moved out of Clifton decades ago, I continued to attend High Holiday services with my family. After my dad died, my mom and brother and I went. After my mom died, my brother and I just kept going. But as the congregation shrank, the signs of decline were unmistakable. We no longer had a cantor. Israel Bonds luminaries stopped coming to give High Holiday presentations, hoping for lucrative investments. Eventually, we had no more bond drives at all. There was a time when the temple had to put hundreds of chairs in the adjacent ballroom to fit all those coming for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Lately, the ballroom remained empty and unused.
I know that times change. I write books about history and intellectually I can place the geographic movements of the Jewish people in historical context. With affluence, many of the Jewish families in Clifton moved to wealthier suburbs. Still, it’s hard not to feel a personal loss with the closing of the Center. It makes accessing the feelings and experiences from my past that much harder. It also raises questions about my Jewish identity that until now, I haven’t had to answer. What kind of synagogue do I want to join? Where do I go from here?
Ironically, the last services at the Center attracted the largest Shabbat crowd in years. People like me, whose parents lived their lives in the community, came from near and far to be there one more time. It was a fitting tribute to a place that truly had been the Center of our lives.
Sue Macy is the author of 18 books for children and young adults including The Book Rescuer: How a Mensch From Massachusetts Saved Yiddish Literature for Generations to Come, winner of the Sydney Taylor Picture Book Award. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey, and can be found on Instagram @suemacy1 or through her website, suemacy.com.
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