Founding Synagogue
Congregation B'nai Tzedek
The History and Journey of Congregation B'nai Tzedek
1964 – 2014
Late in 1964, a group of families in the Roselawn area of Cincinnati, along with others in neighboring communities, gathered together and committed themselves to a new and exciting task. Their goal – create a Synagogue dedicated to Conservative Jewish practices in the Roselawn area. At the time Roselawn was a major hub of the Cincinnati Jewish population and the site of the Jewish Community Center. Follow-up meetings to this first gathering yielded a board of officers, by-laws, functional committees, including a Sisterhood, and a name – Congregation B'nai Tzedek.
Bnai Tzedek as a place for prayer – After announcing its formation, B'nai Tzedek held its first Saturday morning Shabbat Service. The date was November 28, 1964, which appropriately enough corresponded with the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. Hence, the Shecheyanu pronounced at the service had dual meaning. This first Shabbat Service was held in the Jewish Community Center Nursery School building. The event marked the beginning of what became and remains a distinguishing feature of B'nai Tzedek worship. Specifically, the Service was entirely led by lay congregants who assumed the roles of service leader, sermonizer, cantor, and Torah reader. In subsequent services, these roles were rotated among still other members. Giving reinforcement to this practice, our rabbis coached members in how to lead parts of the service, and welcomed them to share the pulpit in offering sermons on Shabbatot. The latter resulted in the publication of two editions of member sermons appropriately titled, “Voices from the B’nai Tzedek Bima – The Congregants Speak”.
In the early years, the spiritual leadership of our Congregation included a succession of short-term appointments of rabbinic students and ordained rabbis doing doctoral work at the local Hebrew Union College (HUC). Though a seminary for training Reform Rabbis, those selected to serve us from HUC came from traditional backgrounds, and thus were very comfortable in leading a Conservative Congregation. Moreover, their approaches to prayer and ritual practices reflected a flexibility that was also growing within the Conservative movement.
B'nai Tzedek as a place for learning – In September, 1991, the B'nai Tzedek Creative School of Jewish Learning opened. From an initial enrollment of a handful of pupils, the number attending grew to over 60 in just a few years, along with the addition of a pre-school and high school program. The presence of the congregation’s first truly full-time Rabbi, Edward Boraz and a nationally known Jewish educator, Candy Kwiatek, gave weight to this school. With this emphasis on education, intergenerational programs and adult learning programs also flourished.
B'nai Tzedek as a place for everyone – True to its original mandate, B'nai Tzedek was to remain as the Roselawn Conservative Synagogue for 36 years, using facilities of the local Jewish Community Center for holding services, furnishing classrooms for instruction plus office space and other areas for special functions. In 1998, the Jewish Community Center announced plans to move elsewhere in Cincinnati in light of changing demographics of the Roselawn area. Shortly thereafter, and in recognizing that most of the B'nai Tzedek members were also living in other areas of Cincinnati, a decision was made to seek a new location for our synagogue. Even more significantly, consideration was given to purchasing land for the eventual construction of our own sanctuary. A Kenwood area site was selected for purchase as it was a location central to many of our members, and a building drive commenced. Within a year, a capital campaign raised over $1,000,000 and building construction began in the summer of 2000. On August 24, 2001, the congregation held its first Shabbat Services in its first real home on Kugler Mill Road.
In 2015 we were blessed to marry our "Beseret" Congregation Ohav Shalom.
