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June 18, 2004
Shul bids adieu to rabbi
Shaarey Tefilah's Ross Singer and family make aliyah.
KYLE BERGER SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Next month, after eight years of serving as spiritual leader of
Congregation Shaarey Tefilah, Rabbi Ross Singer will leave his shul
and the Jewish community of Greater Vancouver in order to spend
two years in Jerusalem.
Singer isn't leaving in search of a larger congregation or a larger
community. He has received a Jerusalem Fellowship, which will enable
him to spend two years studying all over Israel while developing
his own program focusing on modern Orthodox education.
"I am going to go and take that opportunity to focus on myself
and grow so that I can continue to give at a level that I feel a
community deserves," Singer said of his upcoming opportunity,
"It's a dream come true."
His time in Vancouver, Singer explained, has also been a dream come
true.
"Vancouver and Shaarey Tefilah have been wonderful to us,"
he said. "I feel very loved and supported."
Congregation Shaarey Tefilah, which operates under the Traditional
movement, was formed 12 years ago and has grown in no small part
due to the leadership of Rabbi Singer.
Though he has been rabbi at the congregation for eight years, Singer's
journey to Shaarey Tefilah actually started 11 years ago when he
was brought in as a student rabbi, in his first year of rabbinical
school, to provide some extra services during Sukkot.
Three years later, Rabbi Singer and his wife Emily returned to the
community with which they had felt a strong sense of chemistry when
they visited.
That chemistry went both ways, it seemed, as the congregation of
Shaarey Tefilah often went to great lengths to make the Singers'
time in Vancouver warm and welcoming.
"Just recently, the members of the community got together for
our anniversary, offered to babysit our kids for a few days and
sent us off for a weekend so that we could have some time to ourselves
for the first time since our first child was born here," Singer
said of one of the many gestures offered by his community. "I've
also done a lot of projects here and that's just because the community
has given me the time and the support to do that."
Aside from his direct work with Shaarey Tefilah, Singer also regularly
acted on his idea that a Jewish leader has to play a role in the
community at large.
He would look for opportunities to take action in the community,
in ways that others had not. In many cases it came in the form of
taking pro-Israel and pro-Jewish advocacy to the streets of Vancouver.
"I think it's important for Jews to make a public stand when
our brothers and sisters are in trouble," he said of his efforts.
He explained his motivation by recalling the crisis in Iran when
13 Jews were being held by the Iranian government.
"I remember thinking, 'If I was [one of the prisoners] in Iran,
what would I want a Jew in Vancouver to be doing?' " he said.
"I thought that I would want a Jew in Vancouver making sure
that I'm not forgotten. That I'm not just left off the agenda or
that no one is thinking about me. I'm in a country ruled by Islamic
law, where I have very little say, no access to lawyers and they
can do whatever they want to me. And if no one knows about me, then
the Iranians can do whatever they want. So what I tried to do was
to bring them to the attention of the Jewish community and the greater
community of Vancouver."
Singer said his desire to take to the streets came from his view
that it was a form of advocacy that wasn't sufficiently employed
in this community.
"There's certainly lots of campaigning for funds for Jews in
Israel and the Diaspora and there's political advocacy that's being
done as well," he said. "But what wasn't being done was
taking [the message] to the streets. There was no one that I could
see who saw that as an appropriate agenda or they weren't doing
it. So that's where I found a place to step into the fray and make
my small, modest mark."
Singer is unsure of where he will be once his two years in Israel
have come to an end.
"I'm just focusing on these two years and maybe a year and
a half from now I'll start focusing on what I'm going to do after
that," Singer said. "I am certainly not closed to the
opportunity of coming back to Vancouver but I'm not planning on
it either."
Singer and his wife have had three children while living in Vancouver.
Rivital, aged seven, Shai, aged five and Abaye, aged two.
Shaarey Tefilah is in the process of searching for a replacement
rabbi.
Kyle Berger is a freelance journalist and graphic designer
living in Richmond.
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