Congregation Am Tikvah

Congregation Am Tikvah is located at 625 Brotherhood Way, San Francisco, California 94132.[1] The congregation holds dual affiliation with both the Conservative and Reform movements, a structure that reflects its origins in the merger of congregations from those respective traditions.[1] It describes itself as an egalitarian community welcoming Jews and non-Jews, people of different ages and financial means, people with disabilities and learning differences, people of color, and LGBTQ individuals, and states a commitment to social justice.[1]

Prayer services at Am Tikvah blend tradition and innovation, balancing Hebrew and English, with Torah reading performed primarily by congregants rather than clergy.[3] The weekly schedule includes a Tuesday morning minyan, a Friday evening service, Saturday Shabbat Torah study, and a Saturday Shabbat service; the Friday service, Torah study, and Saturday service are offered both in person and on Zoom, while the Tuesday minyan is conducted on Zoom with monthly in-person gatherings.[3] Rabbi Chayva Lehrman, a graduate of Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), serves the congregation.[4]

The two congregations that merged to form Am Tikvah each carried deep institutional histories. Beth Israel Judea was itself the product of an earlier merger, formed in 1969 when Congregation Beth Israel and Temple Judea joined.[2] Beth Israel dated to 1860, began as an Orthodox congregation, and was later described by the congregation as the oldest Conservative synagogue west of the Mississippi.[2] Temple Judea was founded in 1953 as a Reform community that the congregation describes as San Francisco's first Reform temple in nearly 125 years.[2] The merged Beth Israel Judea settled at 625 Brotherhood Way, the address Am Tikvah occupies today.[2]

B'nai Emunah was founded on Chanukah in 1949, primarily by German Jews who had fled Nazi Germany to Shanghai in the late 1930s.[2] According to the congregation's history, Shanghai was then the only destination that would accept Jewish refugees without visas; there, the community established synagogues, schools, businesses, and community centers.[2] After the war, many of those refugees continued across the Pacific to the United States, eventually settling in San Francisco and founding B'nai Emunah.[2] The congregation grew over the following decades, purchasing its building at 3595 Taraval Street in 1976, and marked its 70th anniversary in 2019.[2]

Before the 2021 merger, B'nai Emunah and Beth Israel Judea had collaborated for years as members of the four-synagogue Southside Jewish Collaborative, celebrating holidays together and, for nearly ten years, sharing a religious school.[2] The formal merger in fall 2021 brought the two congregations together under the name Am Tikvah, or "People of Hope."[2][1]

Am Tikvah operates a religious school for children from transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, organized in grade-based cohorts and incorporating hands-on learning through music, storytelling, art, and celebrations.[5] Its two-year B'nai Mitzvah program prepares students to lead portions of Saturday services, read Torah and Haftarah, and develop a personal interpretation of their Torah portion.[5]

Additional youth and family programming includes Teenvah for post-B'nai Mitzvah teens, a Shabbat program for families with children ages three to five, and Tot Shabbat for babies and children through age five.[5]

The congregation's Social Justice Committee publicizes opportunities for legislative advocacy, voting participation, and refugee-resettlement support at local, state, and national levels.[6] Am Tikvah is also a founding member of the Southside Jewish Collaborative Tikkun Olam Committee, which organizes the preparation of lunches for San Francisco residents experiencing homelessness, volunteer shifts at St. Anthony's Dining Room and the San Francisco–Marin Food Bank, collection drives for community and refugee services, e-waste recycling events, and collaborative Tikkun Olam Days.[6]

An annual community retreat, a legacy of B'nai Emunah, had continued for 45 years by 2023.[7] The 2023 gathering was held in Half Moon Bay and featured scholars leading sessions on creative rituals.[7] A January 2025 retreat was announced at Camp Newman in Santa Rosa, with scholar-in-residence Marc Dollinger; the program included two nights' lodging, six meals, Shabbat services, learning sessions, childcare, and optional camp activities.[7]

Am Tikvah stewards two Czech Holocaust memorial Torah scrolls, one inherited from each predecessor congregation.[8] The congregation's account traces the scrolls to an effort by members of Prague's Jewish community to gather ritual and cultural objects from deserted communities and destroyed synagogues across Czechoslovakia for safekeeping in a museum.[8][9] In 1964, 1,564 Torah scrolls arrived at Westminster Synagogue in London, where the Memorial Scrolls Trust cataloged and distributed them to Jewish congregations around the world.[9]

The scroll obtained by legacy congregation B'nai Emunah originates from Uherský Brod in Moravia and is identified as Memorial Scrolls Trust Scroll #500, on long-term loan from the Trust.[9] B'nai Emunah's Men's Club acquired it in 1989 for $700; then-congregation president Max Drimmer arranged for a traveling friend to retrieve it from Europe.[9] The scroll is displayed on the bimah in a lucite case.[9] B'nai Emunah's 2011 confirmation class researched the Jewish community of Uherský Brod and established an annual Shabbat remembrance, a tradition Am Tikvah continues.[9]

The history associated with that scroll is sobering. In 1939, Uherský Brod had a Jewish population of 489.[9] In 1941, community leader Felix Brunn and seven other members were executed on charges of anti-German activities, and local fascists burned the main synagogue.[9] During the Holocaust, 2,837 Jews were deported from the town; only 81 survived, and 30 returned after the war to reestablish the community in 1949.[9] The second scroll, from Kolodeje, was obtained by legacy congregation Beth Israel Judea and is also housed at Am Tikvah.[8]

Among the artifacts carried forward from the predecessor congregations are the stained-glass windows of the former B'nai Emunah synagogue at 3595 Taraval Street.[10] The congregation states that 21 panels were installed when the building opened in 1976; in 1977, many were shattered during a clash with the owners of a Nazi bookstore across the street, an incident that, in the congregation's account, drew news coverage and prompted donations from around the world to repair or replace the windows.[10] Fourteen additional panels were installed in 1980 and dedicated to Sir Horace Kadoorie, who had built the Shanghai school attended by many B'nai Emunah founders, forging a direct link between the windows and the congregation's refugee origins.[10]

The panels depict Jerusalem scenes and were made by a Burlingame studio.[10] In the week of January 15, 2024, specialists removed all 35 panels from the Taraval building; after removal and repair, they were transported to 625 Brotherhood Way for safekeeping.[10]

The name Am Tikvah was also used by an earlier, unrelated congregation that formed in the Boston area, documented through the oral history of Priscilla Golding archived by the Jewish Women's Archive.[11] Golding estimated that the Boston Am Tikvah began around 1977, following a brief predecessor group called B'nei Haskalah, and that she joined around 1978 or 1979 as she was coming out as a lesbian.[11] The group met at MIT and drew members from the wider Boston area; attendance varied between roughly 20 and 40 people, predominantly men, with members coming from Orthodox, Conservative, and other Jewish backgrounds.[11]

Members organized and led their own religious services, including High Holiday services, set up chairs, brought food, held holiday parties, and maintained a chorus.[11] Golding credited the community with transforming her relationship to Jewish life, saying, "It was a way for me to really become Jewish. I mean, it really was a way."[11] Her brother, a capable singer, joined the chorus for a time, and her mother visited once and responded warmly.[11]

The community also engaged in outreach, with members speaking about gay and Jewish identity before rabbinical groups and at college Hillel chapters, including the Hillel at UMass Amherst, where Golding recalled that "some people tried to shut us down."[11] Participants connected to broader networks, including the International Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jews; Golding served as unpaid staff for that organization for several years and attended an international conference in Amsterdam in 1986, meeting community members from Paris, Amsterdam, and elsewhere.[11]

By the late 1980s, as more mainstream synagogues became welcoming to gay and lesbian Jews, members — particularly families seeking religious schools for their children — began moving to Reform congregations in the Boston suburbs.[11] Golding recalled that this transition was largely positive, though it meant losing the close-knit intimacy that came from being outsiders together. She reflected on how the language of the movement had evolved during her involvement: "When I first started, it was just gay. And then it was G and L. By time, I left it was G and L and B."[11]