Welcome Foreigners! Hammonton Congregation Brings Rosh Hashonnah To Haddonfield Friends School

Haddonfield, NJ -- On Saturday, Sept. 17, the Haddonfield Friends School welcomed for the first time a shabbat service for the Jewish community and their friends in Haddonfield New Jersey.

Our 300-year-old community on the outskirts of Cherry Hill has long been legendary for having "no Jews," because the signs at the border of our town read, "The Churches of Haddonfield welcome you."

But at last the notion there are no Jews in Haddonfield was proven untrue. Free and inclusive shabbat
services with "pot luck oneg" marked the starting point of a new era, bringing together a few Haddonfield Jews who might otherwise worship elsewhere or alone; thereby ending an era of exceptionalism.

Even after the Camden County Freedom Medal and the Haddonfield Human Rights Award in 2006 for efforts to have a Chanukiah at Library Point, efforts to bring a community activity for Jews had continued to meet strong resistance, until now.

For those of us who successfully battled local Haddonfield myths about Jews in order to have a Chanukiah in 2005, (which has become a Haddonfield tradition for over a decade), these shabbat services
mark an important quiet milestone. We are delighted by the arrival of new faces and a Rabbi from afar to conduct services here.

We, the Jews of Haddonfield, had felt until this week as if we had our own private diaspora. We knew about each other but have been closeted away from non-Jewish religious events in town and hidden even from
each other by attending services outside our jurisdiction because, until now, we did not feel like we had a place to gather together.

So we worshiped elsewhere or alone. But now there is positive social change that makes me smile. No chocolate is sweeter than positive social change. I know because i have lived and worked in Switzerland
where they have a wonderful vibrant Jewish community and where they have the world's best chocolate. Now I have both right here at home in Haddonfield. I prefer positive social change

The change also marks a renewal and new beginning for our visiting colleagues from Temple Beth El, of Hammonton, which has been struggling to stay alive. If they can establish a presence and perhaps even an address in Haddonfield, the move to a satellite service in Haddonfield gives the synagogue the opportunity to infuse new life into its 75-year-old congregation, which has been in decline despite a strong and wonderful heritage of serving the Jewish community for generations.

Welcome and L'chaim!