In the early 60’s, after more than a few years of not having found a rabbi suitable to lead the congregation and last for a while, the congregation was lucky enough to interview and then hire Rabbi Dr. Israel Freedman and his wife Sheba. They were everything the congregation wanted in a rabbi. He had the gravitas of a rabbi on the bima and she was more than his help mate. She exemplified, for the congregation, what a Rebbetzin ought to be like. They came as a team and operated as team from the very beginning. He was from Montreal originally and she was from South Africa. They came with two teenaged children – Jonathan and Marcia. Jonathan was already in university and Marcia was still in high school. The rabbi and his wife stayed for 15 years and had a lasting impact on the congregation. They entertained in their apartment the newly married couples coming to the synagogue. He began the Hebrew High School and she implemented Bat Mitzvah classes for the girls. They initiated many new things in the congregation and helped make the huge transition from the early days of Orthodoxy to a real commitment to Conservative Judaism, even though his original background was anything but Conservative. When they left St. Catharines, it was to retire to an apartment in Toronto. The congregation entertained them upon their formal retirement. A whole generation of families were sad to see them go.
The picture below, taken on the steps of City Hall, indicated his total commitment to presenting a
face to the wider community.
In those days, we had more than a few Holocaust survivors in St. Catharines and they collectively wanted to have a Holocaust Memorial in the cemetery. It is a focal point of the layout of the plots and here below is Rabbi Freedman leading the dedication and on the right is Jacob Jacobs, and on the left Herman Majers. Both the Majers family and the Jacobs family contributed greatly to the congregation. They were joined by several other families who came to Niagara and began new lives after the war.
Not long after the Freedman’s arrived, Mrs. Sheba Freedman organized the first Bat Mitzvah class. Of course, back in the day, they were not on Shabbat, but rather on Friday nights and there was not Torah service, but the service acknowledged the place the women in the the congregation were wanting to fill, not just here but in many other synagogues in North America. Rabbi Freedman is on the left and Sheba Freedman on the right.
The information about the last picture is underneath the picture itself. Many of us can remember what it was like in the time of the Freedman’s and how we have, some of us, struggled to find our footing in the years after they left.
