Truckin' on the Western Branch

Temple Sinai Temple Sinai, rooted in the modern Reform tradition with emphasis on education and social action projects, was founded during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah in 1953 and held its first religious service at the Portsmouth Women’s Club a month later. For the next few years, the congregation had services at the Portsmouth Coca-Cola bottling plant and at the Suburban Country Club. In 1956, they laid the cornerstone for their new building on a two-acre site on Hatton Point Road.

Arthur Z. Steinberg, now rabbi emeritus at Ohef Shalom Temple in Norfolk, served as the temple rabbi from 1980 to 2012. A former Navy chaplain, he had served in the area for five years and found many old friends when he answered the call to Temple Sinai. Temple Sinai was a spinoff from Gomley Chesed, and many of the younger folks had chosen Temple Sinai. When I got here, whatever ill will there had been between Gomley Chesed and Temple Sinai was petering out. A few people, like Robert Rosenfeld, belonged to both. We were doing well with 100 families with quite a few children. I remember the end of one service, when the departed are usually mentioned; I said the name “Jacob Barney.” My young grandson jumped up and, thinking of the purple kiddy dinosaur, cried out “Barney is dead?!” We had religious school every Sunday, a wide program of community service, and a very modern education program. But we were depending too much on fundraisers like the annual auction that ran for 25 years or so. At the end we had 70 families on the rolls of Temple Sinai, but they were not enough to sustain us. The congregation’s children did not come back to the area. There was not much there to attract younger families. Temple Sinai closed and, in June 2012, merged with Norfolk’s Ohef Sholom, the oldest synagogue in the area. Putting their old building up for sale, the Temple Sinai congregation brought their temple windows with them to Ohef Sholom where the chapel has been renamed Sinai Chapel. Steinberg serves as rabbi emeritus there, and his wife, Kitty, is the temple educator.

Rabbi Arthur Z. Steinberg. Image by Sheally

Jeff Keever : “Our parents instilled values in each and every one of us. We all wanted to do something, wanted to achieve.”

Russ Kirk : “You had a

Opposite page: Ain’t That America. Image by Sheally

sense of what to do and

what not to do and you didn’t know why you did but you did.”

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