Exciting new events are on the horizon for the congregation of B'nai Israel.

The congregants are looking forward to breaking ground on their own building in Fayette County very soon. Members currently meet in Christ Our Hope Lutheran Church on the Fayette-Clayton border on Ga. Highway 138.

Just a month ago, the congregation received its first spiritual leader who was not a rabbinical student. It should also be mentioned that the new rabbi was the first female United States Naval chaplain (1986).

Rabbi Julie Schwartz is a native of Cincinnati, growing up near the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and became a bat mitzvah about the time the first female rabbi was ordained in 1972. “I thought she must be very cool,” said Schwartz in an interview in The Atlanta Jewish Times, July 9, 1999.

She did her undergraduate work at Northwestern University, Chicago and her advanced degree was from HUC-JIR in 1986.

She met her husband, Rabbi Steven Ballaban, in the Navy, where they both remained for three years. They then moved to Cincinnati where Schwartz joined the HUC-JIR faculty. During her nine-year tenure, she established the pastoral education program which included training rabbis in counseling, crisis intervention and congregational leadership and management. Some of those students served at B'nai Israel and she was familiar with the congregation.

Her husband accepted the position as head of school of the Davis Academy in Atlanta, a Reformed Jewish day school for grades K-8. Schwartz called B'nai Israel to offer her assistance and the congregation quickly accepted.

She and her husband are the parents of four children: Reuven, 11, Aryeh, 9, Gavriella, 6, and Adina, 20 months.

B'nai Israel began in 1981 when five families met in a home to discuss the possibility of a synagogue in the south of Atlanta. Three of those five families are still in the synagogue. They called as many people in the phone book as they could find with Jewish-sounding names and called everyone together at a community room in Southlake Mall.

Within a few months, Christ Our Hope Lutheran Church offered to share its facility with the new congregation, and “for the past 17 years,” said B'nai member Elaine McGee, “they have been here for us 150 percent. We cannot say enough about their kindness and consideration. They have always accommodated us in any need we had.”

For some time, B'nai Israel has owned seven acres in Fayette County at the Ga. Highway 54 - Corinth Road area and the congretation is finally getting ready to break ground for its very own building. “Donations will be gratefully accepted,” mentions member Sharon Hudgins, whose family is one of those first five in 1981.

The current membership is 67 families and the congregation is active in a number of social concerns: they volunteer at the Zaban Night Shelter in Atlanta, serving meals and overseeing the overnight stays of homeless people; at Jewish holidays it makes sure needed Jewish families can be availed of the pertinent services and see that children receive toys, etc.; it participates in the “Hunger Walk” which supports the Atlanta Food Bank, and on Christmas Day, members relieve those working at the Clayton County Night Shelter, so the Christian workers can be at home with their families.

Said Schwartz, “Judaism derives a philosophy from the profits, who said that caring for people who can't care for themselves can be accomplished through prayer and that prayer then translates into action.”

The Congregation B'nai Israel Religious School has classes for fourth, fifth and sixth graders Wednesday nights. For information on classes, call Sharon Hudgins, 770-460-1218.

Shabbat services are each Friday at 8 p.m. B'nai Israel's address is P.O. Box 142481, Fayetteville 30214; phone 770-471-3586, or check out its web address: www.bnai-israel.net.

Holy Days services are planned

B'nai Israel will conduct High Holy Day services: Rosh Hoshanah Saturday, Sept. 11 at 10 a.m.; Yom Kippur Friday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m., Monday, Sept. 20 at 10 a.m., continuing through the day.

Rosh Hoshanah marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year, welcoming the year 5760. The ten-day period from Rosh Hoshanah to Yom Kippur is marked by prayer, confession and introspection, when Jews gather in synagogues to contemplate the manner in which they have lived during the past year.

Yom Kippur is a day spent in prayer and fasting, and recalling loved ones who have entered eternity by evoking and handing down the teachings those loved ones gave when on Earth.

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