Temple Tantrum

The B’Nai Jehudah Temple at 69th and Holmes is a spiraling concrete form that swirls into the air like a tepee. Its designer, Ted Seligson, was enamored with tents — large, welcoming, communal spaces — and he preferred high ceilings held up by a few interior columns. The sanctuary has just one. The building, says Seligson, is the only Kansas City structure designed by local architects that has been honored at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

For 33 years, it has been home to the reform B’Nai Jehudah synagogue, the oldest and largest Jewish congregation in Kansas City and one of the best-known in the United States. Founded in 1870, B’Nai Jehudah has long been connected with Kansas City activism. During the 1930s, it was a B’Nai Jehudah rabbi, Samuel Mayerberg, who led efforts to reform Tom Pendergast’s machine. And Rabbi Michael Zedek was a charismatic local anti-war activist and synagogue leader for 26 years until he went to Cincinnati two years ago.

But now the sanctuary and the congregation are on a downward spiral. Members are dissenting over the proposed sale and demolition of the sanctuary and over the recent unexplained resignation of Rabbi Joshua Taub. More than ninety members have signed a petition calling for the ouster of several board members, including all the officers. The board’s fate will be decided at a special meeting Monday, September 30 — only the second time in about fifty years that a controversy has so shaken the congregation, according to one longtime member.

“Many congregants feel the board has done things that aren’t in the best interest of the congregation,” says John Shuchart, who is leading the recall attempt. “One may be selling the building.”

Another may be Joshua Taub’s resignation. Taub had been part of the congregation for eleven years, the past two as senior rabbi. Though Zedek was a tough act to follow, the congregation had accepted Taub, and his resignation at the end of April sent shock waves through B’Nai Jehudah.

Taub and the board of directors apparently disagreed about the hiring and firing of the synagogue’s staff. During the past year or so, the congregation has lost several key people, including a cantor, a librarian, two temple administrators and two executives. “Josh felt since he’s there everyday, he knows these people,” says Troy Miller, a leader of the dissenting Coalition of Concerned Congregants. “The board wanted to control that.” Relations became so volatile that peacemakers from the National Commission on Rabbinic-Congregational Relations in New York were called in to soothe the bad blood.

But the resignation made no sense to Shuchart. Taub had finally become senior rabbi of one of the country’s most respected congregations — and he was quitting? “He wants to leave and won’t tell us why? That’s baloney.”

Taub is officially on sabbatical and won’t perform administrative or rabbinical duties until his contract expires next summer. He and the board have agreed not to discuss the terms of their parting. “It’s time for the congregation to move forward and try to heal and do a lot of reflecting,” Taub says.

Irv Robinson, president of the congregation and its board, refuses to discuss the particulars. “It’s a congregational issue. That’s where it needs to stay.”

Soon after Taub’s resignation, in early May, a series of e-mails among board members was accidentally forwarded to a member of the temple staff, who passed it on to Shuchart. The messages revealed the influence exerted by one board member, who ruled out negotiating with Taub: “The reason I am absolutely opposed to mediation is because if Josh prevails here, we will never be able to get rid of him. He is an evil influence that will prevent healing as long as he is present.”

Shuchart confronted the board member about her letter. When she refused to resign, Shuchart distributed the e-mail — along with a letter from the CCC laying out its grievances with the board — to much of the congregation.

“Had that person resigned, none of this would have happened,” he says. “The board, as they’ve done since May, has not given an inch. They’ve continued to rule with an iron fist.”

The core group of the CCC is small — perhaps ten members — but Miller reports that hundreds attended recent meetings in support. The board has its defenders. Some point out that the sale of the building, and the departure of a rabbi, are ordinary events in the life of a congregation. Susan Tivol says the board held a series of meetings to explain why Taub had to go. Tivol calls the e-mail incident “blackmail” and chastises CCC members for being “reactive and combative.” She adds, “They never wanted to hear what the board wanted to tell them.”

The fate of the building itself has only heightened the turmoil. Over the years, its famed blue stained-glass windows were covered, and the roof began to leak. With the opening of a religious school and new offices in Johnson County in April 2000 — and a synagogue on the drawing board for that campus — B’Nai Jehudah suddenly had two locations. “Eventually we were going to have to face the fact we were going to have to consolidate in one location,” longtime member Lorraine Stiffleman says. “Sometimes you have an offer you can’t refuse.”

That offer came this spring from B’Nai Jehudah member Barnett Helzberg, whose Helzberg Foundation put up $5 million for the property. The foundation would have the temple demolished to make room for the University Academy charter school. The synagogue board of directors said yes.

While raising money to build the Johnson County campus, the board had promised that the sanctuary would remain standing for at least another ten years, say some members of the congregation. “I feel they reneged on that promise,” says John Hoffman, who left the congregation to protest the loss of the historic building.

The B’Nai Jehudah congregation has gradually moved south. The congregation’s first home was at 6th and Wyandotte. It moved to 11th and Oak, then on to Linwood and eventually to 69th and Holmes. Congregants have moved out of the city. Of the 1,600 families that now form the B’Nai Jehudah congregation, only 10 to 15 percent still live in Kansas City, Hoffman estimates.

Despite the move to Johnson County, a task force is scouting for Kansas City property where the congregation can maintain some permanent presence in the city. “Whether you live on the other side of State Line or on this side, I think we all perceive ourselves as citizens of greater Kansas City,” says Loeb Granoff, Taub’s attorney. “We have common goals, common aspirations. I don’t think the movement of B’Nai Jehudah is going to change anything.”

Except, perhaps, its own governing body. Members of the CCC are confident the vote will go their way. They’ve lined up a slate of about thirty volunteers to take over in case the ouster of Robinson succeeds and other board members resign. “I think they have drastically underestimated the number of unhappy people.”