About

Our Mission

Temple Ner Tamid is a welcoming, diverse, and musical Reform congregation where members connect with their heritage while thinking progressively about the present. The temple’s mission is to inspire our members to make our community more curious, connected, and just.

All of our work is done in concert to create and sustain a vibrant community. Our diverse congregation embraces the values of lifelong learning; inclusive, participatory and inspiring services; and repairing the world. As we learn and teach, live and pray together, we embrace each other and our Judaism with joy.

Our Vision

To strengthen TNT as a vibrant hub of worship, learning, discourse, and culture in ways that support Jewish values and traditions while engaging with the broader community.

Message from the Senior Rabbi

When I reflect back on my first four years at Temple Ner Tamid, it’s the energy and vibrancy of the people in our community that stick out most. We are who we are because of the individuals that make up our congregation. Temple Ner Tamid is full of talented, passionate, engaged, thoughtful congregants who are hungry for meaning, excited for community, and ready to make their mark. It’s an incredible place to be a Rabbi.

Temple Ner Tamid is a place where congregants aren’t afraid to ask big questions about themselves and the world. They want to get deep with the big ideas of Judaism and never stop wrestling with those concepts. They show up at one another’s doors to celebrate, to comfort, or to mourn together, often with dinner in hand. Temple Ner Tamid is full of people who step up when called, whether it’s serving in leadership roles in the congregational community or volunteering in the wider community. Our congregants care about building a just and equitable world and see their Judaism as an important tool to do just that.

At our services, congregants sing. Not just a little. Our voices fill up the sanctuary because they know their voice matters and blended together, we can make wonderful music. It’s not uncommon for congregants to grab an instrument and join our band for services, or to volunteer to read Torah or deliver a short sermon on the Torah portion.

We are a congregation where members aren’t shy to bring their passions through the door. They offer advice and perspective and have amazing ideas of programs or speakers that would make our calendar more vibrant. Our members understand that they can be fully themselves and fully Jewish.

If you are already part of our community, we are glad you are here. If you are just finding us now, we would love for you to join our amazing congregation. We can’t wait to see how your unique gifts, your unique voice fit in with our community.

Our History

Temple Ner Tamid (“Eternal Light”) was established in 1980 through the historic merger of Conservative Temple B’nai Zion and Reform Temple Menorah, both of Bloomfield. Setting aside ideological differences, the two congregations came together to create a synagogue rooted in liberal values and enriched by traditional expression—prioritizing the needs of the Jewish community above all else.

The unification was guided by a consolidation committee led by Julius Fisher (z”l) and Manny Rothenberg (z”l), whose efforts culminated in the founding of Temple Ner Tamid. On a sunny June day in 1980, the Torahs from Temple B’nai Zion were joyfully paraded down Broad Street into the newly dedicated home of Temple Ner Tamid, formerly the building of Temple Menorah. In 2010, the congregation was further strengthened by the arrival of members from Beth Sholom Reform Temple of Passaic-Clifton.

Although TNT is a member of the Reform Movement, it continues to honor the spirit of both communities in its approach to Jewish practice and prayer. What Temple Ner Tamid has become cannot be separated from the foundations laid by a century of devoted and visionary Jews. Their history is TNT legacy.

See below the history of the congregations that comprise this unified community.

Temple B’Nai Zion

The origins of Temple B’nai Zion (“Sons of Zion”) are to be found in the formation of the Zionist oriented “Montclair-Bloomfield Camp of the Order of B’nai Zion” in 1915. It was soon after re-named “Bloomfield Camp No. 48.” Within a short time the Bloomfield “Talmud Torah” was created and in 1917 the “Mother’s Club” was organized with Dora Sax as its first president. The following year saw the acquisition of the community’s first sefer Torah and the purchase of a small building on the Franklin Street site where, ten years later, Temple B’nai Zion’s first and only synagogue structure would be built.

Temple B’nai Zion was re-chartered in 1926. It is not clear why this was done, although the presence of Congregation Shomrei Israel, a short-lived Bloomfield synagogue in 1922, may indicate that the Bloomfield Jewish community was religiously split in the early 1920s. By 1926, however, B’nai Zion appeared to be the major Bloomfield congregation with Abraham Lipton as the first president of the newly re-chartered Temple. Two years later the original building was razed and the following year, on June 9, 1929, the cornerstone for the new building was laid.

For the next fifty years Temple B’nai Zion demonstrated itself to be a significant Conservative congregation while maintaining its strong Zionist identity. Having persevered through the Depression of the 1930s and World War II, the post-war years witnessed a revitalization. 1947 saw the establishment of a “Consolidated School” between the Conservative congregations of Bloomfield, Montclair, Verona and Caldwell. Three years later, however, with an upsurge of enrollment, the B’nai Zion Religious School was reconstituted. The recipient of numerous highly-coveted “Solomon Schechter Awards,” the religious school had close to 200 students in the late 1950s, while 1955 welcomed Bloomfield’s first Jewish nursery school.

With the 1960s came serious questioning of relocation to a more suburban setting. No doubt this was, in part, due to the creation of Temple Menorah. Nevertheless, the trustees of Temple B’nai Zion chose to affirm its commitment to the downtown community of Bloomfield by refurbishing the Franklin Street building instead.

By the end of the 1960s it became clear that with major shifts in the Jewish population the religious school could not be maintained on its own. In September of 1970 the combined religious school of Temples B’nai Zion and Shomrei Emunah began. By the end of the 1970s the leadership of Temple B’nai Zion made an historic decision by “consolidating” with Reform Temple Menorah in an affirmation of the Jewish “community” of Bloomfield.

Information drawn from “The Story of our Temple” by Rabbi Phillip Sigal (z”l), 1969.

Temple Menorah

The earliest beginnings of Temple Menorah are rooted in Temple B’nai Zion. Popular legend has it that a number of families at B’nai Zion were uncomfortable over an emphasis upon tradition. Some accounts place the issue of mixed marriage as a central factor. A small group, led by Morris Wein, broke off to form a synagogue that was more responsive to liberal values. Joined by a number of unaffiliated families already living in the Bloomfield – Montclair – Clifton area, Temple Menorah was chartered as a member of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1955. Irving Shakin was its first elected president.

The property for the new synagogue was a sheep farm and nursery located at Temple Ner Tamid’s present site on Broad Street. It was purchased for the sum of $42,000. The farmhouse, which served as the congregation’s building for five years, was restructured for a sanctuary incorporating the living and dining rooms. Classrooms were made from the upstairs bedrooms. During this period, Temple Menorah would hold High Holy Day services at the Watchung Presbyterian Church.

The early years of Temple Menorah saw rapid growth, particularly due to the post-war “baby boom” and the suburban re-location of the Passaic and Newark Jewish communities. 1960 witnessed two important landmarks for Temple Menorah: the construction of a synagogue building and the hiring of Rabbi Nathan H. Fish (z”l). During the 1960s Temple Menorah continued to grow with a religious school population that was well over 200 students, requiring classes to be held in split-sessions over Saturdays and Sundays.

With a new congregation in adjacent Clifton however, and the continued population shift further west, Temple Menorah’s membership stabilized and began to gradually decline. As the decade of the 1970s came to a close, the leadership of Temple Menorah reasoned that the community of Bloomfield would be better served by a single congregation of combined strength than two separate smaller synagogues. Thus, in 1979, Temple Menorah and Temple B’nai Zion agreed to a plan of consolidation. Following the sale of the Temple B’nai Zion property, the newly formed Temple Ner Tamid was dedicated in the Temple Menorah building in June of 1980.

Beth Sholom Reform Temple (BSRT)

Beth Sholom began in 1959 when a group of Passaic and Clifton families organized to provide an alternate Jewish style to the existing traditional learning experiences at the Ahavas Israel and Temple Emanuel. They wanted, among other things, equal access to Hebrew and religious training for girls as well as boys. The congregation grew and the leadership began raising funds for a permanent home. Before they had a space of their own, they rented space in the Odd Fellows Hall on Lexington Avenue. The Torah was taken to the home of one of the founders each week for safekeeping.

Over the early years, BSRT had student rabbis serving the temple: Rabbis Sills, Secher and Soslow. When ordained, Edwin Soslow became the first full time rabbi. In 1975, when he left to go to Cherry Hill, Rabbi Stanley Skolnik came and remained the spiritual leader for 35 years.

BSRT had many cantorial soloists and students from HUC and other schools including JTS. It was at BSRT that the very first woman to be certified as a Cantor from HUC served as a student cantor and remained after that to make BSRT the very first temple in the country to have a fully certified woman cantor, Barbara Ostfeld.

BSRT suffered, as did other non-orthodox Passaic-Clifton congregations, from the demographic shift toward orthodoxy and the loss of families as their children became Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Unlike some of the other congregations which either went out of business or became orthodox, BSRT remade itself as a “regional” congregation and held off the entropy which trapped other temples. BSRT survived many years beyond the experts’ predictions through great effort and voluntarism, creative rental projects, and attracting members in near and less near areas. BSRT members joined Ner Tamid in 2010.

Temple Ner Tamid

Temple Ner Tamid was established in June 1980 through the unification of Bloomfield’s two synagogues: Conservative Temple B’nai Zion and Reform Temple Menorah, the latter of which occupied the site where Temple Ner Tamid now stands. This unique blending of two congregations — and two distinct approaches to Judaism — has flourished beyond expectations. Today, members of Temple Ner Tamid serve as both witnesses to and participants in this enduring and dynamic legacy.

Initially affiliated with both the Reform and Conservative movements, the congregation aligned solely with the Reform movement in 2000. However, its dual heritage remains evident; services are rich with Hebrew and infused with music, the traditional Jewish calendar is followed, the kitchen is dairy, and meat events require kosher catering. Temple Ner Tamid is known for its enthusiastic participation — this is a congregation that sings.

The Temple’s nursery school, Shoresh (“roots”), was founded shortly after the congregation’s formation and has grown steadily ever since. It is now recognized as one of the area’s premier private Jewish nursery schools.

Since its founding in 1980, Temple Ner Tamid has flourished, steadily growing in both membership and professional staff. Rabbi Steven Kushner was appointed as the congregation’s first rabbi and served faithfully until his retirement in 2018, at which point he was named Rabbi Emeritus. Rabbi Marc Katz joined the synagogue that same year. Cantor Meredith Greenberg became part of the clergy team in 2008, contributing to the continued growth of the congregation’s dynamic musical offerings. The temple’s professional staff has continued to expand and evolve to meet the needs of its vibrant and growing community.

With an initial membership of 220 member families, Temple Ner Tamid has since grown to serve a vibrant community of over 600. Its building is in near-constant use. To accommodate this growth, the building has undergone two major renovations. In 1995, the sanctuary was expanded by one-third, and the lobby, bathrooms, and offices were redesigned. A second expansion in 2004 extended the front of the building, adding a new rabbi’s office, chapel, meeting room, and additional classrooms on the lower level.

Our Kitchen

Temple Ner Tamid has a dairy-only kitchen and requires meals to be fully Kosher when catering meat.

Martha Fritz (z”l), a former TNT congregant and WWII nurse, left a lasting legacy by gifting the funds for the renovation that resulted in the TNT kitchen as it exists today.