Renovations of Our Sanctuary

June 4, 2025
8 Sivan 5785

We will be beginning the major renovation of our Sanctuary including improvements to make our bima accessible for all members of our community. This project will begin on Sunday, June 15 and will be completed by the end of August.

The sanctuary and some of the surrounding hallways will be blocked off during the construction. We ask that you pardon our appearance as there will be temporary walls up to protect us for the construction work and to allow for the construction team to work undisturbed. If you are here during the summer, you may see and hear work moving along. Shabbat services during this time will be held in the Perlmutter Outdoor Chapel or the indoor Chapel.

We will keep you aprised of our progress throughout the summer by sharing photos and updates from the construction team.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to be in touch with us.

We look forward to sharing our newly renovated sanctuary together this fall and plan to formally dedicate it during Rosh Hashanah services on Tuesday, September 23.

With gratitude for arriving to this moment,
Rabbi Matthew D. Gewirtz, Senior Rabbi
Karen Feldman, President
Rena Abrams, Executive Director

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As a reminder, here is what we shared in the winter about this project:

The last few years have been full of disruption and change. During these challenging years, we have deepened our commitment to helping others and strengthening our congregation through engaging in learning, worship, and doing our part to help fix our sometimes broken world. One incredible result of all this activity is an increase in our community’s participation in our worship services and other programs. However, as our programs and services have grown, staying true to our value of inclusion and being a welcoming place for all have become more challenging.

The current setup of our sanctuary is not a space where all are able to participate with ease. Our bima, the central focus of our sanctuary, is not accessible to all. It is incumbent upon us as an ethical imperative to make a change on that front and we will be renovating our sanctuary space this summer to make it accessible to all. This is just one of a number of actions that we are taking to better serve our community. In addition to our sacred space, we also are reimagining our education spaces and making sure our building is equipped to function at its best for many years to come.

As we approached this first step, we engaged the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder and Belle to help us create a more accessible sacred space. We chose them out of many options because they have taken great care to respect the integrity of the original architecture and personality of the space. Our sanctuary, after all, has been the epicenter of sacred activity for both the totally joyous and utterly painful. Its roots don’t just represent our history here in Short Hills, but major elements come from our home in Newark where we existed for the lion’s share of our 176-year history. We are acutely aware of the need to sew all of that history into our planning. After months of design and discussion, we believe we have come up with a sanctuary space that allows for all to participate, bringing our clergy closer to us as we engage in sacred prayer while maintaining the physical history of our congregational space.

We are grateful to a talented group of lay leaders who served as part of a design team, and to Jeff Rosen, who is leading the team overseeing this project.

It is thanks to generous congregants in our community that we can do this work. The renovations will begin after our final B’nai Mitzvah in the sanctuary this spring and will be completed before the first B’nai Mitzvah and the High Holy Days in the fall. More details and renderings will follow in the coming months.

We are thankful that we are part of such a thriving congregation with such a rich and storied tradition — yet the survival of any long-standing community relies on its ability to adapt and change. Adaptation is, of course, exciting and sometimes hard. Like everything around here, we will navigate it all as a sacred congregation.

Please, as always, don’t hesitate to be in touch with questions or comments.

Rabbi Matthew D. Gewirtz, Senior Rabbi
Karen Feldman, President
Rena Abrams, Executive Director