Cantor for Bentonville’s Congregation Etz Chaim becomes rabbi.
Etz Chaim embraces spiritual leader, seeks to build on tradition of community
It wasn’t the typical rabbinical ordination for Rabbi Cantor Sam Radwine of Congregation Etz Chaim in Bentonville. Like many events in the time of a pandemic, the ordination was completely virtual.
“I like to say that I’m the first rabbi ever ordained in Prairie Creek, Ark.,” Radwine says with a chuckle. “I think I can say that pretty confidently.”
Originally from Illinois, Radwine graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He later attended the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, School of Sacred Music, and was ordained as a cantor in 1981. He served pulpits in New Jersey and Connecticut, but for most of his career, he was in California. When he retired, he and his husband, Rogers native Wade Sisco, moved to Northwest Arkansas.
“We joined Congregation Etz Chaim, the synagogue,” Radwine recalls. “At the same time, they were looking for some leadership, and it turned out it was me. I have been at the helm of the spiritual leadership of the congregation for four years now.”
As a cantor, Radwine was trained to lead the musical portions of the liturgy and had a firm grasp of the Hebrew language, enabling him to assist with religious instruction, including preparation for bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies.
In addition, he could lead prayer, perform weddings and funerals and carry out other pastoral duties.
He had also been on the faculty of a seminary in Los Angeles, a rabbinical seminary called the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, and was teaching remotely in the rabbinic and cantorial schools. A thought occurred to him.
“I thought if I could teach, I could study,” he recalls. So he joined the rabbinic program.
He studied for three years. “I was given a little bit of credit for my first time in seminary when I was in cantorial school, but probably the greatest surprise for me was learning how much I didn’t know … and how much more there is to study, even after my ordination.”
He wrote and presented a thesis about challenges to rabbinic authority from within the Jewish community and how Judaism evolved throughout the ages. “People think of Judaism as … as sort of being a singularly focused faith tradition, and it’s not,” he says. “From its earliest times, the rabbinic tradition was that there were many views on things, and dialogue and conversation and argument were part of our tradition. My thesis was to show how that evolved, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries.”
His rabbinical ordination was conducted May 31.
In some ways, the ordination, earned through online study and conducted virtually, mirrors the congregation where he serves — resourceful, possessing a “get it
done” focus, and able to prevail over challenges.
THE HISTORY
The story of Congregation Etz Chaim began in 2004 with the vision of 12 families, most of whom came from larger communities with established synagogues.
“They did a beautiful thing to really bring a community together and do it in a very grassroots way, knowing that we were never going to probably be big,” says Jodi Prohofsky, president of Congregation Etz Chaim. “It became this beautiful sort of melting pot of tradition and focus and sense of community.”
“Etz Chaim” is Hebrew for “tree of life,” a plant that grew in the Garden of Eden.
Much like Bentonville, where the congregation is based, many in Congregation Etz Chaim are transplants. According to U.S. Census data included in an online community profile, 62% of Bentonville residents (in 2016) were born outside the state of Arkansas. Of the original dozen or so families who established Congregation Etz Chaim, Prohofsky says she thinks no one was native to the area.
From the humble beginnings of an initial August 2004 meeting in a Rogers home, the fledgling congregation moved forward in 2005 to buy a former church building at Moberly and Central in Bentonville and convert it into the first synagogue in Benton County, according to a brief history on the congregation’s website. The site flooded in 2014, and the congregation was hosted for a time at First Christian Church of Bentonville’s Waterway campus. That church’s support was amazing, in Prohofsky’s view. “They couldn’t have been nicer, kinder and more giving,” she says. “I can’t say enough about how gracious they were.”
Prohofsky says the congregants felt the need to have their own space and moved into a new location on Walton Boulevard, a tiny space that Prohofsky affectionately calls a “mini-gogue,” in December 2019. In just a few months, covid-19 led the congregation to discontinue in-person services and transition activities to Zoom.
During that time, Prohofsky says, the congregation had three bat mitzvahs and two conversions. “We really did thrive, even though there were a lot of challenges put forth in front of us,” she says.
MIRRORING TRENDS
Like the broader community of Bentonville, Congregation Etz Chaim has seen plenty of change.
“We sort of have this sort of ebb and flow of membership, attendance, of friends, however you want to describe a congregation,” Prohofsky says. Because of that continuing state of flux, she focuses on trying to maintain that Jewish presence and community, for the present and the future.
Congregation Etz Chaim is not the only Jewish organization in the region, the congregation’s president notes, and is part of a broader community that includes Temple Shalom in Fayetteville and the Chabad of Northwest Arkansas.
Her particular emphasis is on Congregation Etz Chaim. “It’s a question of our congregation — how are we going to continue? So, we focus on membership, attendance, engagement.”
EFFECTS OF THE PANDEMIC
Covid-19 required the congregation to think deeply and innovatively about ways to foster engagement.
“The pandemic was a challenge for us as it was for every congregation of every religion … and we found yet another way to connect,” Prohofsky says. “We moved to a Zoom model and actually had more people participate than we had in a really long time.”
There’s a desire now to move back to in-person services, especially with the Jewish High Holidays, such as Rosh Hashanah on Tuesday and Yom Kippur on Sept. 16. Radwine and Prohofsky say the congregation will look at a hybrid model with some meeting in person and others continuing to take the opportunity to join by Zoom. For example, the Zoom audience has included people who do not want to drive at night or who live as far away as Holiday Island.
Whatever the situation, Radwine says the continued emphasis is on being welcoming, online and in person. “We know across the board that religious institutions are on the decline because generationally people feel less the need to affiliate,” he says. “Community is really a central principle to Judaism, and we want to make sure that we can reach out and find those people and be a home for them.”
Radwine notes that sometimes in a location such as Northwest Arkansas the Jewish community can be generally invisible. “We just want people to know that we’re here,” he says. The congregation has a good relationship with others in the faith community, including churches and organizations in the Bentonville Interfaith Council.
“I look forward to the opportunity to talk to even more people,” Radwine says. “We are not a proselytizing religion, but there’s an increased sensitivity, particularly now as anti-Semitism is on the rise. We want people to know who we are.”
Past community events that have served to familiarize others with Congregation Etz Chaim’s presence have included a communal Passover Seder, open to anyone, and the public lighting of the Hanukkah menorah at Lawrence Plaza in Bentonville.
“We want to be a place that welcomes all people, particularly Jews as they move in,” Radwine says. “We welcome people who just want to see who we are. We are open and affirming and welcoming to anyone who wants to know us.”
WELCOME HOME
The ability to help Jewish newcomers find their sense of community in a new locale inspires Prohofsky, the congregation’s president, to see Etz Chaim thrive.
A young woman who is moving to the area contacted Congregation Etz Chaim and had coffee with Prohofsky. “We got together and talked and shared stories,” Prohofsky says. “She’s of Jewish heritage, and she wanted to connect with her community. We were one of the first phone calls she made.”
At the other end of the continuum, two years ago, a young man was moving to the area, and his parents visited Congregation Etz Chaim in hopes of affirming there was a community in Bentonville for him. So many things happened in the past two years, including the pandemic, which upended Congregation Etz Chaim activities, and Prohofsky recently received a note from him expressing his regrets that he wasn’t able to get more connected with the faith community. Still, he expressed how grateful he was to know that the Jewish community was there and would welcome him.
For Prohofsky, the two incidents bookend the need for Congregation Etz Chaim to maintain that local presence. It’s all about establishing and keeping that sense of belonging.
“It’s that general sense of we’re here, we’re a community,” she says. “We may be small, and there may be times we don’t feel vibrant, but there’s a life pulse that is really important.”