Synagogue Welcomes Biker Rabbi

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen June 24, 2010

It may be the first time that a rabbi is officially welcomed to his new synagogue on two wheels.

Joined by his mentor and congregants both new and old, newly ordained Rabbi Eytan Hammerman will bike from the synagogue where he spent the last two years as a rabbinic intern, to his new one 30 miles away, where he will have his own pulpit.

Hammerman will set out with Rabbi Gordon Tucker and fellow travelers from Temple Israel in White Plains, N.Y., by reciting the prayer for travelers, tefillat haderech. When they arrive at Beth Shalom, they’ll be welcomed by the town’s mayor and other local clergy, and plant a tree.

Teenagers from the new congregation will join him about 10 miles from Temple Beth Shalom in Mahopac, and the congregation’s toddler contingent will trike alongside for the last 100 feet or so, said Hammerman, who is 33 and the father of a 1-year-old and 2-year-old twins (who won’t be in the bike cart for this trip).

There will be a formal installation ceremony – “Hopefully without as much sweat,” Hammerman says – in November.

But on Sunday, once “Team Hammerman” arrives, “we’ll have some singing with our cantor and hopefully the kids in the community will remember the day that their rabbi came by bicycle,” Hammerman said. “I hope they ride me into town, not out of it!”

Debra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winning journalist and the author of Celebrating Your New Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways to Welcome Baby Girls into the Covenant. Follow her on Instagram @debranc or email her at dncnews@icloud.com.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO