Last Saturday, Congregation Beit Tikvah held its final Saturday Shabbat service. But it wasn’t just a service, it was a reunion.

“I haven’t seen you in so long,” one congregant said to another as they took their seats.

Roughly 50 people gathered in the sanctuary that was once the home of a church. Every week, congregants would volunteer to cover and uncover the cross before and after services, slowly creating their own sacred space in the then-church, now-community center.

Beit Tikvah announced its closure at the end of 2025 and is the latest among dozens of Baltimore-area synagogues that have closed its doors or merged in the past 20 years.

“As you get older, you realize that things change and come to an end,” said congregant of 39 years Nina Storch. “It’s had a long run, and I will miss it, but it’s attrition, things happen.”

“I was a member of Beit Tikvah for many, many years and actually a president, and my children were b’nai mitzvah here, so it has a lot of memories,” said congregant Ray Wacks. “It’s been 40 years that this congregation existed and it’s sad to see it go.”

Longtime member and officer of Beit Tikvah Steve Libowitz added, “this was the last congregation that we were really members of, and then we flopped around other congregations, but this was always home. This is the one that had the most memories, and just seeing the faces coming in now, people that I haven’t seen in a longtime, it’s bittersweet.”

Cantor Linda Baer led the congregation through the Shabbat morning prayers on her guitar, switching to the banjo for a prayer. Then Baer led congregants in taking out the Torah and called up those receiving an aliyah.

First, Baer called up those who served on the congregation’s board, both past and present. Twenty people crowded around the bimah to read from the Torah. Then those who were a part of the clean-up crew after every Shabbat service and those who volunteered to cover and uncover the cross that hung every week for services gathered on the bimah for their aliyot.

Toward the end of the service, the tradition of saying the Mourners’ Kaddish was observed. Congregants stood up and said the names of loved ones that had passed. Then, the cantor led them in prayer and added a list of past congregants who had passed.

Beit Tikvah was the first Reconstructionist synagogue to establish itself in Baltimore. The Reconstructionist movement was first developed by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, who believed Judaism was not just a religion, but a civilization with culture, music, myth, values and tradition. Kaplan promoted democratic leadership in Jewish communities and believed the past must be integrated into the present but not determine it, according to reconstructingjudaism.org.

“My friends, you are still who you always were. You are visionaries, storytellers, poets and seekers who boldly go where no one has gone before,” said Baer toward the end of the service.

The congregation’s Torah is being given to the Seaside Jewish Community in Rehoboth, Delaware. Jackie Land, a native Marylander and leader within the Reconstructionist movement, read a message from the Reconstructionist movement to the congregants.

“Beit Tikvah was never just a congregation, it was a courageous idea at a time when many communities drew narrow boundaries,” she said. “You widened them. You created a space where people could arrive as they were, where mixed families could belong without explanation, where children could explore who they were becoming, where questions about God were welcomed rather than quieted, and where dignity was not conditional … What you nurtured here helped shift what became possible far beyond these walls. Moments like these are never easy. Closing a congregation is not simply a logistical decision, it’s a deeply human one shared by care, memory and responsibility.”

Land added, “May you take pride in what you have built, may you carry it forward in ways both large and small, and may the legacy of Beit Tikvah remain a blessing for you and for all those who believe in the kind of community you made real.”

At the end of the service, Bill Marker, the congregation president, gave remarks, asking congregants, “when you say Kaddish, keep Beit Tikvah in mind.”

mresnicow@midatlanticmedia.com