Jeff Forman, 71, has been president of Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation since 2009, and a member since 2005.
The former New Yorker moved to Baltimore to attend Johns Hopkins University and stayed for good, subsequently graduating from the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Forman works as an attorney at Kauffman and Forman, P.A. in Towson. He and his wife, Joan Gaby, live in Baltimore County. He has a son, Michael, and three grandchildren living in London.
Born in the Bronx, Forman moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, when he was 8 years old, following the death of his father. He, his older brothers and his mother attended Teaneck Jewish Community Center, which Forman described as a Conservative shul. The Conservative synagogue of 1960 looked like a Modern Orthodox synagogue today, he said, though without the mechitza.
“My mother, a 29-year-old widow with three boys aged 11, 10 and 8, sent us to shul twice a day for a year to say Kaddish for our father,” Forman recalled. “My mother passed away in 1998. My brothers and I were always a close-knit family, and we remain so to this day. We were also close with aunts, uncles and cousins.”
When his two older brothers were in college, Forman and his mother moved to Merritt Island, Florida, to be closer to her family. Forman was a junior in high school at the time. However, Forman said, “My mother was a New York Jewish woman who didn’t fare well living in the Deep South, so she and I moved to North Miami Beach for my senior year of high school.”
Forman credits his mother, who, though not strictly observant of many Jewish rituals, did keep a kosher home and, said Forman, “valued being Jewish.”
Though he admits to being a “lifelong Yankees fan,” Forman said he has become a “die-hard Ravens fan.”
The biggest challenge he experiences as president of MMAE is meeting the diverse needs of the synagogue’s members, he said.
“People look to the shul for spiritual comfort,” Forman said. “I am fond of saying that shuls are not just hotels for the spiritually well. They are also hospitals for the spiritually ill. And for any person, that can change in the blink of an eye. For example, a person who is losing or who has lost a loved one or is facing his or her own illness or mortality. Or just a life event that creates a need for spiritual strength. Being able to recognize that need and help with a call, a visit, a kind word or a message to the rabbi to let him know that someone needs him is critical for a shul president if he wants to fulfill the shul’s mission of doing what we can to make every person’s day a bit more bearable.”
The rewards have been many, particularly as he is able to respond to people at their most critical moments.
“For me,” Forman said, “there is very little that compares to being able to lead a shiva minyan and offer words of comfort to a family in their time of grief and need.” It is the “most humbling experience I can have whenever I am called upon to do that.”
Finding inspiration each day, particularly during the dark times, is about finding God’s presence in his life, Forman noted.
“The thing that inspires me the most is that I find God’s hand present in my life all the time. That is so comforting. I think that if you look for his hand in your daily life, you will find it. You just have to keep your eyes, ears and mind open to finding his handiwork. There are no coincidences in this world,” he said.
“I have the greatest marriage, and I 100% believe that God made the shidduch,” he continued. “All the things that had to fall into place for us to have met and to be together could not have happened without God injecting his ‘Perils of Pauline’ vignettes of little things that, in retrospect, you say, ‘How did that happen?’ But Joan and I know how it happened. So, I am inspired every day to find ways to make Joan happy, and to come to shul to daven and thank God for all the blessings he has given me. I have been blessed tremendously, and that is one of the reasons I am willing to continue as president of MMAE, which is the finest shul in the world. I am so proud of our congregation. The congregants step up when there is a need, oftentimes without even being asked. And when asked, the answer is never ‘no.’ This inspires me more than I can express.”
Equally important for Forman is acting with intentionality, with God in the background.
“My philosophy in life,” Forman said, “is that whenever I am faced with a decision, I picture God sitting in the corner, arms folded, legs crossed and watching what I am about to do. And I say to myself, ‘Will he be smiling at what I am about to do, or will he be crying?’ The decision then becomes easier, and if you do that, your life will be so much more rewarding.”
