Well, you don't get to write a review of a shul too often, but I am a big fan and a member at Beth Israel Center. Yes, they are on the conservative side of Conservative Judaism, and to fully participate, you need a working knowledge of liturgical Hebrew and traditional Jewish practice. However, they are extremely welcoming, and are just happy to have you participate, whatever your experience. Plus you learn a lot just by showing up. If you want to go to a synagogue where people really believe in what they are doing and do it with spirit and enthusiasm, this is your place. Plus they have something going on almost every day of the week. read more

The wife and I went to Beth Israel Center for the Kol Nidre service in Fall 2012. We had an invite from friends, so took them up on the offer. Appearance: The synagogue is starting to look a little rundown, but we found out that they're in the middle of a $5,000,000 capital campaign to renovate the place. The preliminary drawings look GORGEOUS. Service: The wife grew up Conservative but has gone more Reform with time, and I grew up Reform and have gone less religious with time, so going to a Conservative service took us back more than few years to when we were much younger. I'd estimate that about 90% of the service was done in Hebrew, and the average age of the congregation was probably between 50 and 60. There were kids of a variety of ages, which was good to see, but they were not in the chapel portion of the building for most of the service (probably better for Kol Nidre, anyway). Anyway, the wife and I will most likely not go back -- not because of anything that Beth Israel Center did wrong, but because we really don't feel comfortable in Conservative services anymore. read more

Relatively few people here are welcoming, though they are friendly enough over kiddush. The community has been pulled back and forth across several leadership changes in the last 15 years: those in favor of Rabbi 1 therefore disliked Rabbi 2 who replaced him, and therefore liked when 2 was let go in favor of 3. This schism is rarely apparent at the surface and unavoidable just below. Good: lay-led services Good: whiskey at kiddush Bad: heavy reliance on "the way we've always done it" Bad: the rabbi gives a long, not-particularly-well-thought-out dvar torah almost every week despite there being plenty of academics and other people with both interesting perspective and good diction Bad: educational philosophy that keeps children more or less out of the service until their bar mitzvah, at which point the kid has been taught to think the day is about them rather than about the community welcoming them Bad: little recourse; the rabbi, executive committee, and ritual committee are all buddy-buddy and it's impossible to seek improvements in any one of the the three because they are all close friends of each other. Bad: on a related note to the above, the rabbi claims and is attributed credit for innovations that are certainly not his read more