Wantagh's Temple B'Nai Torah hosts garden party

It all started with a simple question: Can we have a garden like this?

When Rona and Bob Kauffman, two members of Wantagh’s Temple B’Nai Torah, attended a class led by Rabbi Daniel Bar-Nahum and the Rev. Mark Genzsler, of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Bellmore, a number of years ago, comparing interfaith scriptures, the subject of the garden at St. Francis came up. Intrigued, the Kauffmans met with Susan Salem, the garden’s creator and coordinator, and became regular volunteers there, were parishioners grow fresh produce to fight local hunger.

Salem and the Kauffmans wanted to bring that effort to Temple B’Nai Torah — which was originally known as Suburban Temple before it merged with Massapequa’s Temple Judea in 2008 and East Meadow’s Temple Emanu-El in 2018. The interest grew stronger when Temple B’Nai Torah brought the temple’s youth group to the St. Francis Garden in 2019 for a Sukkot activity.

A year later, B’Nai Torah took action.

“When Covid hit, we realized that if we were ever going to do this, we should do it now, because the food pantries were really having a problem keeping food on their shelves,” Rona Kauffman recalled. “And thankfully, the temple board was willing to take a chance on it.”

It turned out that Temple B’Nai Torah had a playground that was no longer in use, and that spot was chosen for the garden. After much reworking, sand boxes became garden beds for growing vegetables, all of which would be donated.

Though not a member of the Temple Torah, Susan Salem continued to lend her gardening skills to the effort. “Susan and I share some responsibilities, and exercise different responsibilities depending on what’s needed,” Kauffman said. “We work very well together as a team.”

Salem brings her gardening prowess to the project, while Kauffman — in addition to her own gardening knowledge, learned from Salem — coordinates all of the volunteer efforts. She is the co-chair of the temple’s Social Action Committee.

“I grew up with my grandparents, and my grandfather was a gardener,” Salem said. “I grew up in Bellmore. But what really started it (was) when my son was young, we joined a community-supported agriculture farm — the Dominican Sisters of Amityville. That’s where you pay the farmer so that they could get the supplies they need — essentially, you invest in the farm. Eventually they asked me if I wanted to work there, which I did.”

Salem kept at the effort, serving as a consultant for numerous churches and schools that wanted to get involved in community-supported agriculture.

It was important, according to Salem, to ensure that although the garden was at the temple, it was truly a community garden.

“Doing something unknown is always scary,” Salem said. “People are concerned about teenagers, about vandalism. At St. Francis, we took a chance and took down the fence, turning it into a compost bin. And instead of calling it the St. Francis Garden, we started calling it the Garden at St. Francis, to send out the message that everyone is welcome. And it totally shifted the mindset.”

That’s what the temple did, too — and its plot is known as the Garden at Temple B’Nai Torah. You don’t have to be a member of the temple to volunteer and contribute to the garden.

“It was so incredibly brave of them to take a chance,” Salem added. “And what a beautiful response to Covid, when we’re feeling helpless and not knowing what’s going to happen.”

According to Salem, the vegetables grown in the garden include artichokes, sweet peas, radishes, cucumbers, Swiss chard, lettuce, beets, turnips, onions, garlic, lettuce and carrots.

“Pretty much everything but corn,” she said. “Corn is really hard to grow on Long Island organically.”

On the distribution end, Rona Kauffman said that the temple typically donates to the Island Harvest warehouse, in Uniondale; the Bethany House of Nassau County; Community Solidarity, based in Hempstead, and various residences of temple members.

To celebrate the success of the project, which has now had four seasons of harvest, Temple B’Nai Torah hosted a Garden Party on June 10. It was an hours-long event at which members from all of the temple’s communities — Wantagh, Seaford, Bellmore, Merrick, and East Meadow — came together to honor the hard work for a good cause.

“Temple B’Nai Torah is very proud of Rona, Bob, Susan, and their dedicated committee’s accomplishments,” the temple said in a news release before the event, “which provide ‘Tzedakah,’ a Hebrew word meaning justice, specifically doing the right things by helping people or causes in need.”