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Toras Chaim offers a new choice

Rabbi Yaakov Rich leads his “Path of the Just” students, including Asher and Rivka Jacobs, in a discussion at Congregation Toras Chaim last week.<br><i>Photo: Steve Israel</i>

Rabbi Yaakov Rich leads his “Path of the Just” students, including Asher and Rivka Jacobs, in a discussion at Congregation Toras Chaim last week.
Photo: Steve Israel

Rabbi Yaakov Rich leads congregation with focus on growth through Torah

By Steve Israel

DALLAS — When Rabbi Yaakov Rich sounds the shofar at Congregation Toras Chaim next month, he’ll mark the first Rosh Hashanah observance for the area’s newest Orthodox shul, located in a neighborhood with “the highest concentration of Jews” in North Texas.

“We feel we’re just trying to make a little dent — to educate and to inspire and to help people reach their spiritual potential,” says Rabbi Rich, who is familiar to many students of Yavneh Academy, Congregation Ohr HaTorah and the Dallas Area Torah Association (DATA).

Without the rabbi’s reputation in the community “there wouldn’t be a Toras Chaim,” notes Shalom Abrams, a student and friend of Rich and a founder of the congregation.

Since last May, Abrams and more than 50 others have joined in weekly Kiddush services Rich leads in a leased residence at 17912 Hillcrest Road (near Frankford Road). It’s within a mile of three other Orthodox congregations — Ohev Shalom, Chabad of Dallas and Bait Midrash Keren Ohr — and less than two miles from Magen David Congregation.

Even before Toras Chaim moved in, the home’s two-car garage had been converted into a room suitable for use as a sanctuary. The great room became a Kiddush room and classroom that’s filled daily for instruction on topics like “Learn to Learn the Talmud,” “Tefillah — Jewish Prayer for Women,” “Path of the Just,” “Chumash” (Torah) and “Laws of Tefillin.”

“Before I approached the rabbi,” Abrams recalls, “I was feeling a very strong need to have something in the north community that, when people walked in our door, no one would feel they were a stranger, everyone would feel at home and everyone would feel comfortable walking into the sanctuary to daven; that there would be a strong overpowering sense of kedushah, of holiness, where people who came in would know that this part of our building is different from all the other parts, in that this part is where you come and make your connection to HaShem and that’s the focus.”

Rich told Abrams he agreed completely.

“Having seen Rabbi [Aryeh] Feigenbaum at Ohr HaTorah, I was very interested in duplicating that level of kedushah that he demands of his congregation in the sanctuary,” the rabbi said.

Rich said he had also been thinking about a northward move. He and his family were living in the south eruv — “a very, very exciting, very growth-oriented community.” [An eruv is a defined area in which certain carrying activities are permitted on Shabbat and Yom Kippur.]

“There were a number of people who wanted to try to replicate that in the north end, understanding that there’s already an extremely successful synagogue in the north end, Ohev Shalom, and Rabbi [Mendel] Dubrawsky has a very successful shul [Chabad of Dallas],” Rich said. “But different flavors and different strokes, and there were a number of people who wanted to try to replicate that. And Shalom was the individual who was willing to take the risk and make it happen, pull together a group of people.”

While Ohr HaTorah grew from Congregation Shaare Tefilla — “both of them now overflowing their buildings, beautiful to see”— Toras Chaim “is not a breakaway minyan, and in that sense, we’re unusual,” Rich added.

Rabbi Rich and his wife Susan — who is the new assistant principal of Mesorah High School for Girls — have 10 children, ages 3 to 19. Three of their boys are away at yeshiva and a fourth attends school here. Their other children attend Torah Day School.

A native of Canada, Rich says he grew up as “pretty much a Reform Jew,” going to shul only on the High Holy Days. “Pesach was not Pesach,” he says. But at age 22, after spending a year at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Rich attended a yeshiva in the United States and “that’s where it all began.”

Rich came to Dallas in 1996 as director of DATA. In 2000, he became a full-time rebbe at Yavneh Academy and began a graphic design business, Raz Design. Now his time is filled with congregational and family responsibilities as well as the design work.

Thanks to his graphic design income, Rich was able to provide his services without pay for six months. “If it hadn’t been for that, it could never have worked,” Abrams said.

Why the name Toras Chaim? “So often when you’re speaking to people who are not living an observant lifestyle or learning within the framework of an observant lifestyle, the comment is always, ‘Torah is outdated, it’s not for today’s world, we’ve moved beyond that.’ And so the message of this shul is that Toras Chaim is a living Torah, it is a Torah of life and it’s exciting,” the rabbi says.

Toras Chaim has five directors: Shalom Abrams, Tricia Sutkin, Ellen Gutgold, Shelly Newman and Travis Katz.

Asked about Abrams’ key role in the shul, Rich told of a noted rabbi who said “you don’t have an institution like this, a building like this, success like this without one crazy person to make it happen,” meaning someone who is both a risk-taker and a doer. “Anything that needs to get done and that does get done is because of Shalom Abrams. He is the person who has pulled the whole thing together.”

Abrams — a New York native with a background in human resources, public relations and real estate — spent 20 years in Los Angeles before coming to Dallas. He, his wife Shira and their four children completed their conversion to Judaism nearly six years ago, guided by Rabbi Yerachmiel Fried, the dean of DATA. The couple is involved in real estate now, Shira in sales and Shalom in management.

When a stranger walks in and is not comfortable, the rabbi said, “Shalom’s the first person to jump up, put his arm around the person, take him to a seat, show him where we are in the service. The warmth of Toras Chaim emanates from Shalom Abrams. Shalom takes care of the numbers, I take care of the individuals.” Responds Abrams: “He’s the spiritual leader, and I’m the one who keeps the counters clean.”

The rabbi stressed in an interview, “We never push anybody in terms of observance. It’s always been my experience that when a person is learning Torah, they are inspired to grow on their own. And that’s what we do. We just focus on the learning and the davening.”

All his congregants, thankfully, have Internet access, the rabbi said. “We are light-years ahead of where we would be simply because of that technological resource,” said Rich, who also enlists online subscriptions to interact with the community.

When asked how Toras Chaim draws 10 men to minyan services, Rich held up his mobile phone. “We make phone calls,” he said with a laugh. “One of the biggest blessings is having four boys in the shul who are home for the summer helping out with the minyan.”

Abrams said that the shul in fact achieves a minyan most days. “And we’re growing the congregation one day at time.”