Torah

Lehiyot is the Hebrew word for "becoming," and tonight, when the members of M'kor Shalom hold their annual Lehiyot Sabbat service, that word will have special significance. Efforts to make the synagogue accessible to the handicapped and welcoming to those with disabilities were recognized by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, an organization of Reform synagogues. After a national rabbinical committee reviewed the Cherry Hill synagogue's Lehiyot application, M'kor Shalom in March became one of seven Reform congregations in North America - and the only one in New Jersey - to receive recognition.

To commemorate the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Main Line Reform Temple, 410 Montgomery Ave., Wynnewood, will hold an interfaith Sabbath service beginning at 8:15 p.m. Friday. In addition to Rabbis Paul Citrin, Max Weiss and Max Hauser of the temple, speakers will include the Rev. James Pollard of Zion Baptist Church in Ardmore and Rabbi Marc Margolius of Beth Am Israel Congregation in Penn Valley. Choirs from Main Line Reform, Beth Am Israel, Zion Baptist Church and St. Paul Lutheran Church in Wynnewood will provide the music.

Hanukah was to begin at sundown Tuesday, but Betty Anne Gray was still shopping for gifts for her grandchildren and great-nieces. It's not that she is into last-minute shopping, explained the Pine Valley resident. "I have always been conflicted in giving gifts at Hanukah. "But customs do evolve and change and you can't go against the flow," Gray said. As a child, Gray received only money or gelt - as it is called in Yiddish - as gifts. "And it always had special meaning since it was symbolic of freedom.

Area rabbis and educators will share their knowledge on a variety of topics of Jewish interest in the Fifth Annual Jewish Community Kallah on Saturday at the Valley Forge Hilton. A variety of topics will be covered in the two-part event. Topics will include "Hebrew in Early America" and "Let's Laugh Together: Jewish Humor Through the Ages. " Registration will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday. The first session will begin at 8. The second session will open at 9 with a lecture titled "Judaism and Islam: Conflict or Convergence?"

Tales of sex and money provided a snapshot yesterday of the worldly side of the life of Rabbi Fred J. Neulander, a once highly regarded Cherry Hill religious leader on trial for the 1994 murder of his wife. In the sensational murder case's third day of testimony in Superior Court, jurors heard one witness describe how the rabbi told her that he and his wife had an open marriage and that he had had affairs with two members of his Congregation M'kor Shalom. Another witness described a $5,000 business loan from the rabbi that earned him interest at a rate comparable to that of an underworld loanshark.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in the Jewish liturgical calendar. But "hectic" bordering on "frantic" may best describe the days leading up to Yom Kippur, which begins at sundown this evening. "I haven't slept in weeks," Carol Perloff, communications director for Congregation Rodeph Shalom on North Broad Street, said yesterday afternoon. "It's like a meeting of a small nation. " It's a small nation that also swells this time of year, when people who don't usually see the inside of a synagogue "suddenly remember they're Jewish," Perloff joked.

Most afternoons at four, Hermana "Pinky" Shmerler puts her domestic life on hold and enters her private world of warp and weft. Shmerler's Cherry Hill home is a repository for dozens of weaving projects, from tunics to tapestries. Her headquarters is a converted bedroom housing two large looms threaded with work in progress and bordered, on a shelf just above eye level, with spools in a variety of colors. These, she explains, are her cottons. Woolen yarns are stored in a cedar closet to guard against moths.

The bar mitzvah was not as Abbe and Jerry Dorfman had envisioned. When their son, Scott, was born prematurely and with cerebral palsy, they figured that his rite to religious manhood would be marked by a simple ceremony in a synagogue side room. Abbe said she didn't picture a cantor, a video photographer, a packed temple and a country club reception. She didn't dare dream of Scott, adorned in white yarmulke and prayer shawl, sailing unassisted to the bimah platform. "When he was a baby and I pictured in my mind how his bar mitzvah would be, I just figured it would be in the rabbi's study and there wouldn't be a party or a lot of people," Abbe said.

Now that they had received the approval of state officials in Harrisburg, the bride and groom could finally have their union blessed. So, Sunday morning, about 500 people gathered at Beth El Suburban Synagogue in Broomall to bear witness to their unusual wedding. Unusual because this was not the marriage of two people but the symbolic union of two Jewish congregations - Beth El and Ner Tamid of Springfield. Rabbi Barry Blum of Beth El explained that the merger had been planned for many years.

Barefoot and wrapped in a prayer shawl, Rabbi Louis Rieser took the hand of the woman beside him and joined in singing a wordless melody, a prayer of sorts. One in a circle of Jews standing in the library rotunda at Harcum Junior College one day recently, Rabbi Rieser was participating in an emotional morning service commemorating the atomic-bombing of Nagasaki. As a member of the Havurah community, 300 of whom completed a six-day program at the Bryn Mawr campus Sunday, Rabbi Rieser is a believer in egalitarianism.