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Decade at TJE: Rabbi Wasserman is all about outreach

Rabbi Ahron Wasserman (Photo: Lucia De Giovanni)WHEN Ahron Yisroel Wasserman was a pupil at Hillel Academy of Denver, he knew he enjoyed organizing youth groups and Shabbos groups.

Little did he know that he would ultimately use his talents to reach out to Jews in his hometown whose lifestyles were very different from his own.

Ahron Wasserman was born 38 years ago, the youngest child of Rabbi Isaac and Reva Wasserman. He was the only one of the Wassermans’  four children to be born in Denver after they moved here to start Yeshiva Toras Chaim, along with Rabbi Israel and Leah Kagan.

After graduating Hillel in the eighth grade, Ahron Wasserman spent the first two years of high school in Scranton, Pa., and returned to Denver’s Yeshiva Toras Chaim for his last two years and its post-high school program.

Then it was off to Israel for a year before landing in Lakewood, NJ, where he attended rabbinical school at the famed Lakewood Yeshiva, formally known as Bais Medrash Govoha.

While studying there, he met and married the former Hadassah Teichman of Los Angeles in 1995.

The couple lived in Lakewood nearly five years. Rabbi Wasserman became heavily involved in building the community rapidly developing around the yeshiva. The Lakewood Yeshiva is the largest in the US — 2009 enrollment exceeded 5,500.  And the growth of the community around the yeshiva is even larger.

Ahron and Hadassah moved into a new neighborhood of approximately 720 homes on the fringe of Lakewood.  Rabbi Wasserman took leadership roles in building that new sub-community, including a synagogue and a mikveh. Today, he reports, it is home to “hundreds and hundreds of families.”

“I was very comfortable. My wife had a nice job. I was studying. I really didn’t think of moving.”

Ahron was in the process of “getting smicha” — attaining rabbinical ordination — when two employment opportunities presented themselves: starting a yeshiva with a former teacher and administering an existing yeshiva. Both were great career starters.

However, at the time, Yeshiva Toras Chaim in Denver was in the midst of a search for a new director for its division of community services to work alongside Rabbi Yaakov Meyer,  who was busy  starting his own congregation.

Michael Miller, then chair of the YTC executive committee,  approached Rabbi Ahron Wasserman about the Denver position.

“It was not an easy decision,” Rabbi Wasserman recalls, “but the idea of coming back to a community in which I grew up was very appealing. Also, I was inspired by my father, Rabbi Kagan and Rabbi Meyer. This would give me the opportunity to create something on my own within arm’s length of the roshei yeshiva and Rabbi Meyer.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

RABBI Wasserman has now been in Denver 10 years, and The Jewish Experience is celebrating that milestone at its Wine, Cheese and Laughs event, Saturday, Feb. 20, 8 p.m., at the DU Cable Center.

Upon his arrival in Denver, Rabbi Wasserman hit the ground running to re-brand and build The Jewish Experience — and he hasn’t stopped running since.

At first he worked closely with his mentor, Rabbi Meyer. The idea, reflects Rabbi Wasserman, was to “offer an educational center not directly affiliated with a synagogue and to reach out to people not necessarily affiliated with Orthodox synagogues who could tap into the energy and educational resources that The Jewish Experience had to offer while they remained at their own synagogues.”

To that end, Rabbi Wasserman worked with Rabbis Stanley Wagner and Yaakov Chaitovsky, then at BMH-BJ, and with Rabbi Meyer’s emerging community in the southeast, as well as with the Loup JCC. They became co-sponsors of events and speakers.

The Jewish Experience also started neighborhood-based Torah study and social groups called chavurot, and sponsored lunch ‘n learns at business offices.

“We were doing all of this with a lot of local resources, including Rabbi Meyer and teachers at Yeshiva Toras Chaim,” recalls Rabbi Wasserman.

He realized the organization was growing too fast, especially with him as the only staff member. “We need to grow or die,” Rabbi Wasserman told his board of directors, which decided to focus on the underserved population of Jews in the 25- to 45-year-old range.

“The key was to give them a positive experience about Judaism and enable them to make educated decisions about their Jewish journeys.”

Until 2002, Rabbi Wasserman was TJE’s associate director, as Rabbi Meyer still held the title of director. Aliza Bulow had joined as the part-time program director.

That year, 2002, TJE held its first retreat in the mountains, facilitated by the Gateways organization and attended by 200 people. The Gateways staff observed how Rabbi Wasserman was virtually a one-man band and advised him to expand. That’s when Rabbi Raphael Leban was brought on as outreach director.

ALONG with the human resources expansion came a more permanent expansion.  “Until that time, we had been an institution without walls, but we realized we really needed a place. RMHA had just vacated the JCC to move to the Denver Campus, so there was space at the JCC — where the Jews are.”

With the opening of The Jewish Experience Center in the Loup JCC in September, 2002 and the addition of Rabbi Leban and his wife Ita as teachers, “we kicked everything up a notch with new classes.”

Also at that time, young Jewish families began moving into Lowry, but they weren’t functioning as a community. The Jewish Experience held a “Jewish block party,” hosted by Ian and the late Marsha Gardenswartz in their Lowry home with 75 adults attending.

Soon there were classes, chavurot and sukkah hops taking place in the new Denver neighborhood, a  former Air Force base.

Since the people in Lowry  wanted Shabbat programming, Rabbi Wasserman and his family had a “Shabbos house” there for a year-and-a-half before Rabbi and Mrs. Leban and their family moved to Lowry.

Programming grew to include the biennial mountain retreat, a medical ethics event and young professionals’ lectures as well as hip ideas such “The Buzz” monthly coffee group and the popular “Sushi Shmoos.”

NEXT in TJE’s evolution was a Sunday school, requested by TJE participants, who reasoned that since they were finally now receiving a quality Jewish education. “Why should our kids have to wait until they are adults?”

Rabbi Wasserman was not initially enthusiastic,  so he set down four “tough” conditions:

“The parents would have to be committed to the program. It couldn’t be a babysitting service.”

“The parents would have to pay for it.”

“We must have a minimum of 12 kids.”

“The kids have to come back every week, even during ski season.”

The rabbi thought he was off the hook, but 24 hours later, 12 students had signed up, with their parents totally buying into the conditions.

Rabbi Wasserman’s wife Hadassah started The Sunday Experience as its first teacher in 2005.  The next year there 36 students and now the student body is 75.

It is held at the JCC, with classes for the parents taking place simultaneously.

As these Sunday Experience students have gotten older, and become Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, TJE has followed them to offer “The Teen Experience,” on Monday nights at the Aish Denver Teen Center.

More than 20 teenagers currently participate.

TJE is still evolving. “We are moving forward; we have to expand,” he says. “We haven’t even scratched the surface.”

To that end, Rabbi Wasserman, his staff and board have embarked upon “Division 2020,” a careful look at TJE’s constituency and what it will look like in another decade.

“We’ve learned that 24% of our constituency is unaffiliated, although many have joined synagogues since becoming involved. We do know that The Jewish Experience engages more Jews in Judaism, and that’s the key.”

SO, it’s been a busy and eventful 10 years for Rabbi Ahron Yisroel Wasserman.

“I never thought I would end up in outreach, so how am I comfortable with it?” he reflects. “I think growing up in my parents’ home and watching them open their home and spend time with people of all observance levels ingrained in me from an early age how to respect and interact with people from all walks of life.”

While building The Jewish Experience, Rabbi Wasserman has also been building his family. He and Hadassah are now the parents of four: Ahuva, 13; Chaya, 10; Nechama, 7, and Ari, 3 months.

Hadassah, too, has been building her career. She returned to school to earn an MSW and is employed at The Children’s Hospital.

Rabbi Wasserman admits that the sheer workload of running TJE was rather stressful for him in the beginning, but he has learned to balance his work and family lives. “There definitely was a learning curve to that,” he says.

He readily credits his wife Hadassah for insisting that he be home every night for dinner.  “I’m home at 5 for an hour-and-a-half, then I’m off giving classes. It’s a very nice break in the day.”

Rabbi Wasserman has never doubted his decision to leave the comfort of Lakewood, NJ, and jump into a new career in Denver.

The opportunity to work here with his father and Rabbi Meyer at his side is “the best thing that ever happened to me.

“When you genuinely care about people, and you can make sure to respect people for who they are, without judgment, then you become approachable and people feel comfortable. This is what we strive for in all our staff.

“We want to make sure people are comfortable enough that they are willing to come to our programs and ultimately be part of the growing Jewish Experience family.”



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IJN Associate Editor | [email protected]


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