Kansas City native has led the temple from turmoil to transformation
It’s not like Arthur Nemitoff was pining away for home.
He was ensconced as the senior rabbi at Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio, and had been away from his hometown of Kansas City for three decades — moving through rabbinical posts in Texas, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts before arriving in Columbus in 1995. He had two kids and his wife, Leslie Ringel, had never been to Kansas City.
But then came the call from a friend in 2003: The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah — the synagogue of his youth — needed him. The congregation was in turmoil.
Nemitoff reflected on those early years, and the ones following, in an interview with The Chronicle as he prepared to retire on June 30 after four decades in the rabbinate, including the past 18 years at B’nai Jehudah. Nemitoff turns 67 next month.
Nemitoff grew up on Gregory Boulevard only a few blocks from the temple’s former location at 69th Street and Holmes Road, serving in leadership roles on the chapter and district levels with BBYO, and graduating from Southwest High School.
When he came aboard at B’nai Jehudah as the new rabbi, Nemitoff encountered a congregation with “no sense of cohesion” and no clear vision for moving forward, he recalled.
“I remember very well my team we made a very clear decision early on, within the first month, that everything we were going to do in terms of our clergy team, in terms of our staffing, was going to be done as a team, we were going to be one voice,” Nemitoff said, “because in the past there had not been one voice, there had been many voices, and that had been part of the issue.”
The year before Nemitoff’s arrival, the congregation’s board of trustees had approved the sale of the Holmes Road property to the Helzberg Foundation for $5 million. The foundation’s plan was to demolish the congregation’s distinctive building to make way for a charter school.
The sanctuary had stood as a Kansas City landmark since 1967, its spiraling construction patterned after one of the oldest structural forms, a Bedouin tent.
Despite a push to save the structure to serve some sort of ancillary purpose for the school — preservationists argued the skylighted sanctuary was an important piece of post-World War II modernism — the building was demolished in 2003. Two years later the charter school, University Academy, moved into its new 172,000-square-foot facility on the property.
B’nai Jehudah held its last service in the Holmes Road location in late June 2003.
As part of the service, interim Rabbi Marc Disick passed a Torah to Nemitoff. At the end of the service, the five sacred scrolls were removed from the ark and taken out of the building in a recessional.
The congregation then moved to the school building it had constructed three years prior at 123rd Street and Nall Avenue in Overland Park.
The move to the suburbs was wrenching for a congregation with a history of social activism in Kansas City. A significant contingent of the congregation felt the move to Overland Park abandoned members that still lived in the city.
Another Issue
While the congregation was wrestling with the building issue, it was also navigating a rough rabbinical transition after the 2000 departure of Michael Zedek, who had led the congregation since 1976. Disick was in place as the congregation conducted the rabbinical search that ultimately landed Nemitoff.
“It is a childhood dream to be able to come home and be the rabbi of my own congregation,” Nemitoff told longtime Kansas City Star religion writer Helen Gray upon his hiring. “I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m about to jump out of my skin with joy.”
The Star story mentioned “internal problems” within the congregation, but Nemitoff said at the time he was confident he could heal the wounds, just as he had done upon his arrival amid tumult in the Columbus congregation.
Joining Nemitoff as part of the new team were Assistant Rabbi Neal Schuster, who came from Los Angeles, and interim Cantor Sharon Kohn of Cincinnati.
One of Nemitoff’s initial priorities was to call the Midtown members of the congregation to assure them that the synagogue was not abandoning them. He estimated he made as many as 150 phone calls.
Shared Vision
A couple of years later, in conjunction with lay leadership, Nemitoff ushered in a shared vision task force.
Co-chairs of that effort were Irv Robinson and Sharon Liese. The task force worked for about two years, ultimately involving more than 550 participants, to establish bedrock principles that still guide the congregation today.
In addition to kedushah (holiness/sacredness) and derech eretz (common decency), the core values include the Big Holy Awesome Goal of having every congregant pursue an individualized Jewish path.
A couple of other highlights of those early years, Nemitoff said, was reinstituting Mitzvah Day — which has become a signature event of the congregation with several hundred participants each year — and initiating confirmation trips to New York City (an idea he brought with him from Columbus).
Revamping Worship
Nemitoff’s tenure breaks down nicely into thirds. And it was largely in the middle and later years that he worked with the congregation and staff to reimagine regular worship and High Holiday services.
The transformation began with the notion of shabbat chadash (renewal), which created services with a lot of music and no sermon. That effort evolved into the Tefillah Team, where again, just like in the early healing process, Nemitoff and his team engaged a large cross-section of the congregation to experiment on new ways of conducting services, even switching among physical settings.
Through that, Nemitoff said, it became clear that music and message were clear priorities for the congregation. To that end, volunteer musicians — including some from outside the congregation — participated in services.
From there, it was on to incremental experimentation with High Holiday services — Rosh Hashana one year, Yom Kippur the next, and so on. Reimagining High Holidays also included a couple of retreats to Colorado where a mix of participants from the temple dreamed about what the experience could become.
Mesner Puppets
B’nai Jehudah’s High Holiday family services also began to have puppet shows, thanks to the efforts of Michael Klein, who introduced Nemitoff to renowned Kansas City puppeteer Paul Mesner about a decade ago. With funding from Klein, Nemitoff and Mesner created shows in which kids and parents operate the puppets — making for standing-room-only shows during the High Holidays.
Revamping worship is one of Nemitoff’s proudest achievements during his tenure. His bet is that only a handful of other congregations around the country have matched B’nai Jehudah’s efforts.
“I am firmly convinced that for a synagogue today to be successful you have to start where the individual congregant is,” Nemitoff said. “I don’t know where it is going to go in the future, but I am very proud of what we have brought it to.”
One big accomplishment of his last years with the congregation was the $12.5 million campaign to completely renovate the building at 123rd and Nall. The temple first envisioned the project five years ago and finished it in late 2019 — only months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut things down.
Replacing Nemitoff on July 1 will be Rabbi Stephanie Kramer, who comes to B’nai Jehudah from Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa, California, where her most recent post was senior associate rabbi.
“I deeply believe she will continue to mold the congregation in new and innovative ways,” Nemitoff said.
Mixed Emotions
For Liese, the co-chair of the shared vision task force, it is exciting that B’nai Jehudah will have another woman on the clergy team, joining Rabbi Sarah Smiley. But she suspects that she is not alone in grieving a little at the departure of Nemitoff.
“For some of us,” Liese said, “we are going to experience a loss.”
She remembered back to the shared vision process, when Nemitoff was always willing to listen and help, but also stood back to let Liese and Robinson lead the way.
Liese also appreciated the go-slow approach Nemitoff took to making services more contemporary. It was not easy for some traditionalists to adapt to more music and singing in the round.
“It is not just that he brought that to the congregation,” Liese said. “He helped the congregation evolve into that. It was gradual and very respectful of the people who had to get used to that.”
As a documentary filmmaker, Liese had worked with Nemitoff on video projects for the congregation. That laid the groundwork for their major collaboration during the pandemic High Holidays, when they pre-recorded seven services and streamed them online. that were then streamed online.
His legacy at B’nai Jehudah, she said, was bringing people together.
For Liese, what will stick with her, is how Nemitoff always had time for individuals. When you talk to him, he looks you straight in the eyes and holds both your hands.
“He is the epitome of presence,” she said.
Retirement Plans
At the moment, Nemitoff and Ringel intend to continue living in Kansas City. But they both love to travel, with a bucket list that includes bike trips in Europe. They also might spend the High Holidays with the Jewish community in Shanghai, China, giving the couple the chance to travel around southeast Asia, COVID permitting.
Visits to their infant granddaughter in New Orleans will also be part of family visits.
Nemitoff might also do some interim work with congregations around the country, drawing on his experiences in Kansas City and Columbus in bringing about healing.
Looking back, Nemitoff said, the freedom to experiment is what will stick with him the most from his time at B’nai Jehudah.
“I would say I am most proud of the fact that the congregation has, for 18 years, been willing to go with me on a journey and to trust me – and many of the things have been very successful – some of them haven’t,” he said. “It has all been part of this opportunity to try to dream what the future will look like, and I have been very, very proud and humbled by what has happened in the congregation.”
