Spiritual nourishment doesn’t come for free

In your Feb. 15 edition you devoted a cover page and 21⁄2 pages to a seven-member “congregation” whose only official function is to provide High Holy Day services (“The little shul that could”).

I spent two years as the president of a “real” Jewish congregation in the Bay Area. A real congregation provides regular, ongoing religious services, educational programs and activities, and Jewish community activities.

Real congregations have rabbis, educators, administrators, cantors or cantorial soloists and a teaching staff. These people don’t work for free. The necessary physical facilities don’t come free, either.

If you want bodily nourishment, you have to go to the supermarket and pay for it. If you want the spiritual nourishment that Judaism provides, you have to pay for it, too.

Theodore R. Bresler   |   Fremont