Calvert’s only Jewish congregation has much to celebrate

The 30 families who make up Calvert’s only Jewish congregation, Beit Chaverim, will be celebrating a new addition on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah: a full sized Torah and hand-crafted Ark to protect it.

The Torah, a handwritten scroll on parchment, is the principal religious article in Judiasm. A portion of it is read every Saturday and on holidays. Beit Chaverim's new Torah comes to Calvert from New York’s Temple Sinai.

One of the couples in the congregation, Norma and Bill Imershein, belonged to Temple Sinai before moving here. “Their temple had been given the Torah in honor of Bill’s father,” says Klaus Zwilsky, a member of Beit Chaverim. When Temple Sinai merged with another New York congregation, the Imersheins asked that the Torah be donated to Beit Chaverim.

The gift was a result of several months of negotiations between the two congregations.

“People don’t just give away valuable religious objects,” explains Zwilsky.

A Torah is not only sacred but also costly. A new Torah can run upwards of $20,000, a large sum for a congregation as small as Beit Chaverim. The Torah Beit Chaverin has used until now was on loan from an Eastern Shore congregation.

“It was a Torah carried in the field during World War I,” Zwilsky says. “Thus it is considerably smaller than a regular Torah.”

Beit Chaverim had to provide a repository, called an Ark, for the full-sized Torah. Zwilsky’s wife, Roberta Safer, approached their Scientist Cliffs neighbor, Stanley Benning, about the project.

“Mr. Benning is a wonderful woodworker,” Zwilsky tells Bay Weekly. “Although he is not Jewish and had never seen a Torah Ark before, he thought it would be an interesting project and a way for him to serve our mutual God.”

Benning visited several synagogues to come up with his design for the Ark. The finished piece, crafted from walnut with basswood ornamental overlays, stands more than four feet high. It and the Torah it houses will be kept at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Prince Frederick, which has hosted the Beit Chaverim congregation for several years.

The Torah and Ark will be dedicated Saturday, September 19, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rabbi Arnold Saltzman will officiate and has written a special ceremony for the occasion.

“A ritual will be observed called From Generation to Generation,” Zwilsky says. “The Torah will be passed by Mrs. Imershein [as Bill Imershein has since died] to her daughters, and should her grandchildren be there, to that generation.”

–Margaret Tearman

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Fruits of the Sea

Maryland Seafood Festival hauls in a bounty of donations

The Maryland Seafood Festival asked visitors to stuff the boat before feasting on the best of the Bay. Feasters were offered $2 off the ticket price for donating canned food to the Maryland Food Bank. Inside the festival, a canoe was laden with food from charitable revelers.

Not only was the boat stuffed, it overflowed.

Over the three-day festival, 11,000 revelers donated over 2,410 pounds of food to the Maryland Food Bank.

“We’re very excited about that,” said the festival’s public relations director Ayrianne Parks. The food bank had requested peanut butter and tuna fish, to give their beneficiaries protein in their diet.

“From what I saw there weren’t lots of cans of green beans,” said Parks of the haul.

Non-profit food booths also made quite a haul for their causes: $75,000.

The figures are encouraging in a weak economy. After skipping a year due to economic hardship, the Maryland Seafood Festival may have caught a rising tide.

–Diana Beechener

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photo by Jack Knoll Mike Morgan with his ugliest home-grown, heirloom tomato.

The King of Summer

Tomatoes rule at Homestead Gardens

Hundreds of people braved cloudy skies September 12 for a final taste of summer at Homestead Gardens’ first Tomato Festival.

With tents and pavilions along the west side of Homestead, it looked like the carnival had come to town. And there was fun aplenty, with food and drinks, live entertainment and antique cars, cooking demonstrations and a guest appearance by Food Network celebrity chef and master food sculptor James Parker.

But the guest of honor was the tomato. Under the largest tent, tables were festooned with plates of cubed heirlooms, from sweet red cherries to tart green zebras. These were no store-bought hot-house tomatoes, but flavor-rich favorites, some gorgeous and others not so much.

Mike and Audrey Morgan, of Bowie, came to enter the fruits of their own harvest in the prettiest and ugliest tomato contest. “We got up at six in the morning to come here,” Mike said in between talking tomato-growing and staking out the competition.

–J. Alex Knoll

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Our Hapless Neighbors

Recent stolen objects

Autos; bikes (mountain, trail and mini); Blackberries; bowling balls (and bags); front bumper to a 1962 Mercedes Benz; CDs; checkbooks; city street light; copper pipe and fittings; to-the-door deliveries; food and drink; football equipment; portable GPS units; guns; iPods; jewelry; laptop computers; lawn trimmers; license plate registration stickers; metal traffic control display poles; money; motorcycles and scooters; outboard motors; portable safes; purses; soft drinks (20 cases); Razor scooters; tools; yard planters, with flowers; wallets.

“Property crimes are often crimes of opportunity,” advises the Annapolis city police department. “Thieves look for open windows and doors in homes and cars. They look for unsecured bikes and scooters. They look for purses left unattended in grocery stores, bars and restaurants.”

–Annapolis police reports for August and September

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This Week’s Creature Feature

Backyard chicken coops in vogue In Calvert

Forget expensive decks and patios and fire-pits. The hottest trend in residential landscaping in Calvert County could be chicken coops. There may not be a chicken in every plot, but as more people turn to their backyards as a source for fresh food, they’re envisioning omelets as well as tomatoes and squash.

Dale Thomas of Nice & Fleasy Antiques visited the Delmarva Bird Swap to bring home 10 new assorted chickens for the flock he’s kept for a decade at his home in the Willows.

Jeff Klapper keeps four hens behind his and wife Nancy Collery’s Prince Frederick business, Main Street Gallery. Klapper designed a rolling pen to protect the chickens from predators while they graze the in-town backyard. At night the well-fed hens retreat to their custom coop — another Klapper original.

Bay Weekly’s contributing humorist, Allen Delaney, has a flock himself behind his Prince Frederick home.

“After my father died, I got my mother six chickens to keep her occupied,” Delaney says. A nasty spider bite while cleaning the coop sent Mom to the hospital and ended her chicken tending days. Now Delaney is continuing the family tradition with Rhode Island Reds.

“I am now the proud owner of five chickens, and I’m back to enjoying fresh brown eggs,” Delaney says. “Mom gets a dozen upon request, and any left over get sold to friends. According to my wife, at $1.50 a dozen, I’m giving them away.”

Residents of Solomons Island take their chickens seriously. So much so they asked that zoning regulations permitting backyard coops be written into the town’s newly updated comprehensive plan.

“We had requests from citizens to allow chickens,” says Greg Bowen, director of Calvert Planning and Zoning. They got what they asked for. “It is in the recommended Public Hearing Draft of the new Town Center Zoning Ordinance.”

These days, the once-rural county is sounding a little bit more country. Listen carefully, and you’ll hear a rooster crowing as the sun rises over the Bay.