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AIDS crisis left mark
Bet Mishpachah had always been a layled synagogue. But as the gay and lesbian congregation began to lose members to AIDS in the late 1980s, that became harder and harder.
"It was very, very draining on the congregation" for members to be conducting funerals and burying their friends, recalls Allan Armus, 62, of Arlington. The feeling was that "we can't keep doing this."
Beth Cohen, the congregation's president at the time, remembers being able to cope with the administrative aspects of planning funerals, but "we had no idea what to expect. We were concerned that if we were hit hard [by AIDS], nobody ... [was] in a position to handle our pastoral care needs."
That worry was the "trigger," says Cohen, for the congregation to hire its first rabbi after 16 years.
The congregation had already been through the early years of the AIDS crisis, which began 25 years ago last month when the Centers for Disease Control first warned of a rare type of pneumonia found in five Los Angeles residents on JuneS, 1981.
"It was a scary time" because of all the "crazy theories" about how one caught AIDS, says Armus, recalling that simple "interaction with people was frightening."
To "see men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, [with] decades of living still ahead of them," dying from the disease was "heartbreaking," says Rabbi Bob Saks, who joined the synagogue as spiritual leader in 1991 and still serves in that position.
But Saks says the congregation banded together in an inspiring way.
"When I first came to the congregation, what struck me was the wonderful, caring approach" to those suffering from AIDS, he recalls. "People would rally to the bedside of those who were ill [and] attend them day and night."
Today,...