In May, I celebrated the nineteen­ year anniversary of my wedding; a wedding to a person I’m no longer married to. I marked this complicated moment at Minyan Masorti through prayer. As I led the shacharit service that Saturday morning, I chose two very different melodies heard at my own wedding. The first was Asher Bara, the joyful crescendo that concludes the “seven blessings” section of a Jewish wedding. The second was the mournful “Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim” (If I forget thee, Jerusalem), symbolically tied to the loss of the ancient Jerusalem Temple and traditionally sung before the smashing of the glass.

Let me back up a moment. Hello, my name is Ezra Weinberg. Many of you know me as the brother of Abby Weinberg, (GJC’s Director of Youth and Families) which is a huge badge of honor. Some of you know me as father to Ben and Ariel and partner to Healy, also badges of honor. Others still know I am the son of “SPW”— Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg— another significant honor!

You may also know that I have lived in Mt. Airy three times in my life. What I’ve only realized recently is that two of the three times I moved here, it was divorce that brought me to this neighborhood.

The first divorce that brought me to Mt. Airy was in 1977, just before my 2nd birthday. My parents had just split and my mom, sister and I moved from Scranton, PA to West Mt. Airy. Legend has it that when my mom arrived and began attending the “Germantown Minyan” she called my father (her ex­husband) to tell him, “You know that kind of community we had been searching for, this is it!” I like to think of myself as part of the first generation of children at the original minyan, although part of me was also back in Scranton with my dad. In order to have both biological parents in my life, I got to live with my mom on Greene Street while commuting every other weekend the 150+ miles round trip to Scranton to be with my father.

The second divorce that brought me to Mt. Airy was my own, in 2020. Within a six­month period, my marriage ended, I lost my job of six years and the COVID pandemic started. When my mom suggested I move out of my tiny, NYC, post­marriage apartment, (referred to by my children as the “cockroach apartment”) and back to Mt. Airy, it was not a hard sell. As my previous life was crumbling— along with the rest of the COVID-

ridden world— I noticed a strange sense of deja vous. Moving back to Mt. Airy in the midst of divorce, while my children remained in New York City and I was now driving 400­600 miles a month to be a regular part of their lives… was a movie I was somehow reliving. Fast forward to 2026: It is only natural that my work as a rabbi in the world is now working with the sector of Jews I most identify with: the divorced. Over the past five years I have started two divorce­related initiatives that have become my professional calling. The first is Jews Get Divorce which supports, de­stigmatizes and educates Jews impacted by divorce. I work with individuals and small groups offering spiritual counseling, rituals and organizational support during the transition years of a marriage ending. I often get approached, for example, to help families who are coping with divorce to navigate B’nei Mitzvah planning. The second initiative is called Areivut, which is designed to help Jewish communal institutions support divorced members of the Jewish community at large. Areivut supplies training and resources to Jewish leaders to help them answer the question, “How can we better show up for people in our community impacted by divorce.” That has been one of the animating questions of my life. When I think about it, GJC has literally been there for me and my family in many of the critical moments of our lives, including divorce. Some of you know that my marriage actually ended the same weekend as the Bat Mitzvah of my niece, Hadassah Weinmartin. It is hard to find adequate words to describe the experience of waking up from my first evening in my new postmarriage apartment and spending the very next day in the Charry Sanctuary surrounded by hundreds of people from my family’s life and community, celebrating another rite of passage in my family. Yet, something about that really worked, and helped bring me to where I am now. If you, or anyone you know, have been affected by divorce and are curious about how you can find support and healing in marking this milestone, give me a call! I’d love to explore with you ways we can lift up this important lifecycle moment within our GJC community.