Kenneth Venick & Sharon Nelson
East Coast, Long Island Conservative young man meets Southern, small-town Reform young woman. That’s one way to start this story. Sharon and I traveled different paths to Cincinnati. For Sharon, Cincinnati was a familiar city where with her parents and brother she would come to visit family and friends; for Ken, Cincinnati was a new city to explore while studying at UC.
It was the 1980s. Sharon had returned from Israel, where she’d lived and worked on a kibbutz, and also at Carmel Medical Center in Haifa. Moving to Cincinnati, she began her professional career at UC Medical Center. She quickly involved herself in young Jewish leadership, made lasting friends, joined Rockdale, then drifted away for a time. Ken was a cultural Jew, but not an affiliated one, moving in different social circles. Sharon’s parents, Bernice and Marvin, relocated to Cincinnati in the mid-1980s. They left a small, but active, Jewish community in Williamson, West Virginia, and found a larger, welcoming Jewish community at Rockdale Temple. Both were active in Temple activities; Bernice was recognized with a Menorah Award.
In the 1990s, when Sharon and I met, I was happily drawn into her family and the Rockdale family as well. I attended Rockdale High Holy Day services with her parents and grew comfortable with Reform practice. When we decided to marry, we asked Rabbi Gary Zola, a Nelson family friend dating back to Gary’s HUC student pulpit in Williamson, to perform the ceremony. Happy to do so, he asked one thing in return: that we join a congregation. And we took that request seriously, visiting several congregations, trying them on to see how we might fit. Rockdale was a good fit. Rabbi Goldman was a vibrant presence; the congregation was growing and busy; and we could join the Nelsons at Temple and in making a new Jewish home in Cincinnati.
We brought up our son, Arieh, at Rockdale: Brit Milah, Sunday School, Consecration, Bar Mitzvah, Youth Group, Confirmation. One of Rockdale’s keystones is attention and commitment to social justice, a philosophy that Arieh has carried with him and made his own. He takes his Jewish identity seriously. We like to think that comes not only from the home we created for him, but the opportunities available to him in the larger Jewish community. Arieh participated in the March of the Living, interned at the American Jewish Archives, and lived, worked, and traveled for a year in Israel. With joy we saw that these experiences made indelible and lasting markings on his character and his soul.
When we thought about creating our Jewish legacy, it was important to include organizations that have resonance for us and for Cincinnati’s Jews, now and in the future. We believe in the mission of the American Jewish Archives. It is an essential national resource. The collections and the on-going research there document and keep alive the many streams of Jewish life in America. A key piece of Cincinnati Jewish life is our cemeteries, and we included the Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati in our bequest. They serve our local community but are also a resting place for Jews from smaller Jewish communities like the one from which Sharon’s family comes. Chestnut Street Cemetery, recently rededicated, was a cornerstone of creating Jewish life in Cincinnati and is central part of Rockdale’s heritage. The strength of our Cincinnati Jewish life is rooted in Rockdale Temple, also part of our bequest, the city’s oldest congregation with a forward vision of open-minded Reform Judaism and our spiritual home.
For us, creating our Jewish legacy is fulfillment of a promise and sacred responsibility to support vital ideas and institutions. It is with pleasure and gratitude that we join others in creating our Jewish legacy.
