The husband-wife team of Jay P. Goldman and Rebecca S. Salon will be honored by Tikvat Israel Congregation at morning services on Simchat Torah, Oct. 17, as the 2014 “Chattan Torah” and “Kallat Bereshit.”
Goldman has served as editor of the synagogue’s bi-monthly Bulletin for the past half dozen years and chaired a committee that led to the creation of the synagogue’s first website about a decade ago. As chair
of the Strategic Communications Committee, he serves as the editor of content on the home page and developed a protocol with other committee members for publicizing events outside of the synagogue membership. Goldman has been on TI’s board for more than a decade.
Salon serves as president of the Tikvat Israel Women’s Network/Sisterhood. She also has supported planning for Inclusion Shabbat, which is held each year, and has served on the TI Board of Directors representing the Women’s Network for the past four years.
They have been members of the shul since 1987.
Together, the pair has run monthly services on Shabbat and major holidays since 1988 for the Jewish residents at Potomac Valley Nursing Home, overseeing the synagogue’s relationship with the Rockville health care facility that preceded them by a year or more.
“At a volunteer fair held in the social hall during the first year we were members, Rebecca and I signed up to help out at the nursing home. Then a few months after we started, the young couple who were leading the monthly services left for new jobs in New York, leaving us in charge,” Goldman recalls. “We bumbled our way through at the beginning, but the monthly visit has become a significant and meaningful part of our lives ever since.”
Professionally, Goldman, a native of Auburn, N.Y., is the editor of a monthly magazine that covers K-12 education issues for a national readership of school leaders and serves as an adjunct professor at University of Maryland’s Merrill College of Journalism. Salon, former executive director of the Lt. Joseph P. Kennedy Institute in Washington, is project director for the National Disability Institute’s LEAD Center, a national training and technical assistance center to promote employment and economic advancement for people with disabilities, and does program development for the District of Columbia’s Department of Disability Services. She is a native of Hurleyville, N.Y.
Literally the “groom of the Torah” and “the bride of the beginning,” the Chattan Torah and Kallat Bereshit honors are accorded each year to two Tikvat Israel congregants or staff members who have made significant contributions to the synagogue’s spiritual, educational and/or cultural life. The selections are made each year by the Religious Practices Committee.
