One family Synagogue members serve dinner on Christmas Day at Rockland church

ROCKLAND – Betty Spear has had little contact with any of her relatives since she left home at the age of 18.

Now 72, the Rockland woman looks forward to having Christmas dinner at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

“I come every year,” Spear said Monday as she and her fiance, Raymond Olson, 74, of Rockland, took seats not far from the kitchen. “I love everything about it.”

Decked out in a white sweater with a red reindeer pattern and wearing a Santa hat, Spear came close to tears as she described what the meal meant to her.

“When I come here, it feels like I’ve finally come home, like I have a big family,” she said.

That is why Lisa Breheny, 47, of Rockport organizes 14 meals a year – one on the first Sunday of each month as well as on Christmas and Easter – at the soup kitchen at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Rockland.

More than 40 other members of Adas Yoshuron, Rockland’s only synagogue, and their friends and families joined Breheny and her family to serve Christmas dinner to about 50 community members.

Collaboration between the synagogue and the Episcopal church, built in the 1870s, is nothing new, said the Rev. Ralph Moore, rector of St. Peter’s. The relationship between St. Peter’s and Adas Yoshuron, which means congregation of the righteous, goes back at least 60 years.

“The soup kitchen is a metaphor for how this congregation feels about its ministry and Christ’s ministry to the world,” Moore said. “It sees itself increasingly as a community center, partly because this is the last church in the center of Rockland.”

Meals are served at the Episcopal church on Saturdays, Sundays, Christmas and Easter. Mondays through Fridays, St. Bernard Catholic Church operates a soup kitchen from its parish hall.

Members of Rockland’s Jewish community have been serving Christmas dinner to the community for more than a decade. Midcoast area restaurants donated all of the food, according to Breheny. In addition to the traditional turkey, mashed potatoes and eggnog, the menu included fresh mozzarella, pesto and pate.

Three generations of one family, some of whom celebrate the birth of Christ and others who light Hanukkah candles, worked side by side Monday.

“We grew tired of the Christmas hype,” Charmarie Blaisdell, 72, of Tenants Harbor said as she stirred fish chowder in the kitchen. “We wanted our grandchildren to learn about serving others, and this year they’re old enough to understand that.”

She said that after they finished up at St. Peter’s the family would return to the home she shares with her husband, Stanley Levy, 76, for “a simple meal and to exchange a few presents.”

Levy, who is not a member of the synagogue, has served Christmas dinner at the church for the past several years.

“It’s nice to help out, knowing that what you’re doing is appreciated,” he said. “We have plenty to share. We have more than plenty.”

Blaisdell has worked at the soup kitchen with members of the Unitarian Universalist Church and has helped out with the Meals-On-Wheels program. On Christmas Day, her daughter Margaret Webb, 45, her son-in-law Walter Love, 45, and her grandchildren Caleb Webb-Love, 7, and Sophie Webb-Love, 5, all helped set up and serve dinner at the church. The Webb-Love family are members of the synagogue.

The soup kitchen was not the only place members of Adas Yoshuron served Christmas dinner. They also delivered for the Meals-on-Wheels program to area shut-ins.

After Joel Fishman, 60, of Rockland coordinated that effort, he donned a red Santa suit and made an appearance at St. Peter’s. The former president of the synagogue wished the diners a Merry Christmas and offered them a jolly handshake.

“Mitzvah means good deed,” Fishman said in explaining why Jews in the midcoast area run the soup kitchen on the two most important religious holidays on the Christian calendar.

“This is a mitzvah,” Fishman said before he headed out to take meals to his wife, Barbara Small Fishman, and her parents, Sam and Ruth Small, who are both in their 90s.

Sam Small’s grandparents were among a dozen or so families that founded Adas Yoshuron in 1912. Until about a dozen years ago, the synagogue averaged 20 member families decade after decade. Two years ago, the congregation hired its first full-time rabbi in more than 60 years and now has more than 100 member families.

“My kids are fifth-generation members of this synagogue,” Fishman said of his grown sons who live outside of Maine. “How many Santa Clauses can say that?”