Lay Leadership

President Jay L. Kooper Welcomes You to TBA

Welcome to Temple B'nai Abraham. We are proud of being a warm, embracing synagogue and community with an excellent educational institution.

Rooted in tradition and progressive in outlook, we are one of the oldest and largest independent synagogues in the United States. We continually define ourselves by our pulpit, our lay leadership, and the generational legacies that have been lovingly embraced and preserved for more than a century and a half. 

We are an extended family that offers inclusive connection, compassion, and community to all. Our religious services for Shabbat, High Holy Days, and all the holidays and festivals in between are rich, meaningful, and filled with warmth. 

Our temple is in constant motion, reflecting active involvement across all age groups. In the mornings our preschoolers arrive at our highly regarded Early School, and afternoons see students engaged at our exceptional Jewish Learning Program, ongoing bar and bat mitzvah lessons, and our dynamic High School program and youth groups: Temple B’nai Abraham is a busy and exciting place. In addition, there is a steady stream of opportunities to participate in the meetings, programs, committees and associations that make up every aspect of our rich Temple life, ranging from our active Adult Learning, Social Action, and Ritual Committees to our events hosting important regional, national, and international speakers. 

Temple B’nai Abraham combines the best of what the modern Jewish community has to offer. I invite you to explore our website and then come and see us in person—meet our clergy, tour our schools, sit in on services, or participate in an open program. See us in action and be inspired! I look forward to welcoming you personally.

B’shalom,

Jay L. Kooper
President 

** headshot by TBA member Jan Press**

Jay's remarks for Rosh Hashanah 5785/2025 (click here for the transcript)

Jay's remarks for Yom Kippur 5785/2025 (click here for the transcript)

Jay's remarks for Rosh Hashanah 5784/2023

Jay's remarks for Yom Kippur 5784/2023

My fellow Congregants-

Two years ago, you first elected me as just the 30^th President to serve this now 172-year-old Temple. Tonight, you have given me just as great an honor – inviting me back to serve as President for a second term. I am once again honored and humbled by your confidence and for the sacred trust you are once again placing with me. I cannot thank you all enough.

I want to begin my remarks tonight by doing something I have saved for the end in my last two Annual Meeting remarks. To thank someone who is both deserving of all of our thanks and for me to hold it together just one time while I convey it – my wife, Jessica Kooper. Jessica in her own right has served this Temple with grace, without complaint and selflessly. Jessica, thank you, I love you – and last term, I promise!

When I began my Presidency two years ago, Temple B’nai Abraham was in a different place. Thanks to my immediate predecessors, we were able to open the Temple back up as quickly as possible coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic and with wonderful updates to our Buildings and Grounds. The Congregation was, however, still very much struggling in the long, rough wake of COVID-19. Congregants were still shellshocked and afraid to physically come to the building and be together with their community. Our education pipeline for our younger families remained nowhere near where we needed it to be, and our pipeline for our teens to remain active in Temple life beyond their B’nai Mitzvah year had been dormant. Our Temple needed more avenues for the community to access and remain here beyond the basics of Shabbat, Rituals and Life Cycle events.

What a long way we have come in just two years. Today, the Temple is once again teeming with life. Our education pipeline has been revitalized, in fact it has multiplied. We now have five distinct pipelines: JLP, JPlay, the West Orange Universal Pre-Kindergarten program, our brand-new, just-launched JStart program and our TBA Teen Makom program. We have with them a newly renovated, warm, vibrant Lower Level that matches the warmth, joy, laughter and fun from the hundred-plus children and teens who pass through our doors each day. We have re-engaged congregants from all age groups, including parents with college-age children and empty nesters who out of nowhere and on their own initiative banded together to form the new PULSE Committee. PULSE, together with our Sisterhood, Men’s Club, and Ways and Means and Membership Committees have reestablished community and connectivity in innovative ways this Congregation has not seen for some time. Whether it is for events to see Donny Deutsch, Congressman Josh Gottheimer, Congresswoman Mike Sherill, a Shabbat Dinner with an IDF solider, or Murray Hill Boy, Temple B’nai Abraham is once again an appointment viewing destination for community events, with our upcoming event featuring Murray Hill Boy expected to have attendance rivaling High Holy Days attendance.

So as I begin my second term as President, I cannot report to you at this Annual Meeting that our Temple is the same Temple as it was pre-pandemic or that the challenges this Temple has faced in recent years with respect to demographic headwinds and a nationwide inflationary environment have dissipated. But I can report to you that our Temple and this Congregation are back, are re-engaged, and committed to creating opportunities and events that reflect our shared mission to provide a warm, welcoming and inclusive community to all. The state of our Temple is strong.

The strength of our Temple can be found in our vibrant and revitalized education programs. From the creative and brilliant mind of Director of Jewish Learning Melissa Weiner and executed by her caring and capable faculty team have come our Jewish Learning Program (JLP), our JPlay After Care Program soon to be entering its 3^rd year and with enrollment still more than 100% ahead of our targets, and together with Michelle Tobias this month’s launch of JStart, our new preschool program that once fully implemented will bring substantive, innovative and fun learning experiences to our young students, currently age 18 months and older, with our goal of expanding JStart to infants in the very near future. Morah Melissa, Michelle and the entire faculty team, yasher koach and thank you for everything!

The strength of our Temple can be found in the Universal Pre-Kindergarten program for our West Orange students and their families. The program has been run with the skill and warmth of our Director of Early Childhood Education Debbie Aronson-Ziering. Through Debbie’s leadership Universal Pre-K at Temple B’nai Abraham is a success story as we have new families now engaged in Temple life from a previously untapped market for us in West Orange. They have enriched our community and I know your love and acceptance of them as they have joined our community have enriched them as well. Tonight, with the benefit of having had the Universal Pre-Kindergarten program here for nearly two years, I can confidently say that we 100 percent made the right decision to bring West Orange to our Temple. It exemplifies the warm, welcoming and accepting community we strive to be. Yasher koach, Debbie.

The strength of our Temple can also be found in our revitalized Teen Makom Program. Under the leadership of Associate Rabbi Max Edwards teens grades 8 through 12, now past the age of B’nai Mitzvah, are coming back to our Temple in droves. From critical community service projects to trips to Washington, DC and the South, to immersing themselves in all of what’s wonderful about our Jewish heritage, our teenagers are engaged and enriching our TBA and greater community by being the wonderful young people that they are. You now all know this because you just received a report directly from our TBA Makom teenagers just as the Board of Trustees now receives one at each of its meetings. You know as well as I do that our teens are the Temple’s greatest treasure and no words can adequately express how meaningful it is to have them now at the forefront of our community. To borrow a line from a great classic rock song, the kids are all right!

And speaking of Rabbi Edwards, the strength of our Temple can also be found in our incredible clergy. Rabbi Edwards, watching you become the leader you have become especially with our teens, younger Congregants and their parents over the past two years has been truly something to behold. You have an incredible gift through your love, caring, warmth and empathy for others that touches our young congregants, and us slightly less younger congregants too. Equal to the love and caring you make each of us feel is the power of your words from sermons that touch and resonate with so many in this Congregation. And I would be remiss if I did not convey how much joy we all share with you and Evie with Esther’s arrival into your and our lives too. And if you and Evie are looking, I have some great early childhood programs I can recommend to you. Max, we can never thank you enough for all that you do for all of us!

I also want to take a moment to honor Cantor Jessica Fox. Cantor Fox, as you all know, has served our Temple and cared for us all for the past 20 years. Cantor Fox’s musical ability, and her caring for this Congregation are lasting legacies. As Cantor Fox begins a new chapter, we all wish her well with the hope that her next adventures will be filled with the same joy, love, simchas and warmth she provided here. Thank you, Cantor Fox.

Finally, I turn to our Senior Rabbi David Vaisberg. No one individual in this community has worked so hard and cared so much about building the warm, welcoming and inclusive community we strive to be. No one has cared more deeply for all of you on the most personal level you can imagine. Rabbi Vaisberg wakes up every day and goes to bed every evening working to figure ways to make this Temple an even better place than it was yesterday, and to make sure all of you are doing OK and feel cared for. After witnessing this Temple’s struggles through the pandemic I am so happy that David gets an opportunity to lead us in better times, even if such better times are still imperfect. For all you do and all you try, David, thank you!

The strength of our Temple is found in those who come to work here every day to make our community a better place. Our administrative team led by our Executive Director Mara Suskauer has in the past two years undergone a period of change, but what has not changed is the love and caring they provide to us in making sure our day-to-day needs are met and the kindness and professionalism they all provide to us in doing so. Mara, your hard work, good nature, warm smile and steely determination to get things done and done the right way keeps this Temple going in periods of high stress and periods of slightly less stress. Thank you and thank you to the entire Temple Staff for all that you do. And I would be remiss to not thank Tracey Bent and our entire Temple maintenance team for all that you do for us all year round. The beauty of our building and grounds and all of what we have been able to accomplish these past two years could not have been done without you. Thank you!

Finally, the strength of our Temple is found in all of you – our lay leadership and our entire Congregation. To our lay leadership – our Officers and Board of Trustees --  I have asked a lot of you these past two years. You have had to make a lot of critical decisions that in one facet or another have significantly changed this Temple. Change is difficult and is very scary. Transformation is even more difficult and even more scary. Not all of our decisions were popular, but they were deeply considered, meticulously thought through, and you approached each difficult decision with seriousness, with deep love for our Temple and your desire to want only the best for it. You are all incredibly courageous and I am inspired to serve alongside of you every single day of my Presidency. To our volunteers: You work incredibly hard not for personal reward or adulation but your desire to make our community a better place and your fellow congregants loved and cared for. Thank you for everything you do for us, there is not a day that goes by that you are not seen or appreciated by me and all of us. To our Congregation – your passion and engagement is our Temple’s everlasting strength. Your contributions this past year have been too numerous to count here. But that you love this Temple so much is the reason this Temple will be around at least another 172 years. Thank you for all that you do, and please stay engaged!

My fellow Congregants, we have come through a devastating pandemic and an era of deep divisiveness in our community and greater world, either of which could have easily torn this Temple apart, but they did not. Temple B’nai Abraham is still standing, is still warm, welcoming and inclusive, and is still the place where hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds come to worship, celebrate, experience and find fellowship with one another. Challenges still remain, but we have come so far in so short a time. And for all we have accomplished we can do even better. We can make Friday night Shabbat as much a destination as High Holy Days, our speaker series, our galas and other community events. We can build even more pipelines for people of all ages who seek community and fellowship to find that here.

I know we can do all of this, because we have already demonstrated that we have the courage and vision to implement change to make our Temple more accessible to all who wish to find a home in our Jewish community. I know we can do all of this because we have already demonstrated that we are willing to roll up our sleeves, do the hard work, and display the strength and resolve that is necessary in the face of the harshest of headwinds that still continue to blow.

My fellow Congregants, Temple B’nai Abraham is a strong institution, a resilient institution, and a warm, welcoming and inclusive institution that is so sorely needed in this community and broader world. You have all given me the honor of one final term as President to lead it. And opportunities to make our Temple an even better institution abound when (not “if”, but “when”) we seize them. Let’s get to work!

Thank you all so very much!

Bio:
Jay L. Kooper is the 30^th President of Temple B’nai Abraham. A member of the Temple’s Board of Trustees since 2016, Jay previously served as a Vice President and a Co-Chair of the Buildings and Grounds Committee prior to his election as President.

Jay is the Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Middlesex Water Company, one of New Jersey’s 13 investor-owned utility companies, and currently sits on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Water Companies and the New Jersey State Bar Association’s Public Utility Law Section, where he previously served as Chair. A native of New York City, Jay received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and History from Emory University and his Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School.

A longtime public utilities attorney, Jay has represented clients across every public utilities sector – water, wastewater, electric, gas, telephone and cable – across the entire span of his career. In 2019, Jay was honored as General Counsel of the Year by NJBIZ, and in 2020 was honored with the New Jersey Law Journal’s Professional Excellence Award. Previously, Jay was recognized as a finalist in 2016 for the New York Stock Exchange’s Distinguished General Counsel Award.

In addition to his work with Temple B’nai Abraham, Jay serves on the Board of Directors of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s New Jersey Chapter, a board his wife Jessica also served on from 2018 to 2022. In 2022, Jay, Jessica and their two sons, Jordan and Ethan, were the recipients of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s Community Impact Award for their longtime work with the Foundation.

The Koopers moved to Livingston, where they still reside, in 2003 and joined Temple B’nai Abraham that same year. Jordan and Ethan Kooper are both alumni of TBA’s Summer Day Camp, Early School and Jewish Learning Program and celebrated their B’nai Mitzvah at TBA.