Bnai Emunoh Chabad welcomes Mendel and Chana Friedman to its staff

Bnai Emunoh Chabad recently welcomed a new, but familiar, face to its leadership ranks.

About 11 years after celebrating his bar mitzvah at the Greenfield shul, Rabbi Mendel Friedman has returned to his native Pittsburgh to take both religious and administrative leadership roles there.

On Sept. 1, Friedman started serving as assistant rabbi and director of operations of Bnai Emunoh Chabad. He also will work as director of the congregation’s Camp Gan Israel program.

Chana Friedman, the rabbi’s wife, is serving as the shul’s program director and has started teaching Judaics to eighth graders at Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh. She previously taught at SKA Girls High School and HAFTR Elementary School in New York.

Mendel Friedman’s father, Elchonon Friedman, continues to serve as Bnai Emunoh’s senior rabbi.

“It’s new and exciting — there are a lot of new opportunities,” Mendel Friedman said.

Yitzy Idell, Bnai Emunoh’s president, feels the young rabbi — Mendel Friedman is 24, his wife is 22 – will help attract more young families to the shul. More than a dozen families, some of them new teachers at Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh, already have joined this year.

That growth also is fueled by Greenfield’s working-class backbone and the affordability of many of the neighborhood’s homes — especially when compared to Squirrel Hill.

Idell remembers first attending services at Bnai Emunoh about 10 years ago, after moving to Pittsburgh. When the rabbi would take out the Torah on Shabbat, children would line up for a lollipop. Most weeks, about six kids would walk to the bimah for the treat, Idell recalled.

“Now, there’s 50 kids,” he laughed. “There’s been a massive shift in the age of the families coming in.”

The younger Friedman, though, has his work cut out for him, Idell said.

“Rabbi Friedman’s going to focus on growth,” he said. “We want somebody who’s going to be in the weeds, doing the work, every day.”

Chana Friedman, a lifelong New Yorker until late August, grew up in Five Towns, New York, the informal group of villages and Nassau County communities on the southern shore of Long Island. She studied in Brooklyn.

The couple is living with their young daughter, Batya, in Greenfield.

Mendel Friedman, though, has deep roots in Pittsburgh.

The oldest of 12 children, the rabbi can trace back his Pittsburgh lineage on his mother’s side five generations. His great-great-grandfather, Rabbi Sholom Posner, immigrated from Russia to Pittsburgh in 1943 to open the city’s first Jewish day school, which evolved into Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh.

His father became rabbi at Bnai Emunoh when the younger Friedman was just 11. He remembered early services there, where the age of those worshipping skewed a little older.

“Now, it’s still thriving, but it’s a lot of new people,” Mendel Friedman said. “There are a whole new generation of Greenfielders coming here.”

After attending Yeshiva Schools in Squirrel Hill, Mendel Friedman studied at Yeshivas Ohr Eliyahu Lubavitch Mesivta of Chicago, then moved to California. He was ordained by the West Coast Rabbinical Assembly in Los Angeles.

Mendel and Chana Friedman married about 18 months ago and were living in Brooklyn.

“New York’s interesting,” Mendel Friedman laughed. “Crown Heights, where we were, it was the beating heart of Chabad. But, I’m a Pittsburgher, a small-city boy. I like this style better.”

Chana Friedman said coming to Pittsburgh after living in New York City has been a refreshing change of pace.

“It’s very different here,” she said. “I feel people here are a lot nicer.”

The Friedmans said they loved meeting people from Greenfield’s Jewish community during a Labor Day barbecue the congregation held near Bartlett Playground in Schenley Park.

Bnai Emunoh previously held Labor Day events — a wine-tasting session, a thank-you dinner for former shul president Judah Cowen. But this year’s event was so well received, organizers already are thinking about what they’ll be doing this time next year.

The Labor Day barbecue “was a way to welcome new families,” Idell said. “And we also wanted to take the opportunity to welcome this great, young rabbi. So, it was a win-win.”

“There were a lot of people, and new people, from the community,” Mendel Friedman said. “It was really great to see everyone together.”

It’s difficult to calculate the growth of the congregation since Chabad took ownership of Bnai Emunoh Synagogue more than a decade ago. Somewhere between 70 and 100 families have moved into the Greenfield neighborhood and become members of the shul, Idell estimated.

“Not every person coming to an event will be a member,” he said. “But I consider them a part of the whole Bnai Emunoh family.”

The synagogue on Murray Avenue offers children’s after-school programs and two Camp Gan Israel summer programs — one for boys and one for girls.

This year, Greenfield also will launch a new yeshiva — Bais Medrash Chabad Pittsburgh, a post-higher education institution for rabbinical students. Rabbi Elchonon Friedman is leading the school. About 30 students, only two of them local to Pittsburgh, currently are enrolled. PJC

Justin Vellucci is a freelance writer living in Pittsburgh.