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player ready...Lakeside Congregation in Highland Park will mark its 60th anniversary with a gala celebration on Saturday.
“Gala” might be overstating it, notes Lakeside Rabbi Isaac Serotta, who is now in his 18th year as the congregation’s spiritual leader. “It’s more like a carnival. There will be different activities related to the history and the future of Lakeside. Individual classrooms will be devoted to a different decade, with decor, music and games that will reflect what was going on at Lakeside and in the country during that period.”
Attendees will be encouraged to add to an interactive timeline that will note membership and rites of passage such as bar or bat mitzvahs, confirmations and weddings. A group photo will also be taken, Serotta added.
Lakeside Congregation has its roots in the Chicago Sinai Congregation, formerly on the city’s South Side. “There was a migration of Jewish people to the northern suburbs (in the 1950s),” Serotta said. “Most of our founders had been members and in wanting to form a Reform congregation in Highland Park, they to some extent wanted to recreate what they knew there.”
Lakeside is the oldest Reform congregation in Highland Park (North Suburban Synagogue Beth El, entering its 67th year, is the oldest Conservative congregation), and Serotta is its longest-serving rabbi. “I was an associate rabbi in Milwaukee, and it was time to move on and find my own place,” he said. “I had seen the building, and my earliest impression of walking into the sanctuary was a sense of peacefulness that one feels. It’s a lovely, simple sanctuary.”
That sanctuary at 1221 Lake Cook Road was completed in 1971 after breaking ground a year earlier. Prior to that, the fledgling congregation, established in 1955, rented space in schools such as Braeside Elementary and Highland Park High School to conduct religion classes.
“Our first high holiday services were held at the Highland Park Presbyterian Church,” Serotta said. “They reached out to us, and I am pretty sure that no rent was involved.”
Lakeside Congregation began with 50 people, Serotta said. It has grown to comprise 330 households. The biggest changes, he noted, have been mostly physical, in terms of remodeling and new construction.
What hasn’t changed is Lakeside’s emphasis on education and inclusion, providing, for example, a place of worship for interfaith couples. “Lakeside provides many paths for many different kinds of people,” he said. “Whatever spiritual journey they are on, we try to help them along. We have always been a heterogeneous group of people.”
Serotta said that Lakeside is right at home in Highland Park, a rich faith-based community with a strong commitment to social justice. He has formed friendships with other clergy through the Southeast Lake County Clergy Association, an interreligious group. Last July, Lakeside hosted a multi-congregational memorial service to honor three Israeli teenagers who had been kidnapped and murdered.
Lakeside itself expresses its commitment to the community and people in need with its annual “Mitzvah Day,” during which congregants perform projects “for the betterment of the community,” Serotta said.
Looking ahead, Serotta said, “We are writing the most important chapter of our story right now. The spiritual quest is never-ending. There is always more to teach and to learn, another skill to master and to look for what’s new and what needs to be renewed.”