This Passover marks the temporary exodus of one of our congregants, Ron Baker.
Every congregant is valuable, every congregant has roles to play, and the departure of any congregant is remarkable. All this is more so in a small congregation like ours.
Still, Ron’s leaving is worth a special comment.
Ron’s life and career have taken him from Tupelo to the world, from Christianity to Judaism, and for the moment, back to his home and family in Israel. He had been back in Tupelo for a year to take care of family matters here. In that time, he was back at Temple B’nai Israel, where his intelligence, his scholarship, his humanity, and most of all his friendship have left a gap impossible to fill. At our Torah Study, which Ron inspired and helped to start, we leave a chair for him like Elijah at the seder.
It is difficult to summarize Ron’s life and accomplishments. Fortunately, the Daily Journal’s religion editor Galen Holley did that so very well a few weeks ago in a profile, Divine Encounter.
Ron is returning to Israel to take on a new and extraordinarily important job as Director of the Bat Kol Institute in Jerusalem. For those unfamiliar with Bat Kol, their mission is:
To promote the study of Torah (the Word of God), oral and written, as transmitted today through Jewish Traditions.
To foster an understanding and appreciation of Jewish prayer and the Jewish biblical cycle—with the Sabbath as its central festival.
To facilitate the integration of these studies into a Christian self-understanding in a manner that respects the Jewish people and reveres the integrity of their traditions.
To extend the riches of the Hebrew Scriptures and Traditions in regular study of the Bible by Christians.
Ron enriched our lives, our congregation and our community, and we look forward to his being back in Tupelo before too long.
