“When you come together as a community, there’s something special that happens when you review a life with each other,” Jewish Community of Sedona and the Verde Valley Rabbi Alicia Magal said while reflecting on the upcoming 20th anniversary of the JCSVV synagogue building at 100 Meadowlark Drive. “There’s laughter sometimes at a funeral, and there are tears sometimes at a wedding, because our emotions are all mixed, and when you touch the heart, the tears and the laughter flow.”

The JCSVV will be hosting a formal gala at the synagogue in celebration of the building’s anniversary on Sunday, May 19, from 4 to 7 p.m.

“The gala will commemorate the events, services and happenings shared by the congregation over the years,” the JCSVV stated in a press release. “Our elegant gala will feature music by Michael Lucarelli, a fabulous meal … a silent auction and a program honoring our founders, whose dreams took root 20 years ago and blossomed into our beautiful building.”

Attendees can anticipate Lucarelli playing a range of tunes from Latin music to pop covers of Elton John. “I have an eclectic repertoire … but I do it all in a solo style,” Lucarelli said.

“There’s a special positive energy that comes from gathering together, and reviewing all that we’ve done over the past 20 years, all that we’ve experienced together, happy occasions, sad moments, how we’ve supported each other,” Magal said. “This is a time to celebrate all of that with a slideshow of pictures, a book of memories, good food and a presentation by [congregation member and mime] Robert Shields.”

“The Jewish community [of Sedona] started to get together back in the early 1990s, and we were a group of seven, eight families,” JCSVV Gala Book team leader Michael Shapiro said. “We’d get together on Saturdays at someone’s home and study the scriptures. We would celebrate holidays, like Passover, Hanukkah, the High Holidays; and we’d rent space in a whichever church had space on the day we wanted. We were at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, we were at Church of the Red Rocks, we were at St. John Vianney [Catholic Church] and the community was extremely helpful … Nobody wanted to be attached to any particular affiliation, like conservative, Orthodox … we were just Jews getting together. At some point, someone said, ‘There are [so many] churches in Sedona … but there was no synagogue. We should have a synagogue,’ and it took about eight years to gather enough money to build it.” 

The synagogue opened its doors to worshipers on Friday, Feb. 6, 2004, while JCSVV itself was formed in 1988. Rabbi Albert Plotkin [1920 — 2010], who served as Congregation Beth Israel’s spiritual leader in Scottsdale from 1955 through the early 1990s, served as rabbi of the JCSVV from 1991 until he retired in 2005. He encouraged the JCSVV to build the synagogue, which was dedicated in 2004. The Rabbi Albert and Sylvia Plotkin Sanctuary is named in honor of the rabbi and his late wife.

To commemorate the 20th anniversary, JCSVV published the information booklet “Our Dreams Take Root.”

JCSVV President Sybil Malinowski Melody compared it to the Jewish people’s wandering 40 years in the desert, from the book of Exodus.

“It was a nice book about the congregation and the dream of going from being wandering Jews that wandered from one churchto another … and we now have our own synagogue — the Hebrew word is ‘mishkan.’ We have a tabernacle in the desert,” Malinowski Melody said. Proceeds from the gala will go towards the synagogue’s operating expenses and a retirement fund.

“The rabbi is supposed to retire in a couple of years, so we are setting up a fund to help pay for her after retirement,” Malinowski Melody said. However, the majority of the funds raised will be for JCSVV’s “Life & Legacy: Assuring Jewish Tomorrows ” endowment fund that is held by the Center for Jewish Philanthropy of Greater Phoenix.

“We’re starting to prepare for the future because most of us are in our 80s,” Shapiro said. “And the next generation that’s coming along, we want to leave them with a financial wherewithal to have a base, because who knows what the membership is going to be. We’re a small congregation, we have about 172 members currently.”

Gala attendees will receive a commemorative copy of “Our Dreams Have Blossomed,” a 158- page book that will act as a followup to the original and preserve some of the memories of the building’s first 20 years.

“It’s important to mark milestones in an organization, and 20 years of this beautiful sanctuary building is a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come, how we’ve grown, our accomplishments and the importance of a Jewish presence in the Verde Valley,” Magal said. “So that’s why we mark this time with a book.” 

To RSVP for the 20th Anniversary Gala, visit jcsvv.org or contact the JCSVV at office@jcsvv.org or (928) 204-1286.