My parents, Bill and Anita Ornstein, and my 2 older sisters, Lois and Linda, moved to Vancouver from Montreal in 1957.

My parents joined Schara Tzedeck pretty much as soon as they moved here, and they always lived within walking distance of the shul. This was at a time when Rabbi Goldenberg was the rabbi of Schara Tzedeck.

Because both my parents’ families lived out east, we did not have any family here. The Rabbi and his wife as well as other members of the shul became our family.

I was born in 1959, my younger sister, Paula, in 1961.

Rabbi Goldenberg’s wife was my Aunty Shirley and remained so until the day she died. When my grandfather died in 1960, my dad went to shul daily to say kaddish. He became friends with some of the other men who were saying kaddish at the time: Azer Horowitz, Murray Goldman, and a few others whose names I no longer remember. These men also became “uncles” and part of the family.

I grew up in the shul, playing with the other kids who came with their parents, knowing every nook and cranny of the sanctuary as well as the offices and classrooms upstairs and the hallways and mikvah room downstairs, climbing the fire escapes, running around on Simchat Torah with our apples and chocolate bars, showing off our new outfits on Rosh Hashana.

My dad, Rabbi Goldenberg and Izzzy Tischler used to know a Jewish farmer who let us milk their cow for milk during Pesach, as in those days we could not purchase Kosher le Pesach milk. Those are very fond memories.

My older sisters went to Hebrew school at Schara Tzedeck, while my younger sister and I went to Talmud Torah. The shul truly felt like an extension of our home.

As we were growing up, my parents were both quite involved with the shul. My mom was in the sisterhood and got involved with whatever fundraising projects the shul needed. She also babysat the Hier kids and was Rabbi Hier’s secretary when he was the rabbi at Hillel House at UBC.

My dad joined any and every committee he could, served as president for a couple of terms, ran a very successful fundraiser in the form of “the wine room”, a place where one could buy kosher wine from all over the world and all the profits went back to the shul.

As for my own journey with Schara Tzedeck, I joined NCSY as a young teen when Rabbi Hier and Rabbi Bak were at the helm. I was in shul every shabbat, had friends sleep over so that we could walk to shul, and went to seminars in the Pacific Northwest. I remember  so many “shaleshudis” meals of gefilte fish balls and Tam Tams and Reverand Schuster singing zmirot. I remember doing havdala with him, dipping my pinkies into the wine after the candle was extinguished and rubbing them on my eyebrows and into my pockets. Those were also fond memories.

Eventually left for Beis Yaakov in Denver. Once I finished high school and got married, I lived in Ottawa until 1996.

When we returned to Vancouver we decided to “try out” Shaarey Tefillah until its dissolution in the early 2000’s. I once again returned to Schara Tzedeck because despite all the years away, it still felt like “home”. Although many of the faces have changed and most of my “family” is now gone, it is still the home it has always been for me. I am slowly creating new “family”, but also very aware of and proud of just being Bill and Anita’s daughter.

Lianne Palminrose