Kevin and Jan Lipson were among the six families who founded Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac in 1992. Now, their son and grandchildren are continuing the work and reaping the benefits.
The senior Lipsons moved to Potomac in the late 1980s and wanted a place for Jewish gathering.
“We had a common objective, which was to energize Jewish community in a suburban area of Washington, D.C., where we thought we could make a difference in fostering Jewish identity and creating a sense of Jewish community,” Kevin Lipson said. “And we were wildly successful, because we really grew [B’nai Tzedek] from nothing.”
The early congregation had a full-time rabbi, Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt, for its membership of nine families.
“He was the steward of our growth through the years,” Lipson said of Weinblatt.
But in the early 1990s, B’nai Tzedek lacked something that many synagogues have: a permanent building. Members met at a local middle school, the Ring House and the Bender JCC of Greater Washington in Rockville, traveling from “location to location” for High Holiday services.
“It was a lot of fun; a real pioneering spirit among the original families,” Lipson said, adding that the six founding families are still members to this day. “It was a pleasure to give birth to [B’nai Tzedek] and to watch it grow.”
He spoke to the importance of creating such a place, especially more than three decades later, when times feel fraught for the Jewish community.
“It’s almost a different world in the 1990s than what it is now, but what we’re confronting now, I think, shows the wisdom of what we created back then,” Lipson said. “Maybe we had foresight, maybe we were just lucky, but we felt the need to gather as a community … and we felt that organizing around a Conservative synagogue with pro-Zionist ideals was a very important consideration. We didn’t realize how important it would be as years progressed.”
Kevin Lipson assumed the presidency of B’nai Tzedek from 1992 to 1994. As the congregation’s second-ever president, he became known as the “John Adams.”
His younger son, Sam Lipson, had been three or four years old at the time and recalled “bouncing around” various locations.
“My earliest vivid memories are … going to Friday evening services as a family,” Sam Lipson said. “The cantor was Mike Stein at the time. I remember singing along, and my dad and I would try to outcompete each other for who had the louder voice, which we still do to this day.”
Although Sam Lipson was young during B’nai Tzedek’s inception, and added that he still doesn’t understand exactly what it means to co-found a synagogue, he said he looks up to his parents for charting that new territory.
“I really think it’s admirable that they wanted to have a Jewish institution built under their leadership that would be a community centerpiece,” Sam Lipson said.
Sam Lipson, a father of three, regularly takes his children to B’nai Tzedek — now a brick-and-mortar building — for its youth and family programming.
Rejoining B’nai Tzedek was “second nature” for him when he and his family moved back to Potomac in 2020. His middle son began nursery school there in 2023, prompting Sam Lipson to get more involved with the B’nai Tzedek community.
He grew up playing basketball and other recreational sports with fellow B’nai Tzedek nursery school dads: “There’s a lot of shared history in that room.”
As the Brotherhood president, Sam Lipson plans community- and philanthropy-focused events for the men of B’nai Tzedek. He is proud to remain an integral part of the community in which he was raised.
“I see my kids engaging with the synagogue and having fun and going up to the bimah to sing ‘Adon Olam’ every once in a while in exchange for a lollipop,” Sam Lipson said. “It’s definitely nostalgic and meaningful to watch my kids in that way.”
But his involvement also evokes mixed feelings.
“I honestly have a level of trepidation that institutional Judaism is in a fragile moment,” he said. “It’s hard to necessarily find a rabbi who’s 40 years old and wants to be a rabbi for 30 years in a Conservative synagogue. It’s hard to find lay leadership that wants to engage. I am optimistic by nature, and it’s why I attempt to lean into these roles and be active and be present. But nostalgia is two sides of a coin to me because I also hope that we are doing what we can to preserve that for our kids’ generation.”
Sam Lipson’s parents have since moved out of Maryland and have lived in Maine and Texas since 2010. During their regular visits to Potomac, all three generations of Lipsons are reunited under one roof: B’nai Tzedek.
“It’s pretty incredible,” Kevin Lipson said of this feat. “You can’t help but have anything but a sense of pride that we were successful at [creating such a fun, welcoming environment] and that we’re able to transfer it from generation to generation.”
