Genesis of Ann Arbor’s many community activities include blood drives. Emileigh Curtin keeps her aunt Jackie Shock company while Red Cross collection specialist Brenten Swanson starts a donation. | Photo by J. Adrian Wylie
Since 1975, a Christian cross and a Star of David have stood side by side before a single building—the one that both St. Clare’s Episcopal Church and Temple Beth Emeth call home. Years later, Betsy Yvonne Mark still remembers how the congregations celebrated their shared ownership of the interfaith space, which they named Genesis of Ann Arbor.
“It was a sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky,” she recalls. She watched as her father placed the mezuzah on the wooden doors leading to the sanctuary. “The first time the hammer hit the nail, there was this crash of thunder.”
With that fortuitous omen, Genesis of Ann Arbor opened its doors.
The partnership originated in 1970, when the young Jewish Reform congregation approached St. Clare’s, asking to share their building until they could find one of their own. In an interview with Parade magazine, St. Clare’s then-rector, Doug Evett, recalled that “a lot of us were interested in ideas that would break down barriers, that would terminate historic separations.”
Each congregation had sole use of the sanctuary on its Sabbath. To accommodate their individual worship, St. Clare’s redesigned its iron cross to rotate in and out of sight, while Temple Beth Emeth stored their Torah in a recessed wall niche. From time to time, both congregations still came together for Passover Seders, pulpit exchanges, and group prayers for world peace. In less than four years, both congregations had grown so close that even though Temple Beth Emeth had grown large enough to consider buying its own building, Rev. Evett said, “it just seemed to us that it would be appalling for them to leave.”
The Christian-Jewish partnership was “the first ever in the universe,” then–Temple Beth Emeth rabbi Bob Levy told the Observer on the twentieth anniversary of the Genesis agreement in 1994. At their joint Thanksgiving service that year, the congregations dedicated an addition that included a new sanctuary, a classroom wing, a new social hall and kitchen, offices, and a small Jewish chapel.
While the congregations remain independent, they collaborate to serve the needs of the Ann Arbor community. In 2007, four women from St. Clare’s founded the Back Door Food Pantry; members of Temple Beth Emeth joined the initiative in 2009 to provide additional volunteers and funding. In just a few years, the pantry started welcoming volunteers from the entire community.
“It’s delightful that so many nonmembers of our religious communities are part of our efforts to give food to people who need it,” says pantry codirector Kathy Daly. “It embodies … what can happen in the world when the principles of Genesis ooze out into the community.”
Genesis also partners with local organizations to provide relief to Ann Arbor families experiencing homelessness. Throughout the year, it donates meals and basic supplies to the Alpha House family shelter.
Genesis’s commitment to tolerance and public service transcends religious boundaries. As Temple Beth Emeth member Allyn Kantor puts it, the partnership between a Christian church and a Jewish synagogue “is something more spiritual and substantive than just real estate.”
Calls & Letters, September 2024:
“I’ve been going over my City Guide notes and I believe I misread my scribble for one of the people IDed for the Genesis photos,” photographer Adrian Wylie emailed just after our 2024–2025 City Guide went to press. The American Red Cross employee Wylie photographed during a blood drive at the building owned jointly by St. Clare’s Episcopal Church and Temple Beth Emeth is Brenten, not Brenton, Swanson.
