Our Rabbi

Rabbi Ron Muroff

Since 1993, Ron Muroff has served as the rabbi of Chisuk Emuna Congregation. A warm and welcoming Jewish resource, teacher, guide and community builder, Rabbi Muroff has close relationships with congregation and community members of all ages and backgrounds. Together with Mandy Cheskis, our Director of Education, other professionals and volunteers, the rabbi works to provide religious, educational, social action and social programs for the Chisuk Emuna family.

Rabbi Muroff hails from Toronto where he grew up in an active Conservative family, synagogue, and school. After graduating high school, Rabbi Muroff participated in Nativ, USY'S Leadership Program in Israel and then earned two Bachelors of Arts degrees as a student in the Joint Program between Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1992, he received a Masters of Arts and Rabbinic Ordination from JTS. Rabbi Muroff continues to participate in varied continuing education programs; in 2006, he was selected to participate in a year-long rabbinic training program offered by STAR, a leading Jewish think tank. In 2000, our rabbi was recognized for his service to the community as a recipient of the David Javitch Young Leadership Award of the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg. Nationally, he is involved with Jewish Women International in raising awareness about sexual and domestic violence and clergy abuse in the Jewish community.

Together with his wife, Leah, an active volunteer in the synagogue and community as well as a Real Estate professional, and their children, Tali, Yossi, Yitzhak and Yael, Rabbi Muroff is proud to call Chisuk Emuna and Harrisburg home. Rabbi Muroff encourages people to take their Judaism personally and supports their efforts to deepen their connections to G-d, the Jewish community, the world, their families and themselves through passionate prayer, study and the doing of mitzvoth/traditional Jewish ritual and ethical practices.

Rabbi Ron Muroff can be reached at 717-232-4851, rabbi@chisukemuna.org. He looks forward to hearing from you.

Our Mission

Chisuk Emuna, a warm and welcoming congregational family founded by Eastern European immigrants in 1883, continues to provide a traditional, Jewish home to members of the Greater Harrisburg Jewish community from all ages, backgrounds and levels of observance. Affiliated with United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Chisuk Emuna offers religious, educational, cultural, social and youth programs in a hamishe (unpretentious, friendly) atmosphere. Chisuk Emuna is a "hands-on" Jewish family that partners with other local Jewish institutions to involve all who are interested in Jewish life. Together, Chisuk Emuna members make a difference for our families, community and the world.

Our History

Chisuk Emuna's history is a part of its everyday outlook. In 1883 a group of immigrants, all recently arrived in Harrisburg from the northern areas of the province of Kovno, Lithuania, founded Chiska Emuna bene Russia - the Strengtheners of Faith of the Children of Russia. The 1883 Constitution states that Chiska Emuna would follow the ritual of the Lithuanian communities they had left, in Jewish terms, the non-Hasidic intellect-based Judaism identified with Lithuania. The new congregation functioned partly as an Orthodox shul and partly as a benevolent society guaranteeing its members such things as assistance in case of sickness or injury. These were critical concerns to newcomers in an unfamiliar land.

Chisuk Emuna has always been reluctant to change but, in fact, it is nothing like its ancestor Chiska Emuna. The immigrant population first gave way to businessmen and then to a mix of professionals, business persons and government employees, all the while retaining a traditional "small c" conservative outlook based upon its roots. The congregation's first three homes were in the immediate vicinity of the Capitol building, in the midst of the Jewish population at the time. The first and second homes disappeared with the creation of the state building complex in 1915 and its third home, on Forster Street, was occupied for more than forty years.

By the end of World War II, the shul's immigrant orientation and resistance to Conservative style services in English no longer served the congregation, and its location had become problematic for most of the membership, which had moved "uptown." The result was the inauguration of the most dramatic changes in the congregation's history. The shul built its present building on Division Street in 1956. This move was far more than a change in building because the new congregation was now a dynamic English speaking shul newly inducted into the Conservative movement.

The name also changed. Chisuk Emuna - Strength of Faith - is a great distance from the Strengtheners of Faith of the Children of Russia. That congregation looked backwards towards small Jewish communities that by 1955 no longer existed. This congregation now looks forward. Its original role as a mutual-help benevolent society is now expressed as pride in its hamishe friendliness and its willingness to welcome newcomers and immediately include them in ritual and congregational activities, as though they had been in the community for many generations.