50 years of community

“They were, in every way, the wandering Jews,’’ Rabbi Shira Joseph said of the congregation’s founders. “They went from Cohasset to Weymouth to Hull, anywhere they could find space. . . . There was the [basement at the] Pyrotector building at the Hingham Shipyard, and the [unheated] Boy Scout house in Hull.

“It was really a very small group - 25 families, give or take. Our founders never could have imagined where we are today.’’

Today the congregation, which is affiliated with the liberal Reform Jewish movement, includes about 270 families who live in 28 communities from Plymouth to Quincy. About half of the members live in Hingham, where the synagogue is located on Main Street.

About half of the families also are interfaith, and many of the new members have young children, Joseph said. The temple opened a nursery school this fall and almost 200 children attend religious classes. About 20 babies were born into the congregation in the last year, including Cantor Steven Weiss’s daughter, Breanna.

“This really is the hub of liberal Jewish life for the South Shore,’’ Joseph said.

The temple also is an oasis for Jews in a region where they are a small minority.

There’s no definitive number for Jews on the South Shore, but a study by the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University - which put the number of Jews in Greater Boston at 265,500 in 2005 - lumps Hingham and other communities south of Boston in a category labeled “other towns.’’ Only Canton, Sharon, and Stoughton are not part of that group.

“Basically, these were areas where there just did not seem to be enough Jews for us to do random . . . telephone surveys,’’ said Benjamin Phillips, an associate research scientist who designed the study.

That dearth of Jewish families, though, could help explain why Sha’aray is thriving, he said.

“There is this strong pattern where people will belong to synagogues [where there are small numbers of Jews]. If you’re in a place like Manhattan, you can meet Jews anywhere and there’s much less of a need to be formally connected,’’ he said.

Jake and Jody Tolman looked for that connection when they moved to Cohasset from New Jersey a year and a half ago, especially after they realized there were no other Jewish students in their children’s classes in the public school.

“My kids having no Jewish friends [at school] is a challenge, and it makes the temple even more important,’’ Jody Tolman said.

Her family also liked the temple’s “air of warmth of welcoming’’ and its social activism, she said. Her husband, who grew up in Hingham, has been holding an annual fund-raiser for muscular dystrophy for 33 years at the Hingham Community Center. This year the rabbi and many members of the congregation participated, Tolman said.

“It also has a very large interfaith population, and we fall into that category,’’ she said. “I’m Jewish, my husband is not, and our children are being raised in the Jewish faith. My husband is very involved and supportive, and the temple is a place where he feels extremely comfortable.’’

Phyllis Koch of Hingham and her late husband were among the founders of Sha’aray Shalom in 1959; they wanted a Reform temple closer than Boston. She remembers the first high holiday service was held with a student rabbi in what is now the Greek Orthodox church in Cohasset.

The group, which then called itself Temple Beth Am of the South Shore, held weekly services in a basement at the Hingham Shipyard and then moved around to area churches, schools, and halls. Student rabbis came from Boston and New York, and the Torah traveled in a portable ark. For a while the group made its headquarters on the porch of Old Ship Church’s parish house in Hingham Square.

The congregation grew enough to hire a rabbi and, in 1980, to build the current synagogue under the name Sha’aray Shalom. Membership continued to expand, and the building was doubled in size in 1994.

Joseph took over as spiritual leader in 2003, and a year later the congregation hired Weiss as full-time cantor.

Joseph said Sha’aray Shalom is the only temple on the South Shore to have two full-time clergy.

Both Joseph and Weiss came from larger temples - hers near Philadelphia and his outside Atlanta - and both wanted a smaller, more intimate community.

“Here we both know every single congregant by name and, even more so, everyone else knows each other,’’ Weiss said.

“We really take care of each other,’’ said temple president Barbara Marcus, a Hingham resident who has been a member since 1979. “Last winter my husband had an accident and was out of work for a while and, without asking, I had meals brought over and people helping me with things around the house. It was a wonderful feeling to not have to ask for help and for it just to happen.’’

Sha’aray Shalom will celebrate its jubilee anniversary all year with special services and events, including an Israeli film festival in January and a workshop with author Anita Diamant in March. This Saturday at 8 p.m., Jewish folk singer Debbie Friedman will perform a concert. Ticket information is available by calling 781-749-8103.