Gloria Tetewsky, artist, poet and song writer is an active member of the Jewish community in Buffalo since relocating from the Midwest in the 1950s. Born in St Louis, Missouri in 1926, Gloria (nee Parnas) earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music at the Chicago Music College and also attended Washington University Art School. She moved to Buffalo in 1953 after meeting Hyman Tetewsky MD. They married, moved to Staten Island for a few years, and then returned to Buffalo and eventually settled in the Town of Tonawanda in 1959. They affiliated first with Temple Beth El (“House of God”), then Temple Shaarey Zedek (“Gates of the Righteous”), and eventually became early members of the lay led Havurah Kehilat Shalom (Community of Peace Fellowship”) in the late 1970s. After Kehilat Shalom stopped meeting in the early 2000s, the Tetewsky family affiliated with Temple Sinai, and then Sinai’s successor merger synagogue: Congregation Shir Shalom (“Song of Peace”).

Beginning in the late 1960s, Gloria Tetewsky started to become involved in various synagogue activities and in 1972 the Temple Beth El Sisterhood asked her to create a program for Music Month. She responded by writing a cantata to commemorate the Holocaust, entitled “Search for Six Million in the Valley of Silence.” She went on to compose two other cantalas: “You Can’t Study Torah on Just One Foot” for Temple Shaarey Zedek Sisterhood, and “The Eight Steps of Charity” for ORT (ORT was founded in Tsarist Russia in 1880. The 'ORT' acronym id from the Russian Obshestvo Remeslenofo zemledelcheskofo Truda [Society for Trades and Agricultural Labor]. ORT is now a vocational training and education organization active in Israel and elsewhere). She also composed several songs (“When Will Our People Have Peace,” “Herzl – Man with the Flame,” “HaShamayim,” “Entreat Me Not To Leave Me,” “The Yarmulke Song”), and original melodies for Adon Olam (which Temple Sinai used for the High Holidays) and more recently, Shemah (hear of Israel – a central Jewish prayer).

She joined Hadassah soon after settling in Buffalo, and went on to become a lifetime member of the Ada Miller group where she served as the chairperson of the Education Committee for many years. In addition to providing calligraphy and artwork for various Hadassah and Kehilat Shalom events (where she also served as recording secretary and editor of the newsletter), in the early 1990s she began to write poetry and over the years many of her poems have been printed in the Buffalo Jewish Review.