Dr. Jill Hamilton is a licensed psychologist who has spent the last 25 years evaluating children and adults with disabilities. In 2001, she joined Temple Sinai with her spouse and family. She served with the Sisterhood, authored monthly columns for the Temple newsletter highlighting Sisterhood activities and also served as President of the Sisterhood. After board service, in 2010, she became President of Temple Sinai. After 18 months of discussions with Temple Beth Am, a suburban Reform synagogue located on Sheridan Drive in Williamsville, the two congregations merged to form Congregation Shir Shalom, the first merged Reform-Reconstructionist synagogue in the country where both identities and affiliations are maintained. This merger was formalized on July 1, 2012. After a year as Vice President of Administration and a year as President of the new temple, Dr. Hamilton joined the strategic planning committee as chair. She is a member of Congregation Shir Shalom synagogue board, Congregation Shir Shalom Sisterhood, and the Congregation Shir Shalom choir.

Temple Sinai was formed at a meeting organized by Louis Bunis on August 24, 1952, where it was agreed for the need of a “new liberal conservative temple,” to provide its members with “relevant, dynamic, positive and creative Judaism.” Twenty-eight men and women signed the articles of incorporation which included the family names of Borins, Bunis, Estry, Feld, Frey, Goldman, Goldstein, Gross, Kaufman, Posner, Rekoon, Shapiro, Snitzer and Wunder.

The first service was held at former home of the Lyndale Evangelical and Reformed Church on October 24, 1952, with Rabbi Harold Weisburg, Cantor Kaufman, and organist Ruth Axelrod as service leaders. Eventually the building was purchased and formally dedicated on April 26, 1953 with Dr. Ira Eisenstein, then editor of the Reconstructionist Magazine, as guest speaker. On April 1, 1954, Rabbi Nathan Gaynor, was installed as temple’s rabbi by Dr. Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Movement. In 1955, the congregation held a groundbreaking ceremony on Alberta Drive in Amherst, NY and in the following year Temple Sinai hosted the first national conference of the Reconstructionist movement in 1956.

The cornerstone laying for the new synagogue took place on Sunday, November 3, 1957 and the first service at the site was held on August 22, 1957. In 1965, Temple Sinai celebrated its bar mitzvah year (13th anniversary), and its first adult b’nai mitzvah ceremony. After the departure of Rabbi Gaynor to become director of Hillel at University of Illinois, Rabbi Paul Levinson served as an interim rabbi with the congregation from 1966 to 1968. In 1968, Rabbi Joseph D. Herzog, began a 25-year rabbinate with Temple Sinai until his retirement. From 1993, Rabbi Barry Schwartz served the Temple as rabbi, and during his tenure began the Jubilee Endowment fund and edited a new Shabbat prayer book. Rabbi Benjamin (Jamie) Arnold, took over in 1999 as the first Reconstructionist trained rabbi who was also from Western New York. He served as rabbi of Temple Sinai until relocating to Denver, Colorado in 2005. He was followed by Rabbi Jerry Seidler, whose strong interest in pastoral care led him to become a Jewish Staff Chaplain of LifeBridge Health, an interfaith, multi-cultural health care chaplaincy at Sinai and Northwest Hospitals in Baltimore, MD. In 2008, Rabbi Alex Lazarus-Klein, also Reconstructionist trained, took the helm and was the joint rabbi at the successor congregation after Temple Sinai merged with Temple Beth Am, a Reform synagogue, to form the first Reconstructionist-Reform temple in the United States.