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Temple Ohav Shalom was brought back to life on Dec. 14, as Temple Beth Ahm of Aberdeen - with whom Ohav Shalom's membership merged - celebrated their 40-year anniversary and rededicated their chapel and library with the old ark and ner tamid from Ohav Shalom.

In 2002, Beth Ahm merged with Temple Ohav Shalom of Sayreville, because of the declining membership at Ohav Shalom. Beth Ahm was renovated from June to October of this year at a cost of about $165,000, and reopened featuring various Judaica items of Ohav Shalom.

Rabbi Michael Pont who has been at Beth Ahm for five years said the building has been there for 40 years and it is the driving force behind Judaism in the Aberdeen-Matawan community.

"We've hosted countless b'nai mitzvah, baby naming, and brises - every simcha you can imagine," Pont said. "We've had to comfort hundreds of members and friends during difficult times and that's what a house of worship should be - a place that you can come and you know you'll find friendship, inspiration, and have the opportunity to pray for good things, health, and happiness."

The rabbi said that in addition to the chapel being dedicated to Ohav Shalom, it also named the Singer library after the Singer family - a very prominent family at Beth Ahm.

"We have morning minyan here every morning, and just being in this space it's now just brighter, the ark doors are just so gorgeous, and inspiring, it has enhanced our minyan morning and evening," he said.

Pont said the chapel is also a multipurpose room where classes are taught.

"When I have been teaching in here I've honestly felt inspired," he said.

He said minyan used to be held in the chapel, but it simply wasn't the same.

"It feels like we are home, there's no sense of impermanence," he said. "The process of recreating this space has galvanized our congregation."

One person for whom the dedication was emotional was Lisa Weiss of Middletown, whose father was the late Rabbi Robert Port of Temple Ohav Shalom.

"My father was the only full-time rabbi at Ohav Shalom," Weiss said.

Ohav Shalom spent a little under a year looking for a new shul until they found Temple Beth Ahm, Weiss said.

She said it wasn't so different having a new rabbi and being at a new shul, because Pont reminded her of her father.

"Rabbi Pont is truly the kind of rabbi that my father was," she said. "For me, it gives me the same kind of feeling, it's not quite the same as seeing my father up there."

Weiss said she has gone through tough times recently after losing her father, her mother, and two sisters.

"To be able to have most of my famiy joined together, by having the chapel here today, to see my father's ark along with artifacts and other religious things is extremely meaningful," Weiss said. "It helps my children feel closer to their grandparents."

Weiss said her daughter, Liz, was very close with her grandparents, and this means very much to her as well.

"The first time my daughter saw the chapel, she wept," she said. "She's very emotional, my parents were her babysitters for her first five years of her life, and she really misses them."

Weiss said this chapel was her father's work and he would be proud to see it today.

"For this synagogue to be able to live a little in the form of this chapel is just a complete affirmation of who he was as a rabbi and a leader," she said.

She said Temple Beth Ahm made sure the merger between the two shuls was done in a respectful, responsible manner.

"Temple Beth Ahm worked really hard on making sure it was a true merge, not integration, not an absorption," she said. "Both synagogues worked very hard at that to truly make it an integration of the two."

Michael Hoffman of Old Bridge, who was a member of Temple Ohav Shalom for 26 years, said he is one of the remaining members from the merger six years ago.

He said it was a huge transition to switch shuls.

"It was heart-rending; we were a small, close-knit congregation, and it tore us apart to have to close our doors, and it was because of lack of funds and logistics," Hoffman said.

When Port passed away in the fall of 2001, it led to the decline of the shul, he said.

"We started talking to synagogues in February '02, and we had our first meeting with Temple Beth Ahm in March of '02, and it went very well," he said. "And we had several meetings after that and we just had a marriage."

The two shuls officially merged in April 2002, but about 75 percent of the members from Ohav Shalom are no longer members at Beth Ahm, Hoffman

said.

"Some have relocated to adult communities further south, others left because it was not logistically convenient for them to come here, and we knew that when we originally integrated that we would lose some members, because we had done what we felt was our homework that we had found a synagogue that would be a good match to what our values were, and that was a liberal, Conservative congregation where women had equal rights," he said.

Hoffman said the agreement between the two shuls states that a chapel would be built displaying artifacts from Ohav Shalom.

"For me doing this was a labor of love," he said. "I was a board member, a past president; I was totally involved in Ohav Shalom. This means the temple still lives, it's not going to die. Coming into this room makes me feel like I've come home to Ohav Shalom."

People from Ohav Shalom cry when they see the chapel, he said.

"It brings back what we left behind," he said. "It's like we lost a part of our family."

Elaine Singer, who is one of the founding members of Beth Ahm and the first woman president, said she was there when the shul opened in 1968 and it has provided a constant presence of Judaism in the community.

"The members have really been dedicated to the goals of Conservative Judaism," she said.