A very notable aspect of Julian Kaplan’s membership at Temple Gates of Prayer is longevity. After his parents, Adele and William Kaplan (of blessed memory), joined Temple Gates of Prayer in the mid-1950’s, Julian started in TGP’s Primary Hebrew School at the age of 5 in 1960, and since then, he has “run the gamut” at Temple Gates of Prayer, as a member of, and later a leader of, the Junior Congregation, the Youth Congregation, and the LTF and USY Youth Groups, through his teen years an into his adult years. Julian has recently become President of the Temple Gates of Prayer Men’s Club, and sits on the Temple’s Board of
Trustees.
In the summer of 1970, Julian was part of TGP’s first group to participate in the Camp Ramah Community Program’s trips to Israel. Julian still refers to that 7-week Program as “the trip of a lifetime”, more than half a century later, after he made that trip at the age of 15.
Now in his 65 the year as a Member at TGP, Julian has seen the Congregation flourish in multiple locations, having been a participant, contributor, or leader in virtually every activity of the Congregation.
A graduate of Yeshiva University High School, and City College of CUNY, Julian currently manages his own Mortgage Loan Modification company, and has been working in multiple areas of real estate financing and development for more than the past 40 years. In his leisure time, as an avid fan of the local sports teams, Julian attends games as frequently as his schedule permits, also maintaining longevity as a season ticket subscriber with all of those local teams. He has helped organize outings for the Temple’s congregants at Citi Field, on Jewish Heritage Night, and at other baseball events, in recent years.
One of Julian’s very few regrets regarding his life-long membership at Temple Gates of Prayer is that, never having had children, he did not have the opportunity to bar-mitzvah or bat-mitzvah children there, and watch them grow from childhood into adulthood with the same enriching experiences that he feels blessed to have enjoyed there, throughout his entire life. Perhaps that is why he often says he gets his “nachas” from his niece, her husband, and his grand-niece, and his fellow congregants’ children and grandchildren at Temple Gates of Prayer. In that regard, Julian proudly shared the family’s simcha this past November, celebrating his grand-niece Carrie’s Bat Mitzvah.
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