As Rabbi Eric Wisnia looks back over his 30 years at Congregation Beth Chaim in Princeton Junction, he is counting his blessings.

And that's not just a figure of speech. Wisnia reckons that he has officiated at 524 weddings, more than 750 baby-naming ceremonies, some 1,800 b'nei mitzva events, and more than 1,000 funerals and unveilings. He has served at the pleasure of 17 different congregational presidents, and he has seen Beth Chaim's strength grow from 165 families with 150 children in the religious school to 800 families with more than 650 children in the religious school and 250 in the preschool.

"I counted everything," Wisnia said with pleasure as he relaxed in his office at Beth Chaim recently. "It's wonderful. I think about all the kids, all the families. I'm marrying now all the kids I bar and bat mitzva'd and baby-named.

"It's really neat when they come up and give you a big hug and say, 'You're my rabbi,'" he said. "That's the best part. It's very nice to be part of everybody's family."

On Saturday, Dec. 1, at 6:30 p.m., Beth Chaim will celebrate Wisnia's 30th anniversary as rabbi of the congregational family. Headlining the event will be the satirical comedy troupe The Capitol Steps. Scott and Jeri Schaefer of Princeton are cochairs of the anniversary celebration.

The 57-year-old Wisnia, who likes to call himself "a local boy," was born in Brooklyn and raised in Levittown, Pa. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, where he was ordained in 1974. He served as the assistant rabbi at Congregation Shomer Emunim in Toledo for three years before coming to Beth Chaim, a Reform congregation, in June 1977. Wisnia and his wife, Judith, a physical therapist, are residents of Yardley, Pa. They have three children — Sara, Dov, and Ari.

During his 30 years at Beth Chaim, Wisnia said, his core contribution has been as a teacher of Judaism as a way of life. "It has been an attempt to take Judaism seriously and to look at it critically and as an adult — to realize the beauty of our wonderful religion, the glory of the morality and ethics that it teaches, and to put this into our lives," he said.

"I've tried to make people understand that in Judaism, rituals are only important if you learn the values behind them," he said. "I want them to stop defining religion as the observation of rituals and to start defining ritual as the observation of morals. That's what I have really worked on."

Also central to Wisnia's rabbinate is the fact that he is the son of a Holocaust survivor. His father, Cantor David Wisnia of Har Sinai Temple in Pennington, is a native of Poland and a survivor of Auschwitz. That fact was at the core of Wisnia's decision to become a rabbi.

"I think I definitely see myself as responsible for Jewish continuity because of what happened in my family," he said. "Also, I see myself as a Jew who happens to live in America. I do not see myself as an American who happens to be a Jew."

In addition to his roles as rabbi and teacher, Wisnia has been actively involved in the community over the past three decades. A member and past chair of the Committee on Religious Ministries at the University Medical Center of Princeton, he served for 10 years on the medical center's Institutional Review Board for Medical Ethics.

He is a past president of the New Jersey Association of Reform Rabbis, a past president of the Hightstown Area Ministerium, and a former board chair of the Family Service Agency of Princeton. He currently serves as a member of the Jewish Committee on Scouting of the Central New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts of America.

As he looks forward to the celebration of his 30 years at Beth Chaim, Wisnia said, he is feeling pretty good.

"It's such a wonderful position, being a rabbi," he said. "You get to be a teacher. You get to be in people's lives. You get to be a communal leader. You get to shape the job any way you want to. I feel like it's been fun, and I'm looking forward to the next 30 years."

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