Even the scale of the East Rogers Park synagogue seems out of the distant past. The sanctuary is the size of a ballroom. The hallways, with their tiled floors, look as if they could hold thousands of worshippers, and once did. The dark wood paneling and handrails on the grand staircase might have depleted a rainforest. The stained glass windows, each inlaid with the name of a departed congregant or family member, seem to go on forever as they rise to meet the towering ceiling.

And then there are the walls of memorial plaques. Dr. John D. Singer, died 1997. Betty Fink, died 1990. Solomon Rubin, died 1968. Ghitel- Gisela Brociner, died 1950. Joseph Edelson, died 1934.

And now B'nai Zion itself, the oldest continuously operating Conservative synagogue in Chicago, is having its last services in that sanctuary, hosting its last Kiddush luncheon, its last Sunday breakfast.

Technically, B'nai Zion is not dying. It is merging with another Conservative synagogue on Chicago's far north side, Congregation Shaare Tikvah. The new synagogue will be known as Congregation Shaare Tikvah- B'nai Zion, and it's expected that a majority of B'nai Zion's 80 member families will become members of the merged congregation.

There will be a place there, too, for many of the artifacts that B'nai Zion has accumulated in 83 years: Torah scrolls, memorial plaques and various other Judaic objects. Portions will be cut from the stained glass windows and incorporated into a collage that will be displayed at the new-old synagogue.

Shaare Tikvah members, by all accounts, are eager to welcome the folks from B'nai Zion, with their years of experience, into the fold, and the B'nai Zionists say they are looking forward to the revitalization they expect the merger to bring.

But many congregants, like Hershel Oliff, know it will never be the same. Oliff is 82 years old. His family was one of the founding families of B'nai Zion, joining in 1921. Oliff himself moved to the suburbs in 1956 and joined another synagogue for a decade or so, but in 1972, he came back to B'nai Zion and has been active for more than 30 years. His children celebrated their b'nai mitzvot there and even when Oliff was in the army, he managed to get to B'nai Zion every year for High Holiday services.

"And now I gotta go to Shaare Tikvah," he says. "I'm so used to everything at B'nai Zion-the whole layout. I was in the Boy Scouts there, went to Sunday school, Hebrew school, Rabbi (Abraham L.) Lassen married me. But when you're down to 75 members from 1,100, how are you gonna exist?"

It's a question that the members of B'nai Zion-most of them over 70 years old-have been asking themselves and each other for a while now.

In the end, everyone agrees, it wasn't scandal or squabbling or mismanagement or anything so interesting that did B'nai Zion in. It was simple demographics. There was no longer a viable Jewish community in East Rogers Park.

B'nai Zion was formed on the crest of one Chicago Jewish migration-from the West Side to the North-and began losing steam when another swept Jews out of the city and into the suburbs. Hershel Oliff's story could be any one of thousands when he says that "all the people of my era and their children moved to the suburbs. My daughter lives in Buffalo Grove. They forgot about East Rogers Park." Indeed, Oliff himself lives in Wilmette, but still makes the trip to Pratt Boulevard to worship. Not many 82-year-olds have that much devotion or energy.

Rabbi Michael J. Schorin, the synagogue's part-time spiritual leader for the past two years, calls B'nai Zion's story "emblematic of all the demographic changes we see. Jews have moved out of East Rogers Park. They're starting to move back in, but too few and too slowly. (B'nai Zion) has lost its roots as an institution." Not even the most loyal member would disagree.

So, as the elderly congregants begin to feel their way into their new synagogue, a private elementary school, Lake Shore School, will take over the whole of what once was B'nai Zion. Eventually the school may raze part of the synagogue building in order to construct a new structure or to use as a parking lot.

If B'nai Zion's story ends with demographics, it began that way too-in 1918, when Jews were moving in large numbers from their traditional West Side neighborhoods into the spacious homes and apartments and leafier streets of Chicago's North Side. In his book "The Jews of Chicago," historian Irving Cutler writes, "While Maxwell Street declined as a Jewish community, Jewish synagogues and other institutions were rising in several other parts of the city where the Jewish population was growing."

Rogers Park, "Chicago's most northeasterly community, owes its growth to the coming of the elevated line, which was extended to Howard Street in 1907," he writes. "With the improvements in transportation, numerous large apartment buildings and apartment hotels were built ... Jews, mainly those from Eastern Europe, started to move into the area after 1910. By 1920, two of Rogers Park's larger congregations, B'nai Zion and Temple Mizpah, had been established there, and within a decade, about ten thousand Jews resided in the community."

At the same time, the Conservative movement, founded in the mid-19th century, was beginning to gain a foothold in America with the establishment 12 years previously of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement's rabbinical training school.

Still, the Jewish population of the United States was overwhelmingly either Orthodox or Reform, and so when four men-Herman Spivek, Joseph Friedman, Edward L. Steiff and Leon Waldman-met in the Spivek home for High Holiday services in the year that marked the end of World War I, they were thinking primarily about having a group to pray with, not affiliation.

More men joined them and they soon had a minyan and, for a short time, a spiritual leader, Rabbi David Almond. Soon they were renting the Odd Fellows Hall on the corner of Clark Street and Lunt Avenue for services and planning to launch a congregation. In the spring of 1919, they bought a small Episcopal church at 1715 Lunt Avenue and converted St. Paul by the Lake into Congregation B'nai Zion.

That same year, they hired a new rabbi, one who would stay until his retirement nearly 30 years later and be a seminal figure in the development of the congregation. Rabbi Abraham L. Lassen was the first Conservative rabbi in Chicago, and it was he who encouraged B'nai Zion to affiliate with the Conservative movement. Today the synagogue holds the distinction of being the first Conservative synagogue in the city that remained affiliated with the Conservative movement.

Membership jumped in the first year from 16 to 85 families, and by 1921, the congregation was holding "overflow" services at the Masonic Temple. By 1926, it was clear that a new, larger space needed, and the congregation acquired its present site at 1447 W. Pratt Boulevard and engaged the services of Chicago architect Edward Steinberg. Two years later, the new synagogue and assembly hall, known officially as the Benjamin Mendelson Memorial Center, were dedicated.

The synagogue, with its grandiose Modern Romanesque-style exterior of cut stone and ornamental terra cotta, must have dominated the neighborhood. Inside it was just as impressive, with the large main entrance vestibule leading, by two grand stairways, directly to an auditorium with seating for 450. Another room used for study, the Beit Midrash, seated 100. The sanctuary, dominated by tall stained glass windows and an Ark of intricately carved wood, held 800 worshippers. By this time, some 350 families were members.

After holding steady during the difficult Depression years, B'nai Zion again experienced a growth spurt. By 1941, the congregation had bought another building at the corner of Pratt and Greenview to use as a school and community center.

In a speech that Hershel Oliff's father, Charles Oliff, gave at that building's groundbreaking, he noted that "for nearly a decade, Jewishly conscious men and women sought affiliation with our congregation ... but much to our chagrin, we were compelled to turn them away. It is a painful experience to tell a well- intentioned fellow Jew, you cannot join our congregation; we have no room for your children in our Hebrew and Religious School; we have no meeting place for your teenage boys and girls." Membership in B'nai Zion was so sought-after that the synagogue was actually turning away potential members. Presumably that was no longer the case after the school and community center were dedicated in the late 1940s.

Recollections of B'nai Zion's glory days-the days of 1,100 member families- exist not only in history books and synagogue archives; a number of congregants function as living history books when it comes to their beloved synagogue.

Possibly no one has been involved with B'nai Zion more passionately nor for a longer time than Beverly and Irving Tatz. Irving Tatz's family joined the synagogue in 1927. He celebrated his bar mitzvah there, as did the three Tatz children. So did one of their grandchildren who lives in a northern suburb; another flew in from Montana to have his first aliyah at B'nai Zion.

Irving Tatz has served as president of the synagogue and now heads the ritual committee; Beverly Tatz, who gives her occupation as "professional volunteer," has served on the board and in many other capacities. They live four blocks from the synagogue and, when the burglar alarm goes off at night, it is Irving who is called to go over to investigate. To further extend the connection, Irving Tatz's father and Rabbi Lassen's wife married in 1958, after both had lost their spouses. Even today, Irving and Beverly Tatz are active in planning the Shabbat dinners that have remained one of the hallmarks of the congregation. For nearly all of the Tatzes' adult lives, B'nai Zion has virtually been their life.

"We've seen the synagogue at its height," Beverly Tatz, a vivacious 70- something, recalled recently. "At one time, we had a tremendous Hebrew school. We used to have so many people for the High Holidays, we would have a service in the big sanctuary and also one in the auditorium-two large services, each with its own rabbi and cantor, and a junior congregation too."

She can also rattle off the names of all the organizations that B'nai Zion once played host to: the Jewish Diligent Children, Boy and Girl Scout troops, Young People's League, Young Married Group (later known as The Couplehood when the "marrieds" were no longer so young), United Synagogue Group, Drama Group, summer camp, Adult Education Group, Sisterhood, Men's Club. The latter two have remained active to this day and are the pride of B'nai Zion's remaining members, Beverly Tatz says. She also notes that many congregants have gone on to become leaders in other Chicago-area Jewish institutions, and four served as national presidents of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement's umbrella organization.

Robert Mendelson is another descendent of one of B'nai Zion's founding families who stays active at the synagogue. His grandfather, father and uncle all served on the synagogue's original building committee, and the assembly hall bears the family name.

"I remember we always had the first seat in the front row," Mendelson recalled recently. "My father passed away when I was very young, and my mother would then be the one to sit in the front row. She was a staunch believer in the importance of the synagogue and really pushed the idea of its importance."

Mendelson had his bar mitzvah and wedding at B'nai Zion; now, although he belongs to another synagogue and lives in a different part of the city, he still manages to attend services at B'nai Zion on the High Holidays.

Congregants like the Tatzes and the Mendelsons also witnessed the beginning of the end as Jews began to move out of Rogers Park and into the suburbs.

In his book, Irving Cutler notes that between 1930 and 1960, the Jewish population in Rogers Park more than doubled. At its height, it reached about 22,000; Jews, Cutler writes, constituted the largest ethnic group in the area and made up over a third of the community's population. A dozen synagogues, a Jewish Community Center, strip shopping areas and restaurants and delicatessens, including the hugely popular Ashkenaz Restaurant, catered to the area's large Jewish population.

Then, Cutler writes, "despite an influx of thousands of newly arrived Russian Jewish immigrants in the 1970s and 1980s, the Jewish population of Rogers Park began to decline rapidly. By 1980, it was estimated at about thirteen thousand, or about 23 percent of the community's population. Most of the Jews who now live in Rogers Park are elderly retirees, widows and widowers. ... There are very few Jewish children in the area ... the decline of the Jewish population is due not only to the aging of the population and its westward and northward movement, but also to the loss of various 'feeder' neighborhoods that had previously supplied Rogers Park with Jewish residents." At the same time, West Rogers Park was becoming home to a vibrant community of Orthodox Jews and the institutions that serve them, a trend that had virtually no effect on the B'nai Zion community.

When B'nai Zion celebrated its 75th anniversary in 1993, it appeared the handwriting was already on the wall. A commemorative video made for the occasion featured one elderly congregant after another describing the synagogue's past glories.

Still, according to Sherwin Gerstein, one of three current co-presidents of B'nai Zion, officers and board members tried to keep the institution viable. Six years ago, they sold their school building to Lake Shore Academy in hopes that the money they gained would keep them afloat until they could find an infusion of new members. But that didn't happen.

"We finally ran out of money from the sale of the building and we had to look to our choices," Gerstein says. "We could disappear, merge, or move to a storefront somewhere." Most of the members agreed with Hershel Oliff: "We had to merge or just go out of business or start a new one," he says. "Everybody here is over 70 -- how are you going to start a new one?"

Merging with an existing synagogue seemed the logical choice, and a search committee began looking at the options. Members soon entered into talks with Shaare Tikvah, a nearly 50- year-old Conservative synagogue located about four miles from B'nai Zion in the Hollywood Park neighborhood.

"(The search committee) decided it would be a perfect match for us," Gerstein says, and Rabbi Dennis Katz, Shaare Tikvah's spiritual leader, agreed. In fact, Katz says, his congregants don't see the merger as simply an act of charity to B'nai Zion members. They believe it will help to revitalize their own synagogue, which has a religious school with about 50 students, a Hebrew school and plenty of younger families among its 150 member units, but no sisterhood, men's club or tradition of Friday night dinners-hallmarks of B'nai Zion.

The path has also been smoothed by the fact that both congregations are fully egalitarian, incorporating women into all aspects of religious life and prayer. (Most Conservative synagogues are egalitarian in theory, but in practice observe varying degrees of gender equality.)

"I think it will be a really great combination," Katz says. "(B'nai Zion) members are so full of enthusiasm, so full of life. They're wonderful people. They've been very enthusiastic considering what they are undergoing. It's an extremely difficult thing to let go of a synagogue you've been attending all your life. Their attitude has been very optimistic in spite of that. They've really gone out of their way to make this thing work, and so have our people."

"Making it work" has not been an overnight process, Rabbi Katz says. "We've been talking to them for a couple of years. We've been visiting- it's like a dating process. We've been getting to know each other and it seems to be clicking."

Many B'nai Zion members-even old- timers-agree. "I'm very much in favor of it," says Naomi Gaynes, a B'nai Zion member for 53 years and former president who remains extremely active in the congregation.

"We had to make the move. The neighborhood is getting better, but we couldn't sit and wait for 50 new members to come. And so far the people at Shaare Tikvah seem very nice," she says. Gaynes is particularly concerned about keeping the sisterhood, men's club and Shabbat dinners going at the new congregation; she believes it will work out. In fact, the first Shabbat dinner for the new entity is already planned and will take place right after the High Holidays.

Merging the two synagogues involved making some difficult decisions. One was that Rabbi Katz, who has been at Shaare Tikvah for five years, would be the spiritual leader. Rabbi Schorin has been at B'nai Zion for only two years, and only worked part-time; in addition, his contract is up this month (June). He is a full-time chaplain at Northwestern Hospital. Cantor Tom Berkson, who has been at B'nai Zion for nearly 17 years, likewise will not be relocating to the new congregation. He has said only that he will be retiring and moving to Florida. Shaare Tikvah has no cantor.

Schorin, who followed the late Rabbi Norman Kleinman, who served at B'nai Zion for more than 15 years, will nevertheless be helping congregants make the transition-and, he says, it won't be easy for many of them.

"I'm saddened and extremely sorry that this needs to happen, but there is no doubt that it needs to happen," he says. During the last service he presided over, "I talked about the demise of the shul," he says, "the beautiful sanctuary, the beautiful stained glass windows and the beautiful memories that go back some of (the congregants') whole lives.

"What I'm concerned about is how my congregants will adapt and go on to the next place," Schorin says. "As much as it is a merger, it is also a small death. I want them to say goodbye and know that the memories of what they achieved together will live on. Hopefully they will carry that to the next shul, the next stage."

For some, there are family ties, however tenuous, to Shaare Tikvah that will help sustain them. Beverly Tatz notes that her parents belonged to the synagogue at one time years ago and there are six family memorial plaques there. Knowing those plaques exist give her "a feeling of strength," she says.

While accepting the inevitable, Tatz says she still believes it would have been possible for B'nai Zion to attract younger Jewish people from Lincoln Park, Lakeview and other neighborhoods and suburbs. "There are Jewish people all over-you have to kind of seek them out and the word spreads. But it didn't work for us."

Robert Mendelson, on the other hand, already belongs to another synagogue and will not be involved with the new congregation, although he admits he "may go over and see it." It wouldn't be the same as with B'nai Zion, he says: "I feel that that neighborhood, that's where our ties were. Going into that synagogue was very emotional because it was a tie to my father and to my whole family. I had friendships there that were a link to the past. It's a warm feeling to attend an institution that lasted as long as that one did."

Yet on the whole, most of those involved on both sides are sanguine about the situation. Gerstein, the B'nai Zion co-president, calls it "very refreshing when two synagogues voluntarily associate. I'm trying to make it a positive thing. A lot of people are very sad to leave a place they've been all their life. My take is that it's bricks and mortar. The extended family is more important."

Irving Federman, co-president of Shaare Tikvah, also feels enthusiastic about what he calls "basically a new synagogue."

"I think they felt very comfortable with us and we felt comfortable with them," he says. "I think both congregations are of the same mind as to how we run the synagogue. The synagogues complement each other in a nice way. We feel at Shaare Tikvah we could use an influx of new people, new energy." At a Shavuot dinner attended by many B'nai Zion members, he felt that things were working out. He assesses the situation as "so far so good."

So now it's all over but the shouting. That will happen, figuratively of course, at final services at the synagogue on Pratt Boulevard at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, June 22, followed by a final Kiddush luncheon. There will also be services at 9 a.m. on Sunday, followed by a final breakfast. Congregants and guests are invited to take pictures of the sanctuary and to share their memories of the congregation then.

Aside from that, all B'nai Zion members have received a letter letting them know that they are invited to become members of the new Congregation Shaare Tikvah-B'nai Zion, with no additional membership charges. How many of them will accept, no one yet knows. Everything must be moved out of the synagogue by the end of July; Beverly and Irving Tatz are taking charge of the disposition of the ritual items. They say many people are contacting them to purchase memorial plaques and other items with family members' names on them; others will go to Shaare Tikvah to be displayed.

And that will be the end of it. "We'll keep the old phone number working for a month," Gerstein says. "Then it will be on call forward."