3 ‘New’ L.A. Rabbis Stress Roles in Teaching, Jewish Unity

Three of Los Angeles’ most prominent synagogues have relatively “new” rabbis in their pulpits, all of whom say they are eager to emphasize the traditional meaning of rabbi as “teacher” and to deal with threats to Jewish unity.

For Jews affiliated with Beth Jacob Congregation (Orthodox), Temple Beth Am (Conservative) or Wilshire Boulevard Temple (Reform), there is the promise of fresh, new ways of experiencing and learning the Jewish heritage.

For the Los Angeles area’s Jewish population of half a million, it will mean new names periodically addressing the broader religious, moral and social problems. They are:

- Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, 50, who has been at the 2,500-family Wilshire Boulevard Temple since mid-1982 but who will soon become senior rabbi at the domed house that Los Angeles rabbinical patriarch Edgar F. Magnin built. At the end of next month, Fields will succeed Rabbi Alfred Wolf who retires at age 70 after 36 years--a long period of service nevertheless overshadowed by Magnin’s 68 years ended only by his death two years ago.

- Rabbi Joel E. Rembaum, 41, who succeeded Temple Beth Am’s rabbi of the last 35 years, Jacob Pressman, this summer. The oldest Los Angeles synagogue aligned with the Conservative branch of Judaism pulled Rembaum from its own 900-family membership ranks. Rembaum has been a member of the congregation for 30 years. He has been on the University of Judaism faculty for 15 years, most recently as dean of undergraduate studies and associate professor of history.

- Rabbi Abner Weiss, 47, who was formally installed this month as senior rabbi of the 750-family Beth Jacob Congregation, the largest Orthodox synagogue in the Western states. Weiss, who follows a 13-year tenure by Rabbi Maurice Lamm, has been to Los Angeles on occasion for lectures but is the least familiar to the Jewish community. A native of South Africa who left that country in 1976, Weiss spent the last eight years at a New York City synagogue.

Not that these three rabbis and their congregations are the only major voices of organized Judaism in Los Angeles.

Rabbinical colleagues say Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Encino’s Valley Beth Shalom is widely respected beyond his own Conservative movement, and Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin of Reform’s Stephen S. Wise Temple continues to widen his influence from an ever-growing, hilltop temple and school off Mulholland Drive. Westwood’s Sinai Temple, the largest Conserative congregation in Los Angeles, is seeking a permanent replacement for Rabbi-in-Residence Moshe Tutnauer of Jerusalem.

Orthodox Spokesman

Activist Orthodoxy, meanwhile, has leading spokesmen in Rabbis Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies and Shlomo Cunin of the Hasidic Chabad movement. Rabbi Jacob Ott heads the principal Sephardic Jewish congregation.

Nevertheless, Rabbis Fields, Rembaum and Weiss come into senior synagogue positions at a time when some Jewish leaders have been alarmed at divisions among the three largest religious branches.

Intra-Jewish tensions have increased in recent years over changes made by the Conservative and Reform movements, such as ordination of women rabbis, and by ultra-Orthodox pressures in Israel and this country for stricter interpretations of Jewish law. In addition, many Conservative rabbis are unhappy with Reform Judaism’s approaches to mixed marriages and innovative definitions of Jewishness.

“A new generation of rabbinic leadership is beginning to take its place in Los Angeles,” Fields, a Reform rabbi, said. “I hope we’ll not get caught up in bitterness that drives us apart.

‘Honor Differences’

“The Jewish community is best served when we honor differences that have been there historically in the various streams of Jewish life. Those who condemn and refuse to respect marriages and conversions (by Conservative and Reform rabbis) have pushed very strongly in Los Angeles over these last few years.”

Weiss said in a separate interview, “I’m optimistic about good working relationships with non-Orthodox rabbis.” He also listed involvement with the broader Jewish community as one of his goals. “I subscribe strongly to a united community working together,” he said, referring specifically to the umbrella Greater Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council.

As for interfaith activities, Weiss said he was close friends with Roman Catholic Bishop Dennis Hurley in South Africa. “I worked very closely with Christian clergy in South Africa,” he said.

The native of Johannesburg served as chief minister of a synagogue in Durban from 1969 to 1976 before he despaired that the apartheid system of racial separation would change fast enough. “I did not want my children to grow up in that environment. . . . It becomes part of you,” he said. “It’s a vicious system.”

Weiss disagrees with Western critics who urge economic withdrawal from South African business investments. He said he agrees with Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of South Africa’s 6 million Zulus, that the “apartheid system can’t stand prosperity” and that U.S. business could “apply more screws” for reform by staying in the country.

Rabbinical Post Sought

Weiss earned his master’s degree and doctorate at Yeshiva University in New York City in the late 1960s and by 1976 was asking for any available rabbinical post in the United States. “I would have gone to Oshkosh--there is an Oshkosh, isn’t there?” he said.

Instead he landed what others told him was a “plum,” the Riverdale Jewish Center in northernmost New York City, a “deeply committed” congregation embracing 60 ordained rabbis “and I don’t know how many college professors.”

Eventually elected a vice president of the (Orthodox) Rabbinical Council of America, Weiss indicated that the challenges were lacking in the New York area. “There is so much leadership that effectively there was no leadership,” he said.

Weiss said he found the openness to new programs in Los Angeles to be exciting. “You put up a sign announcing a new class, and people come flocking in,” he said.

The rabbi said this is the first year since 1969 that he has not been teaching on the side at a university, but he has been using that skill at Beth Jacob. “I do a Bible class after services with up to 250 people coming while 100 or more come to our weekly Talmud class,” he said.

In contrast to Weiss, Rembaum’s new role as spiritual leader of Temple Beth Am follows 15 years of full-time, university-level teaching. “It was a detour from my original intention to be the rabbi of a congregation,” said Rembaum, who holds a doctorate in Jewish history from UCLA.

Teacher in the Pulpit

Even in Temple Beth Am’s pulpit, however, Rembaum acknowledges he is often more like a teacher drawing out the ideas of students than the orator preaching a classic sermon. During the current High Holy Days, he said, he has been giving the more traditional sermon, but at other times of the year he said he attempts to “engage the congregation in a dialogue with questions, answers and comments.”

That technique, Rembaum said, is employed in the main sanctuary of the temple. Another congregation, once called the “library minyan” when it was smaller, now attracts for services about 150 persons, mainly Jewish community professionals, other rabbis and students and faculty from the University of Judaism.

“These are people who are capable of doing more on their own because their Judaic and synagogue skills are more developed,” Rembaum said.

Rembaum also hopes to interest Jewish adults, who he said have difficulty applying the religious learning of a 13-year-old to moral questions, in more education through the synagogue.

‘Creative Education’

The same can be said for Fields. “One of the reasons I am so thrilled about leading Wilshire Boulevard Temple is that we have a base with our religious schools in the San Fernando Valley, the Westside, the main building and two camps to do the kind of creative education I want,” he said.

Members will also see a series of educational exhibits coming to the landmark temple and increased attention to the religious festivals of the Jewish calendar, he said.

Fields, who earned his bachelor’s degree at UCLA and a doctorate in U.S. foreign policy at Rutgers, left the largest Reform temple in Canada (Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto) to join Wilshire Boulevard Temple in 1982.