Global Concerns : Jews Look Outward at Holidays

The 10-day Jewish High Holiday period from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, which begins tonight at sundown, is traditionally a time of spiritual and personal introspection.

This year, Orange County rabbis say their sermons for the New Year and Day of Atonement will also reflect a revived social consciousness, focusing on Jews’ obligations to the larger community, including such issues as hunger and the homeless.

Several communal milestones will be observed throughout the county’s growing Jewish community, which is estimated at more than 100,000.

“The time has come for rabbis to preach more like the 1960s,” said Rabbi Menahem Herman of Congregation B’nai Israel in Tustin. They should deal with “issues of concern that have a broader impact” and, in so doing, “help swing the pendulum back to community responsibility.”

‘Renaissance of Activism’

In addition to calling for a “renaissance of activism,” Herman said he would be speaking on the “need to restore a sense of passion to Judaism,” which he said is “more than a collection of ritual habits.”

Herman said that it is necessary “to recapture the authentic Jewish spirituality,” that “community sharing and the concern people need to feel for one another” are vital “to have communal Judaism thrive.”

Rabbi Stephen J. Einstein of B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley said he intended to ask his congregants to compose “their own eulogy as a way of looking at who they really are and what they stand for” and to discuss “the state of the Jewish community in the world today.”

In part because “people are looking for something spiritual today,” Einstein said, many are rejoining the Jewish community and becoming more active within that community.

“I think we’ve always had within Judaism both universalist and particularist concerns,” Einstein said. “We live in concentric circles and that’s reflected in Judaism.”

Idealism, Einstein said, “waxes and wanes” within the Jewish community as it does within the community at large.

“There was a time when we were used to everyone being very idealistic,” Einstein said. More recently, he said, he has come in contact with young people “whose goal is to drive a BMW by the time they’re 22.”

Rabbi Mark S. Miller, of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach, agreed. “We’re linking our own special concerns with those of the larger community because we’re part of humanity. I think these things go in cycles. . . . A great idealism surfaces during the holidays.”

Temple Bat Yahm will be observing a milestone during the holidays, Miller said.

“We’re going to be dedicating a Torah that was written expressly for this congregation in Jerusalem,” he said.

“I’m going to be talking about the role of Torah in our lives, the love we have given to the scroll itself and the great moment the welcoming of this particular Torah represents for this congregation. It’s a high point for us. I’ll be talking about the generations to come who will profit by this,” Miller said.

Rabbi Bernard P. King of Shir Ha-Ma’alot Harbor Reform, also in Newport Beach, said he planned to discuss “the problem of evil and our apparent insignificance in attempting to address problems in the world.”

King said he would be considering Abraham, the biblical patriarch, as a symbol of “the flawed human being” because “in a sense we’re all failures in some aspect of our lives.”

For some of his congregants, King said, this is difficult to accept, given “the success ethic of the Newport Beach area.”

King said he sensed that “in general there are more people reaching out to do good than before,” although “there has always been a significant minority who are more socially concerned with responding to poverty and hunger and oppression.”

Frustration a Factor

Rabbi Henri E. Front of Temple Beth David in Westminster said that in one of his sermons he would be considering how, from time to time, it may appear that “we have become so inured to other people’s pains and needs and cries that we have hardened our hearts.”

The problem, he said, is one of frustration rather than of insensitivity. “It’s more a case of, ‘What can we do about it?’ ” Front said.

In one of his sermons, Front will be marking his 30th year as a congregational rabbi, while at Temple Beth Tikvah, in Fullerton, Rabbi Haim Asa will be reflecting on his two decades at the same Orange County pulpit.

Asa said that, regardless of the shifting mood of their congregations, many rabbis like himself continued their work as social activists.

“Often I’ve been a chief without Indians” on such matters, Asa admitted. “The question really is where the laity is. Perhaps there is greater sensitivity today on the part of educated people who have it made.”

On Yom Kippur, rabbis in Orange County will be joining rabbis around the country in addressing the issue of hunger in America, as part of Project Mazon, the Hebrew word for food.

The project was the brainchild of Leonard Fein, editor of the monthly magazine Moment, and Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino. In a nationwide mailing to all Jewish denominations, rabbis were asked to address the issue of hunger on Yom Kippur, a fast day.

Social Tax

Congregants were encouraged to assume a 3% tax on all Jewish-related social events, like weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs, and to make that money available to Project Mazon, a clearinghouse for grants headquartered in Westwood, or for local projects. At Beth David, empty shopping bags will be distributed.

Rabbis Herman, Einstein, Miller, King, Front and Asa all said they plan to participate in the Mazon call. Orange County groups that will benefit include the Save Ourselves Program and the Interfaith Shelter. Other rabbis in the county are also participating.

Jews, said Herman, must “work to reintegrate social welfare concerns as a central part of their agenda. My view is that this is a very important piece of synagogue life that needs to be strengthened.”