Rabbi Sends Message Special Delivery : Video About Holy Days Reaches Those Unable to Attend Synagogue

“What’s the entertainment industry all about?” asked the rabbi. He answered his own question: “It’s about enriching life, and that’s what we want to do today, bring you enrichment.”

What’s this? A rabbi extolling enrichment through entertainment? That’s exactly what Rabbi David Baron was talking about, because his congregation is the Synagogue for the Performing Arts, and a prerequisite of all its members is that they belong to the entertainment industry.

Today, the rabbi was following a yearly tradition by celebrating Hanukkah with those who used to be active in the industry. The retired, elderly and infirm at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills watched as the rabbi and comedian Henry Holden lit the Hanukkah candles on a 4-foot bronze Menorah, and cantor Judy Fox sang the blessings in Hebrew.

Fox, a Reseda resident who was a professional singer before becoming a cantor, then led the group in songs of the Maccabees’ victorious struggle for religious freedom over the tyrannical King Antiochus.

As in other years, those who came to celebrate the holiday had vision and hearing handicaps. Many sat in wheelchairs or were supported by canes and crutches.

“But those of us who couldn’t read the words on the song sheets and couldn’t sing could still tap our feet and clap our hands. I’m losing my sight, and it’s very frustrating,” said Carmen Held, 89, “but I was so grateful I came.” Held added, “I don’t celebrate Hanukkah myself, but as the rabbi said, all people celebrate the ideals of peace and good will on earth.”

The last time the Synagogue for the Performing Arts made an appearance here, it was on videotape. Baron and members of his congregation have put the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on tape for the use of the elderly and ill around the country as a public service.

The tape was produced, acted and edited by members of the congregation. “We put out the call,” the rabbi said. “We got a president from one of the major film studios to donate a camera crew. Somebody donated 10 hours in an editing lab, and we got Buddy Hackett and Monty Hall.”

The result was a half-hour video on the meaning of the holy days, and for the first time last year those in nursing homes, hospitals or ill at home could pop a cassette into a machine and see and hear what they couldn’t see and hear in a synagogue.

At the retirement home, the rabbi now reminded those at the Hanukkah celebration that it was his congregation that put that video together and told them that a new expanded videotape would soon be made with Joan Rivers and Leonard Nimoy contributing their talents.

Going to the Synagogue for the Performing Arts--although offering familiar Judaism to those who remember the orthodox shul --is somewhat like going to the theater. Members who are called on to read probably got over their stage fright years ago, doing Shakespeare or Moliere. This congregation’s singers and dancers have done film, television and Broadway.

Its famous members include Walter Matthau, Monty Hall, Buddy Hackett and Ed Asner, as well as Hollywood’s foremost writers, producers, directors and special-effects people. Many synagogues seek new members, but ads for this synagogue run in the trade journals.

In a sense this synagogue, now in its 13th or Bar Mitzvah year, was formed out of necessity. Hollywood’s famous found it difficult to attend services without being gawked at or asked for autographs. Stars probably found it tiresome to hear someone discover that So and So was Jewish or how good his or her Hebrew was.

What the synagogue does not have is a synagogue. That is, it does not have its own special building, a place of worship.

“We met on the High Holy Days at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” said the rabbi. Sabbath services are at the Wadsworth Theater, and the 20th Century Fox studio lot occasionally serves as the synagogue.

“We decided not to build a building because the edifice complex would tax the membership,” Rabbi Baron added. Besides, he says, “All the world’s a stage.”

A full cast of entertainers had been set for Hanukkah this year at the motion picture home. But only comedian Holden, who contracted polio at the age of 4 and who now told jokes as he supported himself on crutches, was able to attend.

“More performers were going to come,” said the rabbi, “but at the last minute they got jobs in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. That’s the nature of the business.”