Jubilee for Adat Ari El : For Half a Century, Synagogue Set Standard for Innovation

At 83, Maurice Ratner still remembers the sense of isolation he felt as a young man living in the San Fernando Valley when his was one of the few Jewish families in the area.

“We looked forward to the day when there would be a synagogue here,” he said. “We wanted the chance to be among our own where we lived.”

Ratner came to the Valley in 1914. His father was hoping to find relief from the asthma that plagued him in New York, where the family owned a well-known kosher dairy restaurant that still bears their name.

The Ratners were the first Jews to settle permanently in the Valley. By the late 1930s, they had been joined by about 100 other families and the idea of starting a synagogue in the area had taken hold.

“It was time,” Ratner said. “We needed a shul for ourselves and to encourage other Jews to move to the Valley. In those days Jews hesitated to go places where there wasn’t much Jewish life.”

On Jan. 31, 1938, that dream was realized when about 15 families established the Valley Jewish Community Center, a name that reflected the group’s primarily social, rather than religious, goals.

Dr. Maurice L. Young, at whose Studio City home they had met, was elected the organization’s first president. Ratner was among those present.

Today the synagogue is known as Adat Ari El of North Hollywood, a congregation of 950 member families with a reputation for innovation and a prominence far beyond its historical significance as the first Jewish institution of any kind in the Valley. To mark its 50th anniversary, the congregation is celebrating with a yearlong series of reunions, dinners, concerts and other events that have been two years in the planning.

“We want to celebrate our achievements while also recognizing we have an obligation to build for the future,” said Harmon R. Ballin, a past president of the congregation and chairman of the anniversary committee.

Nationally, Adat Ari El, (the name is a poetic reference in Hebrew to the city of Jerusalem), is known for its pioneering adult education classes, its darshanim program that offers lay congregants the opportunity to explain the weekly Torah reading during Saturday morning services, and its commitment to equal status for women. In 1986, Adat Ari El became Judaism’s first major Conservative congregation worldwide to hire a woman as a pulpit rabbi when it installed Leslie Alexander as associate rabbi.

First Nursery School

Locally, Adat Ari El is credited with establishing the Valley’s first Jewish day camp and its first Jewish nursery school. Its members also were prominently involved in helping to launch the West Coast branch of the University of Judaism, now located off Mulholland Drive in the Sepulveda Pass.

“Adat Ari El was the first synagogue in Los Angeles to establish a lot of interesting programs,” said Rabbi Paul Dubin, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

“But it did it when there weren’t that many Jews in Los Angeles to take note of it. Now others do it and it seems new.”

At any synagogue it is the rabbi who sets the tone for the congregation. During its 50-year history Adat Ari El has had two spiritual leaders who are largely responsible for shaping its religious identity: Rabbi Aaron M. Wise, 74 and retired after more than 30 years at the temple’s helm, and Rabbi Moshe J. Rothblum, 46, who took over as senior rabbi in 1978.

Both are modest men who offset any lack of flair with their dedication to drawing congregants into synagogue life. That commitment has produced what Adat Ari El members refer to as a sense of extended family that exists despite the congregation’s size.

When Wise came to the Valley in 1947 as another refugee from the East seeking to improve his health in a better climate, the VJCC, as the synagogue was still called until 1973, had just affiliated with the Conservative movement, Judaism’s middle road between traditional Orthodoxy and liberal Reform Judaism.

Until then, VJCC had remained independent of any of the faith’s branches in an attempt to appeal to as many Jews as possible, the religious as well as the secular. VJCC was known as “the synagogue without a label.”

But after about 15 families broke away from the group to organize the Reform Temple Beth Hillel in North Hollywood, the congregation was forced to define its own religious orientation. It chose to affiliate with the Conservative movement, which was then growing rapidly in the post-war suburban boom that took Jews around the nation away from their big-city neighborhoods and traditional roots.

The VJCC in the early post-war years was housed in a former speak-easy on Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood, now the site of the Orthodox Shaarey Zedek Congregation. But two acres on the east side of Laurel Canyon Boulevard between Burbank and Chandler boulevards had already been donated to the congregation for the new and larger facility.

The land, purchased for $28,000, was donated by synagogue member Nate Blumberg, then the president of Universal Pictures, and his family. Louis Blumberg, his son, said his father picked the Laurel Canyon location because he wanted the new synagogue to be on a prominent residential street (which that part of Laurel Canyon was at the time) away from any loud noises that would interfere with worship services.

“Where he grew up in Racine and Milwaukee in Wisconsin, synagogues were typically in industrial parts of town. That was a time when everyone worked on Saturday and the noise from heavy factories would be real disruptive,” he said. “He didn’t see why Jews praying had to endure that.”

5 Years to Build

It took five years to build the congregation’s new home, the first structure in the Valley designed specifically to be a Jewish house of worship. The temple’s 350-seat chapel (since superseded by a sanctuary that can hold up to 1,500 people) was dedicated to David Familian, patriarch of one of the Valley’s leading Jewish families.

While a student, Wise had been influenced by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, a Conservative Jew whose thinking led to creation of the Reconstructionist Jewish movement. Wise disagreed with Kaplan’s theology, which altered Judaism’s traditional definition of God, but agreed with his belief that synagogues should be more than just houses of worship or social halls.

In the early 1950s, Wise went about establishing a variety of programs in line with Kaplan’s concept of “the organic community” synagogue. The goal, Wise said, was to “involve people in the congregation so they would be more than just passive participants.”

VJCC’s adult education program became the most extensive of any synagogue in the nation at that time, Wise said. The rabbi, a firm believer of the then-radical idea of Conservative Judaism for equal religious treatment for women, also performed the West Coast’s first bat mitzvah, a confirmation ceremony for girls similar to the traditional bar mitzvah for boys, held in conjunction with Saturday morning services.

In the 1960s, Wise marched in the South with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and opened up his congregation to social action and interfaith dialogue.

“It was a temple with a lot of substance,” recalled Rabbi Shimon Paskow, VJCC’s associate rabbi for three years in the late ‘60s before he left to take over the reins at Temple Etz Chaim in Thousand Oaks. “It had marvelous, creative programs.”

In 1971, Rothblum, a Los Angeles native who had taught religious studies at VJCC before enrolling in seminary, came aboard as the congregation’s associate rabbi. Seven years later, he moved up to senior rabbi upon Wise’s retirement.

Under Rothblum, Adat Ari El has continued to break new ground, the most dramatic example of which is the hiring, with the consent of lay leaders, of the 33-year-old Alexander.

However, he also began a day-school program that is credited with bringing in many younger families at a time in the early 1980s when the congregation was in danger of atrophying from a lack of new blood.

The day school now has about 180 students, in addition to the about 270 who attend supplementary religious and confirmation school classes at Adat Ari El. An early childhood center has another 180 youngsters.

“Our membership has been 900 to 1,000 families for 30 years, which attests to the stability of the congregation. But the average age of our members was also going up for a long time,” Rothblum said in an interview in his book-lined synagogue office decorated with Jewish art and a poster from “Mame,” a hint at his fondness for Broadway musicals.

“But in the last five years that has come down significantly. Seven, eight years ago it was maybe 50, 51. Now, I believe it’s in the low 40s.”

Rothblum, who is preparing an album of new liturgical music as part of the congregation’s 50th anniversary celebration, also instituted some non-traditional additions to the synagogue worship services.

Organ Played

During Friday night services, for example, an organ is used, a departure from traditional Conservative worship, which frowns on such accouterments. The Saturday morning service, however, leaves out that progressive touch, although the inclusion of Alexander and other women in the reading of the Torah would still put off the more traditional elements within Conservative Judaism.

Services on Yom Kippur, which attract about 3,200 worshipers for the holiest day of the Jewish religious calendar, also alternate between the progressive and traditional.

“It’s the salad-bowl approach, something for everyone,” Rothblum said. “We’re trying to accommodate different constituents within the congregation.”

But despite all its innovative programming and the willingness of its rabbis to take chances, Adat Ari El has never achieved the local visibility gained by some other congregations, notably Valley Beth Shalom, the larger and wealthier Conservative synagogue in Encino led by Rabbi Harold Schulweis, a nationally known Jewish thinker and writer.

In large part, this is a reflection of rabbinical styles. As the current president of the Board of Rabbis, Rothblum could, if he desired, receive considerable media attention by publicly speaking out on a variety of issues, as his predecessor did. Yet, he chooses not to.

“He keeps begging off, saying he has responsibilities to his congregation first,” Dubin said. “He just doesn’t get out into the community as much as some other rabbis do.”

There are some members at Adat Ari El who would like Rothblum to be more public. One 13-year member, who asked not to be identified, said a more visible Rothblum would “give the congregation a sense of pride. People like to be part of that.”

Alexander, however, said that public display is just not the style of Rothblum, or Adat Ari El.

“The philosophy here is not what’s glitzy. The philosophy here is what’s real, what’s personal,” she said. “If we’re known for anything, it’s for being warm and welcoming.

“At the same time, we’re not insular. This congregation is involved with the larger community in many ways. Social action is a major concern here.”

When the VJCC was organized, North Hollywood was the center of the area’s Jewish life. That focus has now shifted to the West Valley, although the neighborhood around Adat Ari El has had an influx of primarily young, professional Orthodox Jews in recent years.

Alexander said there has also been a return to observant practice, including attention to traditional Jewish law concerning diet and the Sabbath, among many of Adat Ari El’s younger members.

“The percentage of our members who are more observant is still pretty low, but what’s so great about it is so much of the percentage is young,” she said.

That return to a demanding faith among people Alexander called “the children of nuclear fear” has also been noted nationally. Alexander said the return to observant practice bodes well for the future of both Conservative Judaism--which some Jewish leaders fear is in danger of splitting into traditional and liberal wings--and that of Adat Ari El as more than just a repository of an eroding Jewish religion.

“Conservative Judaism is great because we’re not asking young, educated people to just fall into a pattern of doing,” she said. “We respect their need to know, to question. But also offer the kind of structure people want.”

“The next 50 years will be very interesting at Adat Ari El. I plan on being here for a good part of them.”