‘Folk Judaism’ Has Humanistic, Egalitarian Stress : Reconstructionist Synagogue Forming

Since August, about 30 families have met weekly in a bid to form the county’s first Jewish Reconstructionist synagogue.

Members have formed a steering committee and are actively seeking a rabbi to help start the synagogue and a religious school from preschool through 10th grade, said member Hinda Beral of Irvine.

The focus of Reconstructionism is humanistic, egalitarian and participatory, Beral said.

Known as a sort of “folk Judaism,” the movement was founded 50 years ago as a liberal wing of the Jewish conservative movement, said Arnold Rachlis, rabbi of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill.

There are about 50,000 Jewish Reconstructionists in the United States, contrasted with 1 million Reform Jews, 1 million Conservative and about 250,000 Orthodox, Rachlis said. Two Reconstructionist communities exist in Canada, one in Curacao, the largest island of the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean, and one in Israel.

So far there are about 10 Reconstructionist congregations in California, including synagogues in San Diego, Pacific Palisades and Malibu, and Havurot , or fellowship groups, in the San Fernando Valley and Whittier.

Some synagogues, such as the Stephen Wise Reform Synagogue in Los Angeles, hold dual affiliations with the Reconstructionist movement.

Reconstructionists believe that God is not a supreme being but rather a “force for power inside human beings that urges them and empowers them to seek the good and find fulfillment in the world,” Rachlis said. “In a sense, we are to the left of Reform in belief and right of Reform in observance.”

First Bat Mitzvah

The founder of the Reconstructionist movement, the late Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, created the first bat mitzvah ceremony--a coming of age ceremony for girls, equivalent to the bar mitzvah for boys--in 1922 in New York for one of his daughters. The ceremony has since been taken up by many Conservative and Reform congregations.

This week, the South Coast Reconstructionist Havurah is holding lecture services and conversations.

Services were held Friday in Irvine, with Rachlis presiding over a baby-naming ceremony. At 10 a.m. today, the rabbi will speak on “Current Events from the Reconstructionist Perspective,” followed by “Our Personal Concept of God” at 12:30 p.m. A Havdalah service and potluck dinner will conclude the Sabbath activities Saturday evening at the University Park Community Clubhouse.

A former White House Fellow, Rachlis worked on Arab-Israeli issues for the State Department in 1985-86. He was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia. He is host for a nationally syndicated cable TV show, entitled “Hayom,” on contemporary Jewish issues and has made guest appearances on “PBS Latenight” and “Donahue.”

The start of the new congregation, according to Merv Lemmerman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, means that “another facet of the totality of American Jewish life is now represented in Orange County. And that’s good.”

Most of the county’s 75,000 Jews are not affiliated with any congregation, said Rabbi Lawrence Goldmark, president of the Orange County Board of Rabbis.

“I would hope that those who join this new congregation will be from among the unaffiliated Jews rather than from those who belong to established congregations,” he said.

“There is a very close relationship among most of the rabbis, be they Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. One of the major principles we follow is that of respecting each other’s members with regard to not influencing them to change synagogues.

“I hope more and more people do affiliate with the congregation of their choice. And now with the establishment of a Reconstructionist Havurah, it gives them another choice. . . .”