Jewish Community Rallies for Emigres : Fund Raising: Operation Exodus hopes to ease transition from Soviet Union to Israel.

Operation Exodus, the worldwide project to resettle Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel, is catching the imagination--and reaching the wallets--of the Southern California Jewish community, according to leaders of the mammoth fund drive.

The halfway mark for the Los Angeles County goal of $36 million has already been reached, with several more months to go in the campaign, said Ron Rieder of the Jewish Federation-Council, coordinating body for the Los Angeles effort. Meanwhile, more than $400,000 of Orange County’s goal of $1.2 million has been reached.

The total goal is $420 million from the United States and $600 million worldwide. The money is to be channeled over the next three years through the Jewish Agency, a body operating in Israel under an international board.

“This is probably the first time in the diverse history of the Los Angeles Jewish community that nearly all the organizations in town have come together as one to support something,” Rieder said.

In addition to food and housing, Operation Exodus provides scholarships for Soviet Jews to train for new jobs in Israel.

Since the Soviet Union liberalized its emigration policies in the spring of 1989, more than 50,000 Soviet Jews have flooded into Israel. Another 15,000 to 25,000 are expected to arrive this month alone. Operation Exodus leaders predict the total may reach 100,000 by year’s end and 500,000 within several years.

Area synagogues are finding creative ways to raise money for the project.

At Pasadena’s Conservative Jewish Temple and Center, fund leaders Bob and Renee Oran are emphasizing “saving 50 lives.” That translates to a $225,000 goal because the estimated cost of bringing a family of four from Moscow to Israel and providing for their needs for the first year is $18,000.

Rabbi Marvin Sugarman of Shaarey Zedek, a North Hollywood Orthodox congregation, has asked every member family to pledge $1,000 or “$1 a day for three years.”

And at Shaarei Tefila Orthodox congregation in West Los Angeles, the parents of a bride and groom who were recently married there gave $10,000 to Operation Exodus and cut down on the expenses of the wedding celebration.

Conservative Rabbi Allan Shranz of Westwood’s Sinai Temple called his congregation’s response “overwhelming,” and Reform Rabbi Harvey J. Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple said the campaign “has reached the gut of Jews in a very powerful way.”

It has evoked memories of Jews desperately seeking to get out of Europe during World War II, Fields said. “Today Jews are leaving the Soviet Union in fear of the rising tide of anti-Semitism,” he said.

Chelle Friedman, public relations director for the Jewish Federation of Orange County, said their “big push” for Operation Exodus will come during the high holidays of mid-September.

“Congregations will work to raise $500,000 in cash to charter a freedom flight--a plane to take Jews from Hungary, where they have been stranded, to Israel,” she said.

Shear Yashuv Cohen, the chief rabbi of Haifa, Israel, sees the work of Operation Exodus from a unique vantage point. The founder of Ariel, a group of Torah institutions in Israel, Cohen helps resettled Soviet Jews become “Jewishly connected.”

Ariel, not funded through Operation Exodus, is training 15 Russian rabbis in Jerusalem who “know the language and the mentality” of Soviet Jews, Cohen said during a recent Los Angeles visit.

The emigrants “need to be accepted into the Jewish covenant. . . . They know they are Jewish, but they need help to be amalgamated back into their ancient religion after all these years,” Cohen added.

“An historic moment of Jewish history knocks at our door,” he said. “Many generations have prayed for this moment, and now we have been privileged to live it.”

About 70% of American Jews are of Russian or East European origin, and 20% of Southern California’s estimated 600,000 Jews have an affiliation with a synagogue or Jewish organization.