Rabbi Fields Emerges From the Prodigious Shadow of Magnin : Judaism: It was a tough act to follow, but the religious leader has put his own unique stamp on the huge Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

By accepting the presidencies of two broad-based religious councils recently, Rabbi Harvey Fields has kept alive a community leadership tradition set by the late Rabbi Edgar Magnin, whom he succeeded at the huge, domed Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

But more than that, say rabbinical colleagues, Fields, 55, has emerged from the prodigious shadows cast by Magnin’s 60-plus years as the temple’s senior rabbi and by the city’s view of Magnin as the patriarchal personification of Judaism.

“Even though Rabbi Magnin was a legend in his own time, that did not prevent Rabbi Fields from putting his own unique stamp on the temple,” said Rabbi Larry Goldmark, who served on the Wilshire Boulevard Temple staff from 1971 to 1979. “A lot of guys would not be able to follow a man like Magnin,” he said.

Fields assumed the reigns of the multifaith Interreligious Council of Southern California on April 1 and was elected Tuesday to a two-year term as president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.

The Los Angeles rabbi already has his hands full as senior rabbi of a 2,550-family congregation, one of the largest synagogues in the state, and sitting on a variety of religious and educational boards, although he will soon relinquish the chair of the Jewish Federation Council’s sensitive Middle East commission.

“This is a large congregation that needs a lot of love and attention, but it has been very supportive of my broader role,” Fields said.

Because Wilshire Boulevard Temple was the oldest and largest Los Angeles synagogue, Magnin was seen by outsiders as the natural voice for Judaism. A native Californian, Magnin also matched the mid-century desire of most U.S. Jews to fend off anti-Semitism by blending into American culture. In keeping with Reform Judaism’s liberal approach, he de-emphasized distinctively Jewish practices.

When ethnic and religious pride asserted itself in a more diverse Jewish community in the 1960s and 1970s, Magnin was regarded by some as out of step with the times yet still beloved for his many achievements, notably the civic goodwill and interfaith harmony he created.

Fields said he had a warm relationship with Magnin after he was hired in 1982 as the heir apparent to the Wilshire Boulevard Temple pulpit. Magnin, still active except for the last months before he died in July, 1984, at the age of 94, generally supported Fields’ ideas for new programs at the temple.

One Friday afternoon in 1983, however, Fields had a scare.

The blunt but affable Magnin, seated in his office, wagged an angry finger at Fields, waving a copy of the latest temple newsletter.

“Harvey, you’re making a terrible mistake,” Magnin said, pointing to a list of 15 committees formed by Fields to assist in the transition ahead.

“These committees will undo you,” said Magnin. “The role of the rabbi is to tell the congregation what to do; not to have the congregants tell the rabbi what to do.”

Despite that outburst, Fields said, the democratization of the congregation went ahead, aided by Rabbi Alfred Wolf, a longtime Magnin associate who led the temple with Fields for a year after Magnin’s death before assuming emeritus status in 1985.

“The temple has become a very busy, active place in the last few years,” Fields said.

“We are in a different era. Some 15 or 20 years ago we could expect hundreds to turn out for large forums and they would be satisfied with that as their spiritual food (in addition to Sabbath services),” Fields said.

“Today, what we do best is to reach out to small groups and adult classes,” he said.

Consistent with the increased interest during the 1980s by Reform Jews in wearing yarmulkes and incorporating more Jewish tradition into their lives, Fields introduced a cantor into temple services (which he calls a “cantorial soloist”), prayer shawls worn by the rabbis and new prayer books he authored.

The transition may have been helped, Fields said, by the fact that he was not an outsider when he went to Wilshire Boulevard Temple from the rabbi’s post at a large Toronto synagogue. Fields, born in Portland, Ore., had an aunt and uncle who were members of Magnin’s congregation, went to Wilshire Boulevard Temple summer camps and attended services when he was an undergraduate at UCLA and a student at the new Hebrew Union College campus in Los Angeles.

Once his innovations took hold at the temple, Fields also took on responsibilities as president of the Mid-Wilshire Parish (a social needs consortium with area churches) and as co-chair of the Black-Jewish Clergy Alliance of Los Angeles in addition to sitting on the boards of Pitzer College, the American Red Cross and the American Jewish Committee.

When Fields took over as president of the Interreligious Council of Southern California from the Rev. Fred Register, a retired United Church of Christ executive, the rabbi talked about his hopes for change there, too.

The 20-year-old body, which Rabbi Wolf co-founded, is thought to have the broadest faith representation for a council of high-level religious leaders. At the same time, it has had a low public profile in recent years.

“We already had a brainstorming session, and there is a keen awareness that this body has a real healing power to exercise if it can get its act together,” Fields said.

While building a trust between Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh and Bahai groups through meetings and retreats, the council needs an infusion of new, younger participants, Fields said.

“Beyond that, we need to provide a model of civility between people of different faiths for police departments and schools,” he said. “Corporations, for instance, often don’t know the difference between a major and a minor holiday, and we should help with that. Hospitals are lost when it comes to various religious requirements.”

He said that the Interreligious Council would have been an ideal body to speak up in defense of Southland Muslims when they faced some hostility during the Persian Gulf crisis last fall.

“There’s got to be a structure of sanity and decency that raises a moral hand and says, ‘This is wrong,’ ” Fields said.

Rabbi Paul Dubin, who administrates the day-to-day activities of the Board of Rabbis, said Fields will bring the same kind of “broad strokes” to his leadership of the board.

The challenge for the rabbis is at least twofold, said Fields.

First, he said, only about 25% of Southern California Jews are affiliated with synagogues--a relatively low figure in U.S. Jewish communities. “That’s an enormous challenge,” he said, although he mentioned no specific program to deal with that.

The other challenge is the polarization between secular and liberal Jews on the one hand and ardently conservative groups. “Trying to cobble together understandings between the Orthodox community and the secular Jewish community is not particularly easy,” he said.

The 250-member rabbinical board nevertheless has had involvement by some prominent Orthodox rabbis. Fields will succeed Orthodox Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen in an installation ceremony on May 28; one of the three new vice presidents will be Orthodox Rabbi Abner Weiss of the large Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills.