Enduring Faith : A Few Determined Worshipers Still Fondly Adhere to Their Synagogue

Raye Cowan remembers when Temple Beth Zion was so full of worshipers that the congregation rented local movie theaters on the High Holy Days to accommodate the crowd.

“We used to get so many people for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that we used the La Brea Theater first and then later the El Rey Theater,” she said. “Not anymore.”

With the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah starting tonight at sundown, the mostly elderly members of Temple Beth Zion are trying to hold onto a dream that started in 1943, when the congregation held its first High Holy Day services in the rear of a store.

“It looks like we’ll have a good crowd this year, but it won’t be like it used to be in the old days,” said Cowan, 76, who joined the synagogue in 1953.

In the Mid-City area, four blocks west of La Brea Avenue on Olympic Boulevard, Temple Beth Zion is fighting the odds. With a shrinking membership composed almost entirely of senior citizens, the synagogue averages only 20 worshipers at Friday night services and 30 Saturday mornings.

In its heyday in the 1950s, the temple had more than 400 members and a Talmud Torah (Hebrew school) attended by more than 300 children. Six classrooms were built in 1950 to accommodate the growing families in the area.

The classrooms have been closed now for almost 30 years and are only used to store old desks and chairs.

“It’s a sad situation, but we’re a happy shul (synagogue),” said Al Greenberg, a past president of the temple and a member since 1946.

Even though the congregation regularly receives offers to buy the building, Greenberg and the rest of the members are not ready to pack it in yet.

“As long as we old-timers are still around, we still want to have our shul continuing,” he said.

With most of its 100 temple members over the age of 70, it is only a matter of time before Temple Beth Zion closes. But when it does, it will take a part of Los Angeles Jewish history with it.

The synagogue’s vibrancy in the 1950s mirrored that of its neighborhood. It was then essentially a southern extension of the Fairfax District: predominantly Jewish, with an extensive array of neighborhood stores and businesses.

Many of the neighborhood children went to the enormous Westside Jewish Community Center, built in 1954 on Olympic Boulevard, for sports, drama, dancing and theater classes. Most of the children attended Wilshire Crest Elementary at Olympic and Orange Drive.

“Wilshire Crest Elementary School was almost all Jewish in the 1950s, and Los Angeles High School had a significant Jewish student population,” said Cowan, who was president of the PTA at Wilshire Crest in 1956-57. The schools, she added, “were among the best in the city.”

But the neighborhood did not remain a Jewish stronghold for long. The early ‘60s brought an influx of black residents, and since then, many non-Jewish whites, Latinos and Asians have moved in as well. Many of the Jewish families moved out--to Beverlywood, Santa Monica or Beverly-Fairfax.

Today, Temple Beth Zion sits in a stable, middle-class neighborhood of unusual ethnic diversity, even by Los Angeles standards. In the 1990 Census, the synagogue’s immediate neighborhood was 37% black, 31% Anglo, 20% Asian and 11% Latino.

As early as 1966, congregation members sensed that the temple’s days were numbered. When Rabbi Edward Tenenbaum came on board that year, the congregation had already experienced a significant drop in its membership, and the Hebrew school had closed.

Predictions of the temple’s demise were off-target by a few years, however. A quarter-century later, the temple is still there, and so is Tenenbaum, now 73.

“At that time, the congregation’s board thought that the temple would only last for another year, so they asked me to be the part-time, guest rabbi for weekends and holidays,” Tenenbaum said. “We’ve had this arrangement for the past 25 years.”

Those who remain in the congregation have a lifetime of memories and a commitment not to close.

“We want to have a large celebration for our 50th anniversary in two years, so we will remain open,” Greenberg said.

One of the founding members, Sara Shipp, is now 100. She remembers vividly that first Rosh Hashanah service in 1943.

“We had a small number of people, but we were all excited and dedicated, and everyone felt like one family,” she said.

The strength of the synagogue is the Sisterhood of Temple Beth Zion and its 77-year-old president, Sylvia Greenberg. Now entering her 17th year as its leader, she, along with husband Al, remember the first year they became members in 1946.

“We davened (prayed) in a little place, and we scrubbed the floors to keep it clean,” she said.

The sisterhood is an important element in the synagogue, because it does much of the fund raising, Greenberg said.

“There are close to 100 of us in the sisterhood, and we are determined to keep going,” she said. “It’s like home to us. . . . It’s very haimish (homelike) . “

Raye Cowan still remembers going to actor/director Rob Reiner’s bar mitzvah, attended by many Hollywood personalities, at the temple years ago.

“It was a wonderful event that brought recognition to the temple,” she said.

Another notable moment came in 1978, when Beth Zion was the first Conservative temple in the western United States to hire a female cantor, Linda Rich.

“We have always given people their starting-off points,” Al Greenberg said proudly.

Much of the work in the temple is done by volunteers and part-time employees who try to keep the sanctuary, with its 10 stained-glass windows depicting Jewish holidays, clean and manageable.

“We’re very proud of this,” Cowan said.

Few of the remaining members live in the neighborhood anymore. And even though the temple manages to draw a few new members each year, they lose just as many, if not more, members.

“We try and keep the status quo, that is all we can do,” Al Greenberg said.

Centenarian Sara Shipp still hopes Temple Beth Zion will continue, despite all odds.

“Where there’s Torah there’s chochmah (wisdom),” she said. “But I’m afraid that all good things must come to an end, even our shul, because we have no young people.”