High Praise : For the members of the Chabad Russian Synagogue, many of them recent Soviet emigres who have spent their lives avoiding the system, the tolerance and cooperation of county officials and those in West Hollywood has been a welcome surprise.

It was a telling incident for Rabbi Naftoli Estulin and members of his Chabad Russian Synagogue in West Hollywood. The occasion was Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. About 1,400 worshipers, nearly all of them recent immigrants from the Soviet Union, turned up at the synagogue. So did a handful of sheriff’s deputies and fire officials, who calmly divided the crowd outside the synagogue into shifts to avoid a fire hazard inside.

All went smoothly, but the sight of uniformed officers at a religious gathering sent a wave of fear through many in the congregation. In the Soviet Union, Jews usually do not find uniforms a comforting sight.

“Rabbi, they want to take you away?” Estulin recalled his congregants asking during the Sept. 18 encounter. “They thought I was finished.”

Estulin and his congregation came to America expecting to find religious freedom. The tolerance and cooperation of officialdom, however, has been a welcome surprise to people who have spent their lives avoiding the system.

In the midst of the fall holiday season--starting with the Jewish New Year on Sept. 8 and concluding this week with Simcha Torah--the community’s religious leaders are praising the city of West Hollywood, as well as officials of the Los Angeles County Fire and Sheriff’s departments.

The fire, police and city officials all said they were caught off guard by the size of the Yom Kippur gathering. Nonetheless, West Hollywood has allowed the synagogue to remain open since it moved to its new Santa Monica Boulevard facility early this month, even though the synagogue has not yet obtained a temporary-use permit or other required approvals. Synagogue leaders and city planners are working together to bring the building up to code.

County fire officials have been less flexible. Though willing to assist the religious leaders, they are nonetheless concerned over potential fire hazards posed by crowds at the synagogue.

Fire inspectors notified the synagogue last week that the building cannot be used for public assemblies until it meets county fire standards. For example, lighted exit signs are needed over doorways, as is special safety equipment for the back doors.

When it is brought up to code, the building will be able to safely accommodate 800 people. Until then, fire officials said, no more than 50 people will be permitted to assemble at a time.

Nevertheless, Estulin anticipates more than 1,000 people tonight and tomorrow night for the Simcha Torah holiday, on which Jews sing and dance with Torah scrolls to recognize the ending and beginning of the annual cycle of the reading of the Torah.

At a meeting Thursday with synagogue leaders, city officials agreed to give the congregation a temporary-use permit for the holiday. Fire officials said they would allow the gathering, provided a safety officer from the local fire station is present. The synagogue will foot the bill, according to Capt. Bill Hood, who oversees the county fire prevention bureau that serves West Hollywood.

The gatherings at the synagogue come at a time of growth and religious revival in West Hollywood’s Russian Jewish community, which officials estimate at about 5,000. Many emigres, once forbidden to practice their religion in the Soviet Union, have arrived here desiring religious affiliation, Estulin and others say.

The synagogue, affiliated with the Chabad Hasidic movement, often attracts 50 or more worshipers every morning for daily prayers, and several hundred for Saturday morning Shabbat services. It also offers religious education for children and adults, and such services as job placement, English classes, medical assistance and family counseling.

The new, 11,000-square-foot synagogue building, a former auto repair shop, replaces a facility one-quarter the size. The community has raised more than $770,000 to help buy the building. Volunteers constructed the pulpit and painted the interior.

“For me, this has been a spiritual awakening from total spiritual death,” said Julius Levin, a physician who started attending weekly services about five months ago.

Even requests for the ritual circumcision ceremony, called the bris, are coming into the synagogue in greater numbers than ever before, Estulin said. The rabbi officiates at more than 10 such ceremonies a week.

Customarily, the bris is performed on all Jewish boys eight days after birth as a mark of the Jewish people’s covenant with God, but for decades it has been unavailable in the Soviet Union. For young men like Leonid Sheyer, 26, one of several adults recently circumcised, it is an opportunity to embrace their heritage.

“Now I am a Jew,” Sheyer said soon after his procedure was over. “My soul was always Jewish, but my body belonged to Ivan the Terrible.”