Chief Rabbi From Israel Praises Orthodox Jews for Doing Much With Little

A chief rabbi from Israel, speaking in the back yard of a small house that serves as a synagogue and day school for Orthodox Jewish families in Woodland Hills, assured about 80 schoolchildren and adults Friday that a congregation’s beauty and worth do not depend on an imposing edifice.

“Beauty and truth are inner qualities,” said Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu, praising Beit HaMidrash and its West Valley Hebrew Academy for accomplishing so much in such modest and cramped quarters.

“Anyone who helps make the building beautiful on the outside will be greatly blessed,” said Eliahu, whose brief Southern California visit includes a speech Sunday at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles.

“Next time I visit, you will have more,” he said before cutting a ribbon to mark the synagogue’s expansion into another converted house next door. The city recently awarded a conditional-use permit for the synagogue to operate in the second house.

Eliahu is one of two chief rabbis for Orthodox Jews in Israel. He leads Sephardic Orthodox Jewry, whose culture and traditions developed in North Africa and Spain. Ashkenazi Jews, those with a Central European heritage, also have a chief rabbi.

Wearing a deep blue turban and black robe symbolic of his high office, Eliahu spoke briefly to the noontime gathering. He drew a contrast between “the civilization in which we exist--people enveloped in confusion” and Orthodox Jewish leaders charged with “leading the flock along sacred paths.”

Eliahu’s theme echoed introductory remarks by Alan Shapiro, president of the synagogue, who praised the “miracle” of the 50-family synagogue and academy forming “in the midst of this West Valley wasteland.”

Shapiro explained later that he meant that the West Valley had been a “spiritual wasteland for Orthodox Jews” because of a paucity of Orthodox places of worship.

There are two Reform temples and two Conservative synagogues in the Woodland Hills-Canoga Park area as well as the West Valley Jewish Community Center, but Orthodox Jews prefer the strict observance of Jewish law found in their institutions.

In his speech, Shapiro also indicated that the academy, one of only two Hebrew day schools in the San Fernando Valley, was not merely teaching children in grades one through nine to be good U.S. citizens. “We’re raising pious Jews who will eventually settle in the land of Israel,” he said.