The Day the Miracles Stopped : Irvine Chabad Center--Plagued by Financial Woes and Resignation of Rabbi--Is Slowly Rebuilding

You can tell Mendel Duchman’s story in 25 words or less:

Brooklyn boy decides to become a rabbi and do great things. He makes a big splash in Irvine, but later things don’t go so good.

There’s a little more to it than that, of course. The last of the lawsuits has been settled. And the congregation at Chabad of Irvine Jewish Center, once in danger of dissolving, is rebuilding and looking for ways to pay off its estimated half-million-plus dollars of debt.

Duchman, who created the center from nothing and built it into one of Chabad’s larger congregations, has resigned his post in Irvine. He is living somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, counseling individual families, who in turn are paying his bills.

But he says he’s neither disgraced nor exiled.

“Everybody still feels firmly that I’m going to be back there. I haven’t given it any thought that far, but I’m very proud of what’s been built there. Right now I’m keeping my distance just as a matter of protocol, but those people are my people. In a year, the problems will be history.”

The Chabad organization was founded in Russia in the 18th Century, and its Jews are Hasidic, orthodox Jews known for their ecstatic singing and dancing. They don’t drive their cars on the Sabbath. They keep strict dietary laws. The sexes sit separately in synagogue, and the men don’t even shake hands with a woman to whom they are not married.

Religious education is so important that most men study and are ordained as rabbis, even though many do not go on to lead congregations.

So as his grandfather and father and brothers had done, Mendel Duchman entered rabbinical school. Then he dedicated himself to working for Chabad.

“You’re basically devoted,” Duchman said. “You don’t know where you’re going to live, what they’re going to pay you--as long as they take care of your needs.”

He worked at Chabad centers near Paris and in Cincinnati, then in 1979 at age 22, was invited to Westminster and hired as associate director of the local Hebrew Academy. Things began to happen fast.

A group of five South African immigrant families in Irvine was looking for an orthodox rabbi to start a congregation there and hired Duchman. He, his wife and infant daughter moved to Irvine, supported by Chabad headquarters until the new “community” could take over his expenses.

The traditional Friday night services began in Duchman’s living room with just the five families. A newspaper ad a month later immediately boosted attendance to 30 families--about 75 people.

“Everything was in my home. On Friday night we would move out the furniture and bring in the Holy Ark, set up the chairs--we were bursting at our seams. And Irvine, being the city that it was, you can’t pick a storefront because it had to get approved.

“We wanted to open a school, an afternoon Hebrew school. There was no way we were able to do that in our home. We needed a house where we could set up a few classrooms, offices. So in six months, the decision was we were going to take a three-bedroom home on a cul-de-sac.”

A $140,000 house in University Park was bought, cash on the barrel head, with money from the original five families plus $10,000 from an unexpected source.

“That’s where I found out my fund-raising skills. I’ll never forget, I had an appointment with a young man who walked in and wanted Hebrew lessons. And I was coming out of the meeting a few minutes late and he saw I was a bit concerned, and he said: ‘What’s going on, Rabbi?’ And I said: ‘I’m trying to close a deal on a house and I’m short $10,000.’ And the next day the check was there from him. And we bought the house immediately.”

These acts of generosity are considered miracles, channels through which the Lord provides, but they are not that rare, said another Chabad rabbi. You come to expect them sooner or later.

“There’s a Chabad rabbi in L.A. who works with Russian immigrant Jews,” the rabbi said. “Suddenly comes to services a couple months ago a little Jew with a little hat and he talks Yiddish, and he says (in heavy accent): ‘Rabbi, you need a bigger place. I vant to help you.’

“So he figures the guy can give him $18 and a bottle of herring. . . . But this little Jew says (with the accent): ‘Rabbi, I vas gonna give you 400, but I’m gonna give you 500 . . . thousand .’

“The point is, we’ve all had our miracles, you know. But you got to be realistic sometimes, I mean.”

Duchman said he was flying high, buoyed by the rapid growth of his congregation. “There was no proper board at that time. It was basically whatever was needed, it was done. I basically did it by myself.”

So in September, 1981, when the usual hall Duchman rented for the big High Holy Days services was unavailable, he begged use of a vacant lot at Royce Road and Yale Avenue and erected a circus tent.

“We were on the front page of the papers. People went crazy. And we literally had, with no exaggeration, we had over five ... hundred ... people to services. Just the fact that it was a unique place. That’s really what put us on the map.

“And then came the downer, of course, of going from this tent back to this little house.”

Duchman began working to move permanently. The owner of the lot, the Mormon Church, agreed to a low rent. Portable buildings were bought and moved there one night.

“The next morning the community woke up to this, and from then on it was a disaster. For two years it was a nightmare, a total nightmare. It was this old brown building, and there was no way they were going to allow it.”

Duchman had received city approval but not approval from the powerful Irvine homeowner associations, who through deed restrictions have the power of quasi-governments. It would take two years and cost $200,000 to meet their landscaping and other requirements.

For the first time, Duchman went outside of the congregation for a loan. He went to a bank.

“I, thank God, have no notes with any banks,” said another Chabad rabbi. “A guy, a big supporter of Mendel’s, he told me, when you sign a note for religious organizations, you should know going in that it might turn into a donation. That’s not the attitude the organization should have, but that’s the attitude the supporter should have.”

Said Duchman: “People there who were part of the founders, they’re saying: ‘Let’s go, Rabbi. We’re in for it,’ and they (co-signed the loan). . . . Then we started to be, as we say, from little boys to big boys. Once you have the community center, you need some programs, and that’s when things got going.”

First came a preschool, a full-day nursery. There were 17 children, then 33. And when the children reached kindergarten age, the parents wanted them to remain in a Jewish school, so they wanted Duchman to create a kindergarten. At that time, the dues-paying congregation numbered about 100 families, but about 800 families were using the center in one way of another.

“The kindergarten year was a good decision. But then (a year later) came the first grade. And I remember sitting together with seven parents and they were saying: ‘Please, Rabbi, how could you not do this? We need a day school. After all, this is why you’re here.’ And the guilt and the needs.”

Then second grade. Then third grade. Then fourth grade. “And when the issue was whether we were going to make a fifth grade, I said: ‘That’s it.’ ”

Because by then, the center was in a circular trap of obtaining new loans to pay old loans and meet daily operating expenses. By then the paid staff numbered 27, including four rabbis. At its peak, the annual budget was about $700,000.

“You name anything--a Jewish center and/or synagogue and/or outreach program and/or humanitarian program and/or social program--in Judaism, and we had it,” Duchman said. “We do things, and then we worry about money.”

“We’d been approached several times and given money several times,” said one woman. “Our goal was always to help this young man, to tide him over until his receivables came in. We have done that--$2,000, $5,000, maybe $10,000--and never had a problem. It was paid back within a couple of weeks. We’re not alone. I’m sure there are at least 30 people who did the same thing.”

It may seem reckless in retrospect, “but that’s how we operate,” Duchman said. “I’ll tell you why so you’ll understand: Because my father and my grandfather and my great grandfather, their saying ‘yes’ was sitting in jail in Russia (for furthering the Chabad cause). So here it’s only money. What’s money? ‘We’ll get it together, OK?’--that’s really the undertone why we are so committed.”

There were other factors, such as the defection of many of the well-heeled South Africans to a new, “modern orthodox” synagogue in town. “They said, ‘We want to have a little hub back for ourselves.’ All of a sudden there are two cups, and less water goes into each cup.”

This is normal, said another Chabad rabbi. “It’s not unusual in the Jewish community. You know the Jew who gets off the desert island and there’s two big buildings there? And they say, ‘You been here alone for 20 years, what’s happening with the buildings?’ He says: ‘That’s the synagogue I go to, and that’s the synagogue I don’t go to.’

“It’s true. In the orthodox Jewish community, the tendency is for many smaller synagogues, almost never any big ones.”

Duchman called an emergency meeting in July, 1989, “and the people we owed money, we said you’re going to wait, instead of taking from Peter to pay Paul and Paul to pay Peter.” His plan was to eliminate the money-losing day school, bring expenses under control, form an emergency committee and begin to climb out of the financial hole.

“People were very angry,” said a woman who attended the meeting. “People were screaming. People were very, very upset. There were people in the room who suggested that they’d given maybe several hundred thousand dollars.”

Rabbi Baruch Y. Hecht, associate director of Chabad headquarters in Los Angeles, attended the meeting and told the congregation, some of whom were creditors, exactly what they didn’t want to hear: “It was their debts. It wasn’t my debts.

“These (Chabad centers) are all separate California nonprofit corporations with separate employer ID numbers and separate names and titles. They’re deliberately established that way because part of our policy, our organizational policy, is that each center must take financial responsibility for itself.”

Headquarters paid off $200,000 of loans it had guaranteed on behalf of the Irvine center, but it had harsh words for Duchman.

“We said to him: ‘Either you make it or you don’t,’ ” Hecht said. “ ‘If you’re not going to make it, leave, and then we’ll have no choice but to clean up your mess.’ ”

Hecht said Duchman wanted to remain and try to pay off the debts, even though some in Irvine were crying for his head.

“The creditors (former members who had co-signed large, unsecured bank loans) said to us: ‘We’ll work with you. Just shoot Duchman,’ ” Hecht said. “If I give them his scalp, they’ll be happy to work with us. We said: ‘Wait a minute. Give the guy a chance. Work with him .’ ”

Duchman said that those most critical of him had previously been “with me all the way.” Hecht said he’s seen it before.

“When things are going well, everybody jumps on with the winner. It’s just ‘Keep goin’, Rabbi, you’re doin’ great.’ And in the infinite optimism of Rabbi Duchman, I think he thought ‘Keep goin’, you’re doin’ great’ meant ‘The check is coming.’ And it didn’t happen.”

After the emergency meeting in 1989, things simmered but were under control, Duchman said. Operating expenses matched income, although the old debts still loomed.

Then on July 17, Duchman resigned.

“The reports we got from him were, ‘Everything’s OK,’ ” Hecht said. “Then one day he walks in and says: ‘I’m outta here.’ That’s when we stepped in.

“Actually, he never did give me a reason. He said personal reasons.”

Duchman said he resigned because the death of his father, then his father-in-law, altered his perspective. He wanted to be less of a workaholic. But his sudden resignation “freaked out the creditors,” he said.

“Maybe because I resigned, they’re settling, because there’s no one out there to carry the burden,” Duchman said. “As long as I was there, (headquarters) figured: ‘Listen, let him worry about it. Let him handle it.’

“Now that there’s nobody there--the new rabbi don’t want it--so headquarters got to step in, and they are stepping in,” he said. “So maybe my resignation was worth its while.”

The lawsuits from banks have been allayed by reducing interest and setting up a new payment schedule, Hecht said. The last lawsuit, filed by a former member of the congregation, was settled this month.

Chabad headquarters will pay until the Irvine center, now called South County Chabad, can begin making payments, Hecht said. But headquarters expects to be reimbursed by the Irvine congregation, “although we’re the last on the list,” he said.

Rabbi Alter Tenenbaum, who is Duchman’s brother-in-law, moved from Chabad in Laguna Beach to take over the troubled center in Irvine.

“The way I see it, when I came here two months ago, there was a lot of uncertainty,” Tenenbaum said. “The fact now that I’m here, a new rabbi, the large lawsuits have been taken care of, services are continuing--people now realize Chabad is here to stay.”

Tenenbaum has created a committee to deal with the center’s financial future.

“We lost a lot of members,” said Colin Becker, one of the committee members. “We had a very, very large community beforehand,” about 240 dues-paying families. “It dwindled down to 10 or 15 families. With Rabbi Tenenbaum being appointed, he has actually stabilized the membership. At present there are about 40 paying families.”

He said the congregation is aware they are morally obliged to repay the debt. He said fund-raising events are being planned and potential large contributors are being approached.

Looking back, Duchman said that he “probably should have tightened up on some of my yeses, have a little more lay people carrying some of the load. . . . I was a young guy, and I just bulldozed right through.”

“I am a supporter of his,” said a creditor who’s out about $14,000. “He was dedicated and he worked very hard. He was responsive when other rabbis weren’t. But all the enthusiasm in the world doesn’t make a good manager.”

“One thing about Mendel Duchman--the guy was a go-getter,” said another Chabad rabbi. “He was a tummler (a live wire). He was making noise. He’s always doing some project and always getting it in the papers. He did a lot of creative things.

“I think he’s matured a lot. . . . Mendel tried to do a little too much here. Except here you don’t go to Siberia, you go to court.”