Keeping the Faith : Jews Find a Growing Sense of Community and Tradition : Religion: The small but rising population creates networks of friends, bulging synagogues and more cultural amenities.

The South Bay’s Jewish community once was notable only for what it lacked. There was no social center, kosher butcher or bakery, no schools for Jewish studies, and, perhaps most sorely missed, no real Jewish deli.

Although it is still hard to find a knish south of Los Angeles International Airport, the area’s small but growing Jewish community no longer considers the South Bay a cultural wasteland.

Jewish children learn about their heritage at local synagogues in Lomita, Rancho Palos Verdes and Redondo Beach. Elderly Jews celebrate Friday night Shabbat services with a loaf of challah at the South Bay Jewish Community Center in Torrance.

And South Bay Jews of all ages no longer have to schlep all the way to West Los Angeles to hear lectures on Jewish issues. A synagogue in Rancho Palos Verdes regularly sponsors an annual lecture series that has drawn such prominent Jewish personalities as Israeli statesman Abba Eban and Harvard law Prof. Alan Dershowitz.

“We’re like the (San Fernando) Valley was in 1963,” said Bruce L. Ross, president of the Southern Region Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. “We’re living in an area that is not considered traditionally Jewish, but we’re beginning to see that (vitality) that is necessary to really push us into the future.”

An estimated 45,000 Jews live in the South Bay, about 7% of the total in Los Angeles County. Although the number has risen only slightly in the last 10 years, there are signs that a mature and cohesive Jewish presence is emerging in the South Bay.

Fueling those changes is an influx of young couples, many with children, who have moved into Torrance, the beach cities and the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the last few years, said Wade Weiman, chairman of the southern region’s general campaign.

Robin Rome, 36, a transplant from West Los Angeles, is among the newcomers. After years of agonizing about moving, she and her husband bought a home on the Palos Verdes Peninsula two years ago.

“I held off the move for eight years because to me, it was like my husband was asking me to move to Nebraska,” said Rome, a dental hygienist. “I thought, ‘What are you talking about? I’m not going to leave Beverlywood Bakery.’ ”

But in the two years since they arrived, Rome has become, for the first time in her life, an active member of her local synagogue and has formed close bonds with a network of Jewish friends.

“It’s such a thrill for me because I just couldn’t imagine leaving West Los Angeles,” Rome said. But to her surprise, she said, her new home is “a wonderful community for Judaism, and for life.”

In the last year, the Jewish Federation’s southern region, which covers the entire South Bay, saw its membership roster rise to 2,500 families, a 25% increase over the previous year. Over the same period, donations by South Bay Jews to the United Jewish Fund, which raises money for Jewish causes, programs and activities, was up 10% to $940,000, said Marc S. Dworkin, director of the federation’s southern region.

The South Bay is also home to a plethora of Jewish community groups, including two units of B’nai B’rith, a volunteer organization that funds programs for the disadvantaged, a 350-member chapter of Hadassah, a women’s group that raises money for Israel, and an AZA youth group for Jewish teen-agers.

In yet another sign of the flowering the local Jewish community, next month the South Bay Jewish Community Center will open a walk-in parenting center in Torrance where young families can learn parenting skills and practice Jewish customs with their children.

And Jewish religious leaders from Lomita to Rancho Palos Verdes say they have received so many newcomers that their congregations are rapidly outgrowing their synagogues.

“We are bursting at the seams,” said Rabbi Ronald Shulman of Congregation Ner Tamid in Rancho Palos Verdes. The Conservative Jewish synagogue, which was built 30 years ago to accommodate 250 families, is serving twice that many families.

It’s a similar story at Temple Menorah, a Reform congregation in Redondo Beach, which saw its membership shoot from 225 families in 1987 to 425 families this year. Chabad of South Bay, an Orthodox congregation that runs a preschool for children as young as 6 months old and a kindergarten through fifth-grade day school, is hoping to buy an adjacent piece of property to add more classrooms and play areas.

“It’s the difference between night and day,” Chabad Rabbi Eli Hecht said. “When I came here in 1973, Jewish people weren’t talking about their Jewishness. Today, most Jewish people feel comfortable putting a mezuza on their door or a menorah in their window during Hanukkah.”

A number of factors have made that transition possible, Jewish leaders say.

Among them was the construction five years ago of a community center and headquarters for the Southern Region Jewish Federation Council in Torrance. The new building “gave the Jewish community a central address and established a presence” in the area, Dworkin said.

Since then, the federation has worked hard to ensure that thousands of dollars would be funneled into South Bay agencies, including local offices of Jewish Family Services and Jewish Big Brothers, he said.

Local leaders also say a six-week celebration of Jewish culture two years ago helped kindle an awakening among the South Bay’s Jewish community.

As the community has developed a local identity, South Bay Jewish leaders have begun to express an interest in tackling world issues as well.

In June, 1990, a small group of South Bay Jewish leaders met with the Egyptian and Soviet consuls general in San Francisco to convey their concern about the treatment of Jews in those countries.

And in May, local Jewish leaders are planning to travel to Washington to learn how they can become more politically active.

The San Francisco trip “gave us a wonderful sense that we had some impact,” said Judith Sommerstein, chairwoman of the southern region’s community relations committee. “We wanted to do it again, and we felt Washington, D.C., would be another experience that would expand our knowledge and make people become more involved. . . . It also is a good way of developing leadership.”

Given some of the unique characteristics of the South Bay’s Jewish community, it isn’t surprising that the area’s Jewish population has only recently begun to flourish, Jewish leaders say.

South Bay Jews marry outside the faith in higher numbers than do Jews in most other parts of the county, according to planners with the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, which allocates funds to Jewish agencies throughout the county. South Bay Jews also join synagogues in fewer numbers than do Jews elsewhere in the county, planners said.

“For a lot of years, (Jews) came here not to be Jewish,” Shulman said. “(Living in the South Bay) was a way not to be connected to other Jews.”

Despite growth in the South Bay’s Jewish community, the federation’s southern region has among the smallest Jewish populations in the county, said Carol Koransky, director of the federation’s central planning and allocations department.

The highest concentration is in the San Fernando Valley, which is home to about 250,000 Jews, she said. The federation’s metropolitan region, which includes Beverly Hills, West Los Angeles and the Fairfax district, runs a close second with about a community of about 200,000, she said.

Only the eastern region, which cuts a wide swath through Glendale, the San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino, has a Jewish population comparable to the South Bay’s, she added.

In an attempt to strengthen the local Jewish community, Temple Menorah this year launched Shalom Club, through which intermarried couples meet weekly to discuss Jewish identity, family life, religious ritual and education.

“The purpose is to educate these couples on Jewish customs and events in the hopes that they will choose to eventually join a synagogue and become active participants in the Jewish community,” program coordinator Susan Zeff said. “This program is a response to the fact that intermarriage has become a widespread phenomenon, and instead of turning these people away, we really need to welcome them into the synagogue.”

Nurturing a Jewish identity in the South Bay, however, has its challenges.

Jews who observe traditional dietary laws say they must leave the community to find kosher foods. Two years ago, a group of observant Jews at Congregation Ner Tamid created a kosher cooperative to allow them to receive deliveries of kosher meat once a month from a Westside butcher.

Although local supermarkets have begun to carry kosher goods, they don’t always stock the right items. Last April, for instance, a Torrance market offered a type of matzo that is not considered kosher for Passover, a holiday commemorating Jews’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt.

And in its eagerness to please its Jewish customers, at least one local market has been known to put out Passover displays during Hanukkah and Rosh Hashanah.

There are more serious problems, however, facing the South Bay’s Jewish community.

Jewish parents say they must remind public school teachers not to plan important tests or assignments during Jewish holidays, and it is not unusual to hear Jews say they have been targeted for insensitive remarks.

Hannah Rosinsky of Torrance, an employee of the Torrance Unified School District, who is adviser for North High’s multicultural club, said she was appalled to learn that a classmate of her 11-year-old son had told him that “all you Jews should have died in the Holocaust.”

“The parent is not anti-Semitic, so the child must be learning that in the community,” Rosinsky said.

Upsetting as such incidents are, there are signs that South Bay Jews are spared the level of anti-Semitism found elsewhere in the county.

Of the 125 hate crimes directed against Jews in Los Angeles County during 1990, only eight occurred in the South Bay. Most of them included displays of swastikas or anti-Semitic graffiti. Figures for 1991 are not yet available.

And although anti-Semitic crime is on the rise throughout the county, the South Bay is one of the few areas where the number of hate crimes against Jews appears to have fallen in the last three years, according to statistics compiled by the Anti-Defamation League.

“Obviously, it’s heartening when we find any kind of decline in these incidents and I would think it is because of the good work of law enforcement and educators who are trying to prepare schoolchildren for greater diversity in the South Bay,” said Jerry Shapiro, the agency’s associate director.

Despite enthusiasm for the strides made by the South Bay’s Jewish community, some leaders caution that the region has a long way to go before Jews here can feel completely at home.

“I would not consider this a renaissance just yet,” Temple Menorah Rabbi Steven Silver said. “But if things continue to go the way they are going, I believe you will see a solidification around common interests and goals in the next five years.”