A Synagogue on the Move : Congregation Carries Torahs to New Building

This city’s historic downtown has seen a lot, but little like the procession that trooped down Main Street on Sunday morning: 300 members of Congregation B’nai Israel, carrying six sacred Torah scrolls from the synagogue’s old home to its new building in Tustin Ranch.

Most walked--a few with the aid of canes--but others rode along in strollers, on roller blades and even in a wheelchair. Many wore baseball caps decorated with cartoons of walking Torahs on the side and “I Walked the Torahs Home” on their upturned bills.

Stopping frequently along the two-mile route, the marchers shared the honor of carrying the Torahs--the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch.

They also made a joyful noise. The celebration began with the sounding of four shofars, the ram’s horns used in services for the Jewish High Holidays, which begin Wednesday at sundown. Later, accompanied by three guitars, a flute, tambourines, a toy drum and colorful plastic kazoos, the congregation sang Hebrew songs.

Rooted in Eastern Europe, the march is part of a folk tradition in which a new Torah is accompanied from the home of the scribe--who copied it by hand and without error or vowels in Hebrew onto sections of parchment--to the village synagogue.

“The Torah was treated like a bride, accompanied from its old home to its new home,” said Rabbi Elie Spitz, 39.

In evidence during the march were several issues facing the American Jewish community, not the least of which was news of the Mideast peace settlement. The settlement lends currency to the Biblical admonition to “beat swords into plowshares,” Spitz observed, and it is “a surprise that only adds to the sense of joy” among the marchers.

Spitz then reacted to news of violence that morning in Gaza, saying that “changes of this dramatic kind provoke convulsions in the body politic.”

The American Jewish community also faces threats, he said. Then, noting that “we don’t live in an ideal world,” he gestured at two Tustin police cars that accompanied the marchers. “There are risk factors.”

But for the most part, the emphasis was on community celebration.

Many joyous events celebrated at the synagogue, like weddings and bar mitzvahs, honor one family at a time, observed Barbara W. Heyman of Irvine. “But this is for every single family in our congregation,” said Heyman, 41, a synagogue board member. “It’s just fabulous.”

“This has been a dream for us for many years,” added Elliot Bloom, 37, of Irvine.

The Conservative congregation, with many professionals and entrepreneurs from Irvine and Tustin in their 30s and 40s, got a boost last year when it merged with Temple Sharon of Costa Mesa, a 25-year-old synagogue with a somewhat older membership, Spitz said.

Moving to the new facility, a $2.5-million complex on 4.2 acres purchased from the Irvine Co., developers of Tustin Ranch, is “a real emotional thing,” said the congregation’s president, Ron Morrison, 42, of Tustin. The 350-family combined congregation is moving from the old quarters--a rented, converted warehouse across town.

Morrison explained that the new building, a social hall to be used temporarily as a sanctuary, is the first of three phases of construction. The second phase is a more formal, 600-seat sanctuary, to be followed by a classroom building for the religious school, which has a current enrollment of nearly 200 students. The new synagogue also plans to provide a licensed child-care center, a state-recognized preschool and a kosher catering service for the Orange County area.

Sue Ann Cross, 42, of Anaheim Hills, a founding member and one of the Torah carriers, said that moving into the new synagogue is “an incredible development from an idea 13 years ago. . . . Tears of happiness have been shed by everyone today.”

Linda Shaw, 43, of Villa Park, president of a Jewish day school in Costa Mesa, said her twins will celebrate their bar and bat mitzvahs next month in the new building.

She said the expansion “helps with the growth of the Jewish community in Orange County. . . . It’s like an extended family. We need a place to grow.”

Although the march was largely about the future, there was a clear link with the somber past. Ed Briner, 40, of Irvine carried a Torah recovered from a Czechoslovakian synagogue after World War II.

The son of Holocaust survivors, Briner said he had a special feeling carrying the scroll. “I’ve grown up with this feeling.”

Also in the procession was member Harold H. Lowenstein of Anaheim, who will be 84 next week. Lowenstein escaped from Germany in 1939 after being jailed by the Nazis. While imprisoned, he admits, “I thought Judaism was finished.”

At the conclusion of the march, the procession passed under an arch of braided blue and white balloons and into the new parking lot. Rabbi Spitz affixed a mezuza to the lintel of the front door, as prescribed by Jewish law, and led members into the structure, of beige stucco and red tile.

“B’nai Israel isn’t a dream--it’s a reality,” Jay Witzling, chairman of the congregation’s building committee, told those gathered inside the new sanctuary.