Temple Emanuel Congregation Rejects Merger : Religion: Despite support by acting rabbi and board, members voted against joining Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Decision leaves a $2-million debt and squelches hopes of easy solution to finding a new rabbi.

The board was for it. The rabbi was for it. It seemed to make good economic sense.

But then the congregation spoke.

In a narrow vote Sunday, the members of land-rich, cash-poor Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills rejected an offer to marry their synagogue to Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest and possibly the richest Jewish congregation in Los Angeles.

By a narrow margin Sunday, the vote put an end to the dreams of Emanuel’s leaders that Wilshire Boulevard’s resources would help them out of a $2-million debt. It also squelched their hopes of finding an easy solution to the problem of replacing a rabbi who left under a cloud of controversy earlier this year.

Frustrated, too, were the elders of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, who had hoped to gain a new home on the Westside and add a high school and an adult education center to Emanuel’s prestigious day school.

But Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, who would have headed the joint congregation, said Tuesday that Wilshire Boulevard Temple will keep looking for a Westside location. The temple is located between Western and Vermont avenues in Koreatown.

“Our temple is a landmark building, probably one of the most beautiful in the Jewish world, and we have no desire whatsoever to abandon that magnificent property or our role as a congregation in Los Angeles,” said Fields, who serves as chairman of the Interfaith Coalition to Heal Los Angeles.

“But we want to serve in a more convenient way our young families and the number of adults who live west of La Cienega, who really would like to have much more of our activities and facilities,” he said.

Although the Westside location might include a chapel for services, weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs, the temple would continue to use its Wilshire Boulevard location, he said.

Sunday’s vote came after months of debate in which Temple Emanuel’s board of directors were squarely in favor of the merger, backed by the temple’s longtime spiritual leader, Meyer Heller.

“My sense is that this was a good idea for the Jewish community, but perhaps our temple wasn’t ready for it,” said Heller, 72, who came out of semi-retirement in April to take the place of Stephen M. Robbins. Robbins, who was Heller’s assistant for 14 years, clashed with some synagogue leaders over various issues, including fund raising and spending. He opposed the merger.

Emanuel’s chronic debt restricted its ability to do “anything beyond surviving,” Heller said. “A homeless man on the street is surviving too. Our survival would be just that and nothing else. . . . But obviously we have to gird our loins.”

With Heller determined to go back to emeritus status next summer, Emanuel’s leadership is still faced with the simultaneous challenges of a projected $350,000 budget deficit, a $2-million debt, a void in the pulpit and a recruiting effort to fill the seats of those who followed Robbins to his newly formed congregation, N’vei Shalom (Oasis of Peace).

“Now the work is really starting for us, and it’ll be great trying to rebuild this temple,” said Andrea Grossman, a vice president of the temple who helped lead the self-styled “Contra” effort against the merger.

She was on the short end of a 22-5 vote by Emanuel’s board of directors, but a lively effort by opposition forces resulted in the membership’s 269-243 rejection of the proposal.

“We don’t have to wipe (out) our debt immediately but there are operating expenses,” she said. “I don’t know how much we have to raise but we certainly have to raise some pretty fast.”

Emanuel has about 900 member families, compared to about 2,500 at Wilshire Boulevard. N’vei Shalom has grown to 170 families in its five months of existence, Robbins said.

Although Emanuel has some immensely wealthy people among its members, the temple has never been able to rely on them for the level of financial support that has made Wilshire Boulevard Temple a major force in Los Angeles Jewish history.

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Founded in 1862, Wilshire Boulevard was the pulpit of longtime Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin, perhaps the best-known Jewish leader in Los Angeles history and the beneficiary of generations of support from leading families in the movie business and other industries.

Although it began as an Orthodox synagogue in the pioneer days of Los Angeles, Wilshire Boulevard joined the more liberal Reform movement in the late-1880s and changed its name when it moved to its current mid-town location in 1929.

At that time, an early forerunner of Temple Emanuel was located less than a mile away, said Stephen J. Sass, president of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California.

That congregation closed its doors at the onset of the Depression but it was revived in 1938. Emanuel’s red-brick synagogue and school are located on Burton Way in Beverly Hills.

Emanuel has long had a more traditional outlook, reflected in its reliance on cantors to conduct Sabbath prayers, and some of its members were concerned about losing their identity after a merger.

They were also afraid of being lost among thousands of congregants.

“Temple Emanuel has a very proud past and opportunities for the future, great schools, a great location, a great rabbi emeritus, and I wanted for Temple Emanuel to maintain its identity,” said Bruce Corwin, a member of both congregations.

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Corwin, who has been named to head a search committee for a new senior rabbi, said there has been no fund raising for Emanuel for at least a year, “so we have to catch up.

“People have been re-energized,” he said. “There’s been a new resolve to make it work and keep the traditions of the last 50 years going. People liked where they have been for the last half-century and they want to keep it for themselves and their children.”