Jewish Group to Break Ground Today on New Home : Synagogue: After years of renting space, Congregation Beth Shalom will begin work on what will be Santa Clarita Valley’s first temple.

After 25 years wandering through a desert of rented meeting space, including unlikely stops in churches and nursing homes, a group of Conservative Jews here has finally found a home.

Congregation Beth Shalom will break ground this morning at the site of what will be the Santa Clarita Valley’s first Jewish temple.

“This is the most exciting thing that could happen to the Jewish community up here,” said Elyse Feldberg, the administrator and a longtime congregant of the 400-member synagogue. “It gives us a sense of permanence.”

The Conservative congregation, which has been raising funds for several years to build the 6,400-square-foot sanctuary, also recently got a new rabbi known for his work on behalf of patients with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Rabbi Rafael Goldstein wrote the book, “Being a Blessing: 54 Ways You Can Help People Living With AIDS,” and is director of AIDS services for Jewish Family Services of Los Angeles.

“It’s a challenge,” Goldstein said of his first assignment leading a congregation, “because there is such growth potential and they are finally able . . . to have a building to grow in terms of numbers and support.”

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As he prepared his remarks Wednesday for the groundbreaking ceremony, Goldstein, recently ordained in New York, said he was excited for the congregation. “It’s the same as when a couple buys a house,” he said. “In this case, the synagogue will help affirm the congregation as a community of faith.”

At Sabbath services Friday at sundown, the congregants chatted with the rabbi and the cantor about the groundbreaking at their current rented temple.

“I am excited,” said Ann Graham, 63, a 22-year member of Congregation Beth Shalom. In her delicate Czechoslovakian accent, Graham said, “We all need to have some . . . how do you say it? . . . some religious outlet.”

Having been a member of Beth Shalom since he was born, Ed Keimach, 10, said he thought it was “neat” that the synagogue was about to get a new, permanent site, adding proudly that he has been given the responsibility of blowing up the blue and white balloons for the groundbreaking.

Three other boys, all in the same Hebrew class, said they would be celebrating their bar mitzvahs just before the new temple is scheduled to open in September, and were thrilled to be making the transition from boy to man as they prepare to move from the rented temple to the permanent site.

The congregants of Beth Shalom embarked on their quest for a permanent temple in 1991 when they hired a fund-raising consultant, said Stan Winegrad, past president of the synagogue.

“For this, we had to raise about $200,000 and that’s with 147 families,” Winegrad said in a phone interview. “And we did it.”

And it was no easy task, he said.

“We had no angel,” Winegrad said. “No one to drop $100,000 or $50,000.”

The congregation painstakingly raised the $200,000 down payment over four years through donations and careful investing, Feldberg said. “We had wonderful luck in a bank that gave us favorable rates,” she said.

The new temple will be erected at 21430 Redview Drive. “It’s a real good location,” Winegrad said. “Directly in the center of the valley.”

The actual building will be made of prefabricated units and built on a 2 1/2-acre lot of unimproved land, congregation officials said.

“But you’ll never know it’s modular,” Winegrad assured. The structure will house both a sanctuary and classrooms for Hebrew school, he added.

Congregation Beth Shalom is one of only two Jewish congregations in Santa Clarita.

The other, Temple Beth Ami, which is a Reformed congregation, has also had to rely on rented space--an office in the industrial center--for meetings. Officials say Temple Beth Ami is much newer than Congregation Beth Shalom and does not have the money to purchase its own space.

But there is clearly a growing population of Jews in Santa Clarita, said Feldberg, who has lived in the valley 29 years. Although no one is certain just how many Jews live in the area [one informal estimate is 3,000], Feldberg is certain the numbers are growing.

“I have a gauge,” she said. “I used to have to go back to Encino to buy Passover supplies but now you have every market overflowing and they are depleted halfway through the holiday.”