Temple of the Elders

The ceremony had all the pomp of a regular bar mitzvah. But the guy under the yarmulke was 83-year-old Sidney Goldman, a great-grandfather who hardly needed the ritual passage into manhood that’s normally reserved for 13-year-olds.

For Goldman, having a second bar mitzvah was a statement, a celebration of life, and at his synagogue near the large retirement community of Leisure World, it’s done often.

“Usually, your parents are present for your bar mitzvah, but, my God, my grandchildren have turned 35 and 37,” Goldman said. “You might say many of us here are living on borrowed time.”

Welcome to Temple Judea, where the average age of the 1,600 members is 76, making it one of the largest and oldest Jewish congregations in Southern California.

“When we talk about young people, we’re talking about people under 60,” said the temple’s president, 77-year-old Martin Alpert.

One other unusual thing about this temple--don’t ask to see the rabbi. Not at bar mitzvahs, high holidays or the synagogue’s annual Passover Seder dinner, which is expected to draw 400 people Thursday.

“Look around. We’re a bunch of elderly people here,” said Louis Eisen, 89. “What kind of advice do you think I need from a rabbi?”

The 41 founders of the temple, which was created in 1965, voted not to affiliate with any one branch of Judaism and not to employ a rabbi but to have members lead the prayer services and deliver sermons.

“Probably in the whole United States, there’s not a temple like this,” said Alpert, who retired after a long career in the furniture business.

Alpert is typical of temple members from other places-- ranging from New York, Chicago and Pennsylvania to countries throughout Europe--who have belonged to orthodox, conservative and reform congregations. “I have to tell you I like this one the best,” he said.

But don’t tell that to Rabbi Haim Asa of Fullerton.

“Temple Judea has caused a great danger to the Jewish community, because they’ve declared in their constitution that they will not have a rabbi,” said Asa, a prominent member of Orange County’s Jewish clergy, who on occasion counsels Temple Judea’s elderly members on everything from handling business matters to losing a loved one.

“The point is not the money,” he said, “but the principle.”

Added Michael Mayersohn, president of the Orange County Board of Rabbis: “It’s hypocritical, because inevitably, they do end up turning to a rabbi for some function or another.”

Temple Judea is the only one of Orange County’s 23 synagogues without a rabbi. And Jay Schuster, a spokesman for the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, said he knows of no others in the area.

Jewish law does not require a rabbi. In fact, rabbis are not needed to conduct weddings or funerals, according to Jewish clergy.

Many rabbis head synagogues that must provide a variety of services for growing families, such as religious education and training both at schools and preschools, prayer services, counseling and life-cycle celebrations such as births and weddings.

Temple Judea members say they don’t need much of that.

“We lose 60 members to death a year, what do we want with a Jewish rabbi who’s, say, 50 years old?” said Michael Applebaum, 82, from Brooklyn. “They can’t understand our geriatric problems.”

The temple began with the gift of two acres by Ross Cortese, who developed Leisure World in Seal Beach and Laguna Hills, as well as other retirement communities in California. The minimum age for residency is 55.

With prayer books borrowed from a North Hollywood temple, Temple Judea began on June 11, 1965.

Now the ranks have grown, and among the 18,000 Leisure World residents are former teachers, doctors, attorneys and business people who found their way out West and retired to this 2,095-acre place.

So large is the Temple Judea congregation that during high holidays--during which, as usual, no rabbi is present--a fourth cantor is brought in to help. The main cantor has sung at the temple for 27 years.

“We are growing, but this is a congregation with no children,” Alpert said.

Architecturally, the temple lacks the marble and other trimmings that highlight some of the wealthier synagogues in Los Angeles. Here, the structure is simple, done in Early Orange County Suburbia, which means plain stucco walls topped with a red-tiled roof that resembles the area’s strip malls.

Such a simple structure that welcomes rather than intimidates the visitor also blends in with the temple’s philosophy: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.”

With members’ donations and dues of only $100 a year, members have enlarged the once small facility into a 13,500-square-foot building housing a sanctuary, chapel, dining hall, kitchen, library, gift shop and several meeting rooms. And further expansion is planned.

Jewish temples charge a yearly fee for membership. At Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of the largest in Los Angeles County, fees are $1,000, which is typical at bigger Los Angeles-area temples, said Steve Breuer, Wilshire’s executive director.

“It’s hard to compare them to other congregations, because they [at Leisure World] are typical of a retirement town,” Breuer said. “It’s a substantially different community than ours, because they’re not worried about preschoolers, Hebrew school and training.”

Most everything at the Leisure World temple is decided by committee. There are no long-winded sermons at services. Goldman, who co-chairs the religious committee, said it’s tough to sit through a long talk at the members’ age.

Temple politics slowly have changed to allow women, who in this generation outnumber men 3 to 1, to hold the office of temple president, said Shirley Brodsky, Sisterhood president. Of the temple’s 19 presidents, two have been women.

Temple Judea’s most prominent display, at least the one that catches the visitor’s eye, is its memorial wall, occupying six panels of floor-to-ceiling space. Next to each of the names on metal plaques is a tiny light bulb--referred to as a yahrzeit--that temple workers keep lit for one week yearly to mark the anniversary of a member’s passing.

“Let me tell you, no temple in the world has this many people dying every year,” Applebaum said. “To put it bluntly, it’s our generation that is at the end of the ballgame, and frankly, we want our ending to be handled uniquely.”