Old-Timers’ Synagogue Is Set in Its Ways

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 usually reserved for 13-year-olds.

But for Goldman, having a second bar mitzvah well into his years 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 the temple 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 Martin Alpert, the temple’s 77-year-old president.

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 will be Thursday and is expected to draw 400 people.

“Why do you think we need a rabbi? 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.

The founders also decided a nondenominational place of worship was appropriate with no religious overseer, a fact that irritates some Jewish clergy.

“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 who are 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.

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 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.”

As the only one of Orange County’s 23 synagogues without a rabbi, Temple Judea is something of a phenomenon.

“A Jewish temple without a permanent rabbi? There are none that I know of that don’t have a rabbi,” said Jay Schuster, a spokesman for the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles.

Jewish law does not require a rabbi and, in fact, rabbis are not needed to conduct weddings or funerals. However, traditional Jewish law does require a minyan of at least 10 adult males to conduct a prayer service. In Laguna Hills, for example, laypeople conduct prayer services, funerals and also bar mitzvahs.

Many rabbis head synagogues with growing families that must provide a variety of services, such as religious education and training 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, who is from Brooklyn. “They can’t understand our geriatric problems.”

The temple began with the gift of two acres near El Toro Road and Moulton Parkway 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, and had one of its founders serve as lay rabbi.

“Ross Cortese had a belief that no retirement community would be complete if it didn’t have a religious component,” said Tanya McElhaney, a Leisure World spokeswoman. “He offered all religions a chance to have land and they had to get their own financing to build facilities.”

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 in the California sun.

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-tile 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, the once small facility has been enlarged into a 13,500-square-foot building housing a sanctuary, chapel, dining hall, kitchen, library, gift shop and several meeting rooms. And a further expansion is planned.

Synagogues in the United States typically charge a yearly fee for membership. At Wilshire Boulevard Temple, one of the largest in Los Angeles County, fees are $1,000, which is standard 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.”

Alpert said that while some members do come from outside the area, the bulk of the congregation is from Leisure World. “We don’t have any limits on age here and it’s a group of people primarily in their 70s, 80s and 90s,” he said.

Which is the point when it comes to hiring a rabbi.

Everything from temple business to prayers is decided by committee. It makes for meetings that can be a long ordeal, members say, but some Jews from other temples envy the arrangement, saying it allows greater participation and sense of camaraderie than if one person was overseer.

There are no long-winded sermons here. Goldman, who co-chairs the religious committee, said at the members’ age it’s tough to sit through a long talk.

Temple politics have slowly progressed 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.

One woman, asked why there had been only two, replied, “Hey, it’s a beginning.”

Temple Judea’s most prominent display, at least the one that catches the visitor’s eye, is its memorial wall. For here, occupying six panels of floor-to-ceiling space, is the temple’s most cherished roster.

Proud names such as Margulies, Zeifert and Brachman can be found on individual metal plaques. Next to each of the names is a tiny light bulb that temple workers keep lit for one week yearly to mark yahrzeit, the anniversary of their 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 ball game and frankly, we want our ending to be handled uniquely.”

Goldman’s second bar mitzvah was witnessed by his entire family, including 3-year-old great-grandson, Kevin.

“We have a saying in Hebrew, L’dor, V’dor--translated it means ‘from generation to generation,’ which for me was a transfer from my grandparents down to me and now down to my children and great-grandchildren. That’s what has kept the faith alive,” he said.