A Mensch, a Message

The time has come for Haim Asa, who learned of compassion amid this century’s darkest plunge into hopelessness and hate, to bid farewell.

After hundreds of bar mitzvahs, countless Sabbath services and years of helping break down barriers among Orange County’s religious leaders, the county’s senior rabbi is retiring.

Asa, 65, leaves a legacy that transcends even profound differences over the very concept of God.

“He really has built a bond with the Jewish community and many of the Christian pastors and churches such as ours here,” said the Rev. Jon West, pastor of Morningside Presbyterian Church in Fullerton.

Thirty years ago, when the Bulgarian-born rabbi arrived in Orange County, he found fragrant groves but few houses of worship.

“The most exciting part of my career is that I’ve seen the birth of every Jewish and non-Jewish institution in Orange County since,” Asa said. “I remember when Orange County used to be the joke of L.A. County. They used to kid us about what a bunch of hicks were out here and how it lacked culture.”

The once-scant Jewish community is now estimated at 70,000 people affiliated with 23 synagogues, one of which, Fullerton’s Temple Beth Tikvah of North Orange County, Asa has served for three decades in every capacity--from spiritual leader to directing traffic in the parking lot on the Sabbath.

If Christian churches needed insight on Passover, Jewish customs or the Middle East, they turned to Asa, a Reformed rabbi.

And many Gentile leaders have repaid Asa’s caring and devotion.

“When Temple Beth Tikvah was the subject of [anti-Semitic] threats several years ago, our members joined those of the Jewish temple and stayed at the temple overnight, protecting it,” West said.

West and Asa have shared public pulpits on occasions such as the Fullerton community’s Thanksgiving eve prayer services.

Their friendship has led to the 27-unit East Fullerton Villas, a unique program supported by private builders and 20 churches that is under construction at 2200 E. Chapman Avenue. It will provide affordable housing for the poor, said West, who is president of the nonprofit development agency.

“Asa would literally do anything for anyone,” West said. “They call that being a mensch, someone with a good heart who helps others.”

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Much of the rabbi’s compassion sprang from his early years in Bulgaria, where in 1943 he was among 50,000 Jews saved from the Nazis and certain death in the Holocaust by the late king of Bulgaria.

“We were packed and ready to board the trains for resettlement in Poland,” Asa said, adding that the term, “resettlement” meant they were headed for a concentration camp.

Instead, King Boris III, whose signature was needed to authorize the departure, disappeared for three days. The trains never left, making Adolf Hitler livid, according to Asa and accounts by historians.

On Aug. 14, 1943, Hitler summoned Boris to Germany, where the two had a meeting described by eyewitnesses as a tense and angry showdown over the Jewish matter and the king’s refusal to send Bulgarian troops to the Russian front.

A year later, Asa’s family fled Bulgaria for Palestine.

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Asa saw action in the 1948 war that established the state of Israel, and in 1950 was a founder of the Nachal division in the Israeli Defense Force. In 1952, he was the first officer to graduate from Israel’s paratrooper academy.

Asa never forgot King Boris’ action and in later years campaigned to honor the Bulgarian monarch. In 1994, when the late king’s son, King Simeon II, visited Orange County, the rabbi gave an emotional thank you at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

His penchant for recognizing heroism included Irene Opdyke, a Polish Catholic who lives in Yorba Linda. During the war, Opdyke helped 12 Jews hide in a Polish villa where she was a housekeeper.

Because of Asa’s efforts, a memorial museum to the Holocaust in Israel, called Yad Vashem, has included Opdyke as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations of the World.”

Asa believes Opdyke is Orange County’s only “Righteous Gentile,” one of an estimated 5,000 non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Opdyke’s story was the subject of a public television documentary, “Courage to Care.”

“Rabbi Asa is a wonderful friend,” Opdyke, 77, said, adding that she was inspired to speak out a decade ago, when a few critics maintained that the Holocaust never happened.

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Asa has helped establish many Jewish organizations, including Orange County’s Jewish Federation, Bureau of Jewish Education and Jewish Community Center in Costa Mesa.

At the federation, Edward Cushman, executive director, noted that Asa has become one of the few rabbis to help Jewish residents not affiliated with any temple. In Orange County, temple affiliation is a strikingly low 10%, according to Cushman.

The majority of Jews do not belong to any synagogue, a topic that rankles and saddens Asa. His post-retirement plans call for serving senior citizens.

“It is my dream to try and start a Jewish chaplaincy that can provide services to many of these people,” Asa said, “especially our senior citizens who are warehoused and isolated in retirement homes and convalescent hospitals with no one around.”

Typically, Asa said, the parents have been brought to Orange County by their children to be closer to relatives. But what occurs is that their children move to the Midwest or elsewhere because of the economy, Consequently, the parents are left behind.”

“I hope I can establish the chaplaincy and leave a legacy for my younger colleagues because the elderly have no one.”

A retirement dinner was held Saturday at Cal State Fullerton and a special service and reception will be held July 27 at Temple Beth Tikvah, 1600 N. Acacia Ave., Fullerton.