A Synagogue to Call Their Own

For years he walked 14 miles each week to pray.

So Sunday’s two-block processional by members of a Westside Jewish congregation carrying the Torah to its new home was a piece of cake for Clark Gross. Make that a piece of potato pancake.

Nearly 200 people sang and danced their way down Eastborne and Thayer avenues before piling into the new Westwood Kehilla synagogue to celebrate with song and the traditional pancakes.

It was a joyous moment for those who have taken to calling themselves the “wandering Jews.” After 15 years of using borrowed and rented space and members’ own houses, the congregation opened a remodeled Santa Monica Boulevard storefront as its permanent headquarters.

Synagogue members’ Orthodox faith requires them to shun modern conveniences and walk to Saturday worship services. They scheduled the dedication ceremony for Sunday, not only because it was near the start of Hanukkah--a Hebrew time of dedication--but because it was a day everyone could dance in the street to amplified music.

“It hasn’t been easy,” said Rabbi Asher Brander as the congregation’s 75 families gathered at the corner of Fairburn and Eastborne avenues to start their march. “There’s no sense of permanence if you have to pack up after every service.”

Greg Smith, a Westwood lawyer who helped organize the congregation in 1984 over his kitchen table, recounted how the synagogue’s treasured Torah scrolls were kept on wheels so they could be rolled in and out of a Gayley Avenue closet.

Later, the synagogue rented space in a three-story office building and struggled to fit its daily 18-hour schedule in with those of a neighboring computer company and an express-delivery firm.

“We have a 5 a.m. Talmud class, where we study a page a day every day for seven years, and classes that run until 10 at night. We bothered them and they bothered us,” Smith said.

As president of the congregation last year, Smith discovered a vacant shop at 10523 Santa Monica Blvd. sandwiched between a tile store and a picture framing shop. The congregation negotiated to buy the shop and take over the adjoining spaces when the other stores moved.

Loans and donations by congregation members covered the $750,000 cost of the purchase and remodeling--which converted the three shops into a meeting room that seats about 150, offices and classroom areas.

Leaders said it has taken this long to find a permanent home because the membership has grown slowly and financing was tight. Current congregation president Mark Katchen said leaders are planning ways to increase the size of the synagogue as membership grows. “God willing, that time will come,” said Katchen, an environmental consultant who lives in Westwood.

Neighborhood residents poured onto their front porches and peered from apartment windows as synagogue members triumphantly began their march. Leading the way were musicians Uzi Biton and David Sudaley, loudly playing Hebrew wedding tunes on a drum and a synthesized keyboard powered by a portable generator on the back of a pickup.

Behind them were synagogue leaders ceremoniously carrying the two large scrolls beneath a canopy supported by other marchers. A few steps behind, men danced to the music.

As the crowd neared the new synagogue, it passed a longer-established Jewish temple, the Kahal Joseph Congregation. Although the Westwood Kehilla Synagogue is tied to Eastern European Judaism, Kahal Joseph’s roots are more Middle Eastern.

“If we were rich we’d just buy that synagogue and let them use space in it,” Westwood Kehilla member Bunnie Meyer of Santa Monica joked about Kahal Joseph.

At their new front door, congregation members followed the Torah inside, passing under the same canopy that had been carried in. The covering is used in wedding ceremonies, said member Phyllis Folb, a West Los Angeles publicist. “Carrying the Torah in is like the bride being carried over the threshold,” she said.

Inside, Gross paused to take in the new surroundings. Two weeks ago, the patent attorney said, he closed escrow on a nearby home and moved from Culver City.

From now on his Saturday Sabbath walk will be a short one.