Shopping centers and a BART station long ago uprooted the streetcars of downtown and replaced the Jewish merchants. But the city now boasts a Reform congregation attracting more than a minyan.
Formed in 1946, Richmond’s Temple Beth Hillel marks its 50th anniversary next month. In celebration, the congregation will host a Saturday, Nov. 2 dinner at the temple, with a slide-show presentation and the opening of a time capsule from 1964.
The capsule was buried when the current synagogue building was dedicated, symbolizing the congregation’s bumpy road of growth from humble beginnings.
The Jews of the blue-collar town dominated by Kaiser shipyards had always gathered informally. However, in 1945 they decided to forge a more formal presence and purchased a plot of land on Macdonald Avenue for the Richmond Jewish Community Center (later changed to Temple Beth Hillel in 1959).
In the fall of 1946 its members conducted their first Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Don Mason remembers it well. Nineteen years old at the time, he had just asked Jean, 17, to be his bride.
The young couple couldn’t begin to imagine the role the temple would play in their lives.
“We had dances, fashion shows, break-the-fast, seders and New Year’s Eve parties there. [The synagogue] was the center of our social life,” said Mason, a three-time synagogue president.
“It’s not so much that way anymore,” Mason added.
Today, newer members with young children lead the congregation. One of the twice-monthly Shabbat services includes a potluck dinner and presentation from the religious school students. In addition, most of the congregation’s teachers are returning for the third year in a row.
“We’ve invested in the kids and in the religious school — the materials, the teachers, the curriculum,” said David Brown, synagogue president. “There’s a continuity to the curriculum. You pay for it. But the results have been entirely satisfactory.”
Meanwhile, the “old-timers” still meet monthly for lunch and a Jewish discussion. The most recent addition to the “lunch bunch” is the congregation’s part-time Rabbi, Shelly Waldenberg.
Waldenberg, retired rabbi of Lafayette’s Temple Isaiah, follows Beth Hillel’s long list of mostly short-term spiritual leaders, which began in 1950 with David Robbins. (A law student turned JCC director-religious leader, Robbins left the congregation in 1952 to attend rabbinic school.)
Fourteen rabbis followed in Robbins’ footsteps, including Rabbi Judy Shanks, now associate rabbi at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette.
“Young rabbis come to us for a short time and use us as a stepping stone mostly. We can only afford to pay so much,” Mason explained. “It’s understandable.”
Regardless of each rabbi’s length of service, congregants maintained continuity through their own involvement. They instituted a religious school and raised funds by performing plays such as “My Fair Faygee.” In 1960 the congregation secured new land for its present location on Park Central Drive.
Groundbreaking for the new building and adjoining school wing followed three years later. Scholar recalls how one congregant who worked for the park department donated tiny trees in one-gallon cans for Beth Hillel’s Sunday-school students to plant on the new site.
Those trees “must be 50 feet high now,” she said. “They form this tremendous windscreen. I never pass them without thinking of those tiny beginnings. They tower over the building now.”
At its peak, Temple Beth Hillel had 120 member families. Today it numbers 100 families. Nine new members have joined since July. The mortgage is paid off and the synagogue has a lay cantor and part-time rabbi.
“There have been tough times. Money is always an issue. But there’s this sense of hope and growth here,” Brown said.
“I’m beginning to believe every synagogue has a struggle. It’s just all relative to numbers.”
For this relatively small synagogue, “our size is both a burden and a joy,” Brown added. “We have an intimate congregation. There is no sense of getting lost in the crowd.”
Brown acknowledges, “Financially, it’s a challenge. But we’re holding our own. The bills are all paid.”
Immediate past president Jan Taksa added, “I worry about the future sometimes. But there’s a life in this place. This is always going to be a small community. But smallness has its own regenerative power.”