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JCCs don’t often inspire metaphysical questions, but the newly formed Jewish Community Center Sonoma County is an exception.

It almost sounds like a Buddhist koan: Can a Jewish Community Center without a building really be a center?

Daniel Y. Harris is adamant it can.

The executive director of the newly formed JCC Sonoma County hopes it will become the “gateway” to the local Jewish community.

“I would like us to become the place where Jewish — and non-Jewish — people in Sonoma County can find some Jewish content, whether it’s cultural or education or spiritual,” he said.

“Even though we don’t have a building, we really are a coalescent force where people all over the county can reach out and find Jewish-related content.”

Contrary to popular belief, you really don’t need a central location to be a center — but it helps. Of the 350 accredited JCCs in North America, 346 have buildings. Sonoma is one of the four that does not.

And yet the Sonoma JCC, which was inaugurated in late 2005 and was formerly known as the Sonoma County Jewish Community Agency, still boasts the largest mailing list of any Jewish organization in the area, at 4,200 and growing.

“We’re going to be a JCC without walls for the foreseeable future. But our situation is very unique here,” said Harris.

“We have a very intimate working relationship with all the synagogues and Jewish organizations in Sonoma County.”

And that’s a good thing, because the eight programs the JCC runs couldn’t be operated out of the modest suite in a Santa Rosa office park it calls home.

In fact, one could state that the JCC doesn’t have a building but possesses many homes. Or, in plainer English, it organizes its programs at the office and holds them in remote locations, including all seven of Sonoma County’s synagogues as well as Sonoma State University and the Sonoma Hillel.

Despite its unconventional status, the Sonoma JCC runs a full slate of programming. Nearly 600 seniors participate in its Friendship Circle events. The JCC operates Camp Chaim, a long-running day camp for teens and pre-teens, and handles a number of lifelong learning series.

Harris hopes to lavish particular attention on the lifelong learning series, which is hardly a surprise for a former U.C. Berkeley and Lerhaus Judaica instructor with expertise in Jewish philosophy, Jewish literature, Kabbalah and theology.

It’s been an adventure rivaling Augie March’s for Harris, a frequent lecturer on Saul Bellow, to end up at a JCC. He’s still a faculty member at Lerhaus, where he worked full time prior to being hired by the JCC several months ago.

Before that, he was the director of the ArtShip Foundation, an Oakland organization that put on cultural events and exhibitions aboard a retired freighter docked in the city’s harbor. He’s also worked as a communications director for an Internet art hosting site, has had his visual art exhibited in several galleries and has a book of poetry coming out this year.

Born in France (where an aged grandmother who fought with La Resistance lives still), Harris resides in Windsor with his wife, Tracy, a former U.C. Irvine professor of French and his infant son, Marc — “spelled M-A-R-C, the French way.”

And if one thinks it’s odd that an academic would take over the reins of a JCC, he hasn’t heard Harris talk about how he’d like to beef up the center’s lifetime learning programs. Obviously, this old lecturer isn’t ready to be a “mere” administrator yet.

Incorporating with the Jewish Community Center Association and becoming an official JCC cost the Sonoma JCC $2,000. Yet Harris feels joining up has helped to cement relationships with other area Jewish Community Centers and gives Sonoma access to mailers about traveling speakers and bands. Now a klezmer band on tour from New York City can make a pit stop in Santa Rosa or Sebastopol during its West Coast swing, Harris points out. Or, perhaps, a lecturer can do the same.

“We want to be the container for the Jewish world of Sonoma County. Even though we don’t have a building, we’ll function as if we did,” he continued.

“That’s not to say we will [ever have a building], but if the need arises in the future, then we’ll move in that direction. But you need to have all this [programming] in place before you have a physical center.”

Information about the Jewish Community Center Sonoma County is available by calling (707) 528-4222 or visiting www.jccsonomacounty.org.