San Jose’s Temple Emanu-El goes back a ways. How far back? The congregation formed a few weeks after Confederate rebels smashed the Union Army at Bull Run.
Temple Emanu-El is set to mark its 150th anniversary, which takes place Aug. 5, beginning with a special Shabbat service. The celebration will last the better part of a year, and will include the creation of a new Torah scroll, guest lecturers — including special reminiscences from past temple presidents — and plenty of partying.
Rabbi Dana Magat and Cantor Meeka Simerly serve as spiritual leaders of the bustling congregation, which boasts more than 400 member families.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to reflect on what we’ve been, and what we want to be in the future,” says Magat, now in his 13th year as rabbi. “This is a warm, connecting congregation that views its role as being active in the community at large.”
David Mimeles, a member of the congregation for 28 years, chairs the anniversary committee. He’s especially excited about that new Torah scroll being created for the congregation. New York–based Torah scribe Neil Yerman has been commissioned to come to Emanu-El several times over the coming year to work on the scroll.
Congregants will also take part in writing the Torah, contributing to a temple fundraiser by buying (and inscribing) letters. The money raised will help fund the synagogue endowment.
“We decided [the Torah project] would be great not only to celebrate the last 150 but to put something out for the next 150,” Mimeles says. “It will kick off our yearlong celebration.”
Almost anywhere else, synagogue president Michael Cahn, 79, would be considered an old-timer, having joined the Reform congregation in 1963 upon opening his San Jose medical practice.
But at that point, Emanu-El was already more than a century old.
“I grew up with the concept that you belong to a synagogue and contribute to the community,” Cahn said. “I picked [San Jose] because I thought it would be a nice, middle-sized town. I didn’t realize it would become America’s 10th-largest city.”
When Emanu-El became the Santa Clara Valley’s first Jewish congregation, there was little else around but dust and fruit trees. The Bickur Cholim Society formed in 1861 to “assist the needy and sick, and for the burial of the dead for furtherance of our Holy Religion and Language,” according to its founding documents.
One of its first tasks: the purchase of land for a Jewish cemetery.
“Halacha teaches that the first job of a Jewish community when it forms in a new area is the establishment of a cemetery,” Cahn says. “This goes back to Abraham purchasing the cave. That’s how [Emanu-El] started.”
In 1870, the congregation dedicated its first building at the corner of Third and San Antonio streets. That structure burned down in 1940, but eight years later the newly renamed Temple Emanu-El opened at its current site on University Avenue.
Joan Fox, 74, is a native of the South Bay and remembers the days when Emanu-El was “the only game in town” for the area’s small Jewish community.
“San Jose was all blossoms and orchards,” Fox says. “When I grew up, we had smudge pots and my husband picked apricots. You went via El Camino Real. There was no freeway.”
Fox and her husband, Marvin, have been members even longer than Cahn. She attended confirmation class in 1951 with Rabbi Joseph Gitin, who served Emanu-El from 1950 until his retirement in 1976.
“He married us, married two of our three children,” Fox says of Gitin, who died last year at the age of 104. ”He was an integral part of the family.”
As the Silicon Valley revolution spurred growth in San Jose, Emanu-El grew with it. During Gitin’s tenure, the synagogue membership rolls swelled from 150 families to more than 1,000.
To accommodate the growth, capital campaigns raised funds for new construction, including the religious school and preschool buildings. Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Emanu-El stressed digital innovation.
“We webcast last year’s High Holy Day services,” says Mimeles, a software entrepreneur who sits on the synagogue’s tech committee. “It was a huge success. People from all over the world watched.”
Mimeles says Emanu-El has changed from the “sleepy congregation” he remembers from his early years there. He credits the rabbi and cantor for much of that.
“Now we’re more well known because of [Magat] and the good word of mouth about him,” he says. “He’s got a more modern interpretation of Judaism. He’s a good advocate for coexistence, reaching out to others in the community.”
Earlier this year, the Union of Reform Judaism gave Emanu-El the Irving J. Fain Award for Outstanding Synagogue Social Action Programming for its electronic waste recycling program, which was adopted by the City of San Jose.
It reflects what congregants feel is a vibrant, active and forward-looking Jewish community.
“I look at it as a real major milestone,” Cahn says of Emanu-El’s 150th anniversary. “We only look old.”
For information about Temple Emanu-El’s 150th anniversary celebration, go to www.templesanjose.org.