When completed, the synagogue will be called Or Hadash, meaning new light. It is a fitting name.
For when this cinderblock house in a rural Santa Clara neighborhood is gutted and transformed into a dignified house of worship, it will represent a splash of brightness in an otherwise pallid landscape of squat homes in varying states of disrepair.
At last, area Jews will have a worthy house of prayer.
Or Hadash will serve a few dozen Sephardic Jews from the countryside in central Cuba. The building — basically a small home on a quiet street where horse and buggy is still a popular mode of transportation — was purchased in 2007 with $10,000 quickly raised by visitors from Washington, D.C., at the urging of their rabbi.
David Tacher heads Santa Clara’s Jewish community, which experienced a rebirth in 1996 “with the help of the Joint,” he noted, alluding to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Before that, “There was a time when people didn’t believe,” Tacher said. “They couldn’t be religious.”
Many years ago, Santa Clara housed a sizable Jewish community and synagogue. But the community shrank so much that the shul closed and the Jewish cemetery was practically abandoned. Tombstones were stolen and the grounds lacked maintenance.
But things changed about 15 years ago. “There was an opening,” Tacher said, “and religious communities were reborn.”
“My generation had 30 years of silence — a lost generation,” said the silver-haired 60-year-old, who is working hard to see that history does not repeat itself.
Besides leading the drive for a synagogue, Tacher has overseen the cleanup of the aging cemetery nearby and the installation of a Holocaust memorial. “We thought this was a beautiful thing to do — to remember and never forget,” Tacher said as he stood in the cemetery.
The stone monument is engraved in Hebrew and Spanish with words that translated mean “to remember our brothers and sisters who were killed in the Holocaust.”
Set in the earth in front of it are 10 cobblestones from the Warsaw Ghetto. Provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the stones were carried individually in backpacks by a group of visiting Americans.
Tacher also planted a tree in sand from the Negev, in tribute to the non-Jews who helped save Jews from the Nazis. “This tree symbolizes the desire to not have another Holocaust,” Tacher said, “and we want to tell all the non-Jews to not be silent again.”
Tacher is trying his best to reach out to the local community to demystify Jews and Judaism.
Some neighbors still call the graveyard the “Syrian cemetery,” he said, thinking that it was Syrians (not Jews) who resided in the area.
“I explain every time that it is a Jewish cemetery. The first funeral [held] with the revival of the community was open to neighbors so they could understand what is a Jewish community — and they started to understand.”
In the past year, Tacher added, “We have been trying to be more open, so everybody can understand what is the Jewish community in Santa Clara.”