Jews Orange County

At a Jewish ritual bath in Long Beach, Michele Boldt of Irvine took off her clothes and removed her nail polish, jewelry and makeup. She walked down the seven pale steps and immersed herself--not only in the warm waters of the mikvah, but in centuries of Jewish tradition and her connection to God. Boldt, an Orthodox Jew, has spent years schlepping to Los Angeles County for her monthly ritual bath.

The world has offered many reminders in recent months of the dangers facing Jews in America. But some Orange County rabbis preparing sermons for services tonight marking Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, are deliberately steering away from drawing lessons or warnings. This is to reflect, they say, on Jewish tradition and becoming a better person. "The goal in Judaism is to make this into a better world," said Rabbi Neal Weinberg of Temple Judea in Laguna Hills.

Jeff Schreiber, a Costa Mesa mail carrier for 19 years, had a dilemma. Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, landed on a Saturday earlier this month and, try as he might, he could not get out of work on the highest of Jewish holidays. The post office relented, and Schreiber had to work just three hours on Rosh Hashana instead of the entire day. Though his struggle became public, dozens of other such situations arise that are typically handled in more private arenas.

As if wandering in search of the Promised Land, they spent a decade worshiping in place after place--in a school room, an office, a home and, for the past four years, a garage. But this month, a small group of Orthodox Hasidic Jews finally opened this city's first chabad, a religious center they say is drawing worshipers from throughout South County.

The stripes, he knew, were just about the same width, almost the precise blue-gray. So, Tony Chari, 61, a retired Laguna Beach periodontist, paired the designer pants with a pajama top and arrived in an outfit all too familiar to many participants of Sunday's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day at Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach. "I was there," explained Chari, freed from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. "That's who I am."

Lou Weiss was just a child when he got the notion to move to California. A Brooklyn native who grew up in the shadow of Ebbets Field, he longed to follow the Brooklyn Dodgers when they left for Los Angeles in 1958. Weiss finally did so 20 years later, settling in Laguna Beach, where he quickly adapted to the laid-back lifestyle of coastal Orange County. But something was missing. "I am the only person living in my immediate neighborhood who is Jewish," the 47-year-old consultant said.

It was probably one of the more unlikely celebrations of Hanukkah--the Jewish Festival of Lights--in Southern California: a sold-out dance that featured a popular Latino orchestra playing tangos, mambos, rumbas and salsa music. But the celebration of the Jewish festival was entirely appropriate for the 200 Jews of Latino background who have found camaraderie in the Club Hebreo Latino at the Jewish Community Center here.

Hundreds of visitors to one of Orange County's largest and oldest synagogues were in a festive mood Sunday, and why not? The holiday calling on Jews to atone for their sins, Yom Kippur, had just passed. And members of Temple Beth Sholom in Santa Ana were celebrating a more lighthearted holiday, Sukkot, which marks the harvest and means "festival of the huts" in Hebrew.

It was a Passover Seder with a difference. There was the usual array of matzo, hard-boiled eggs and horseradish. Several times during the service, the celebrants, mostly children and their parents, rose and sat in accordance with custom. And, as always, they sang song after song about freedom. Yet there was something unusual about this recent gathering at a clubhouse in early observance of the 3,000-year-old holiday commemorating events surrounding the Jewish exodus from Egypt.

You can tell Mendel Duchman's story in 25 words or less: Brooklyn boy decides to become a rabbi and do great things. He makes a big splash in Irvine, but later things don't go so good. There's a little more to it than that, of course. The last of the lawsuits has been settled. And the congregation at Chabad of Irvine Jewish Center, once in danger of dissolving, is rebuilding and looking for ways to pay off its estimated half-million-plus dollars of debt.