By Donald H. Harrison
LA JOLLA, California – “From generation to generation” is a popular saying among Jews to indicate how Torah learning has been passed down from parent to child through the millennia.
At Congregation Adat Yeshurun on Sunday night, the saying was happily augmented with another: “Generation and generation and generation.” Although the congregation is just 32 years old, already it counts among its membership three generations of worshipers – with some members of the two younger generations having grown up in the Orthodox synagogue.
Sunday was the opportunity for members of the sandwich generation –- those with parents still living and having their own children – showing just how they like to maximize the fun at a FUNdraiser.
“What’s that you say, a gala ‘Sukkos’ celebration?”
“No, no, a gala “circus” celebration!”
Prior to the formal dinner, the congregation’s large patio under a tall Torrey Pine was circled with food booths and carnival games, supervised by the children of the congregation. Attendees had the opportunity to bowl down some pins, toss rings around the neck of bottles, and attempt to knock down metal bottles with beanbags for a variety of prizes including sunglasses, portable speakers and headphones. Meanwhile, performers from Circo Etereo circulated through the crowd. Lucca Cecchini, walking on stilts and, later in the evening, juggling, greeted the guests with a big hello, while John Mackey, being a mime, delivered his greetings with a wide smile.
Schmoozing guests munched on lamb sliders and boerewors, a South African sausage served on a bun — all kosher, of course, and catered by Felicia G. There were plentiful choices of beverages. When the guests were called into the social hall for dinner, they found it festooned with red balloons and other colorful decorations. Circo Etereo’s performers were augmented by a contortionist (Taylor Richardson) and an acrobat (Sasha Fedortchev), the latter of whom climbed up two suspended ribbons and then suspended himself in various positions high above the dinner crowd. Guests in advance had selected beef, vegetarian, or fish entrees.
The co-chairs for the evening were three couples: Moises and Jennifer Eilemberg, Jacob Kamaras and Megan Marcus, and Jonathan and Zoe Moed. Having just last week served as a co-chair of the fundraiser for Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School, Eilemberg was content to have Jacob Kamaras and Zoe Moed underscore the theme of the evening in a staged dialogue.
“When you daven in the same shul as your parents, you’re family,” said Moed, whose parents are Adat Yeshurun members Len and Anne Jurkowski.
“When you daven in the same shul as your in-laws, you’re family,” added Kamaras, whose wife Megan is the daughter of congregation members Brian and Suzanne Marcus.
“Zoe and I are privileged to be part of the dozens of multi-generational families this community is celebrating tonight,” Kamaras said. “It’s a minor miracle, if you think about it. San Diego isn’t accustomed to retaining its young Jews, let alone having them return after spending a decade or more away.”
Moed suggested that 20- and 30-somethings are “suddenly returning to Adat” because of the congregation’s warmth. “Not the weather, the warmth of the community.”
Thirty-two years ago, Congregation Adat Yeshurun started in a store front, eventually gaining sufficient members to build its synagogue at 8625 La Jolla Scenic Drive North in La Jolla. Kamaras suggested that the congregation’s founding spiritual leader, Rabbi Jeff Wohlgelernter, and his wife, Rebbetzin Shoshie Wohlgelernter, “really built something special here.
“How does a shul which started as a mom-and-pop shop maintain its heimish feel 32 years later, when it’s so much larger?” Kamaras asked rhetorically. “All we know is that, forget biotech, Adat remains the hottest startup in San Diego.”
The Wohlgelernters soon will be taking a sabbatical year, and leaving the congregation temporarily in the hands of his assistant, Rabbi Daniel Reich, and Rebbetzin Brooke Reich.
Wohlgelernter underscored the religious underpinning of the night when he spoke of the very first Passover – the one which the Hebrew slaves observed before they made their Exodus from Egypt.
He said that it was important for the slaves to eat together as families before embarking upon their 40-year journey that eventually would bring their people to the Promised Land. By eating together, the Hebrews were making the transition from slavery to building Jewish families, Wohlgelernter said. They were supposed to eat with their families, because it was within the structure of family that Judaism was destined to grow.
“A community is only as strong as its families,” the rabbi said. “We have many parents and their young children, but the most beautiful thing that we have is families – older people and their children, married, and living together in the same community, raising families together, living and experiencing together. It is these families that we are celebrating this evening.
“It is so beautiful to see a dad and his six-year-old kid sitting in shul together,” Wohlgelernter added. “To see a mom and her daughter sitting in the women’s section davening. To see moms and their babies sitting inside and studying. But to see a zeyde (grandfather) and his son, and his grandson, and to see a bubbe (grandmother) and her granddaughter and daughter all sitting together, celebrating, rejoicing, living in the same community, gives the rest of us that sense of family, that sense of mishpocha (family). To see the children, how they care for their parents; how when the parents become older, to watch children take care of them …”
The rabbi said the root of the Hebrew word mishpocha is one that connotes service, adding that “Mishpocha is made up of people who serve each other, who care about each other, who worry about each other, and that is what we celebrate this evening!”
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com