I-8 Jewish Travel: Shuls on the move

 

-18th in a series–

Exit 6, Texas Street, San Diego — Old Tifereth Israel, Beth Jacob

By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO –Although San Diego’s Jewish community started in Old Town San Diego in the 1850s, moving to downtown and environs in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was on the move again after World War II, with 30th Street in the North Park neighborhood becoming a focus of activity.

Here’s a quick chronological overview:

San Diego’s first Jewish house of worship, Temple Beth Israel, had been constructed  in 1889 at Second and Beech Streets as a Reform institution with men and women sitting together and facing a raised stage on which both the Holy Ark and the reader’s table were located.

Not recognizing Reform liturgy, which was an amalgam of liberal German Judaism and some of the mannerisms of American Protestantism, Orthodox Jews who arrived in San Diego from Eastern Europe formed a separate minyan to conduct their services.

But in 1905, when Yom Kippur came, there was a conflict over who could use Beth Israel’s one-room Temple building. The Orthodox minyan had started prayers early in the day and were still engaged in prayer when the main Reform group arrived, and asked them to vacate.

The Orthodox angrily adjourned to the nearby home of Elias Jacobson to complete the service, and thereafter decided to form their own congregation, which they named Tifereth Israel Synagogue. The congregation found a location sixteen blocks east and about ten blocks south of Beth Israel near 18th and Market Streets, a venue which since has been obliterated by the construction of Interstate 5.

The congregation remained on 18th Street until 1948, when it moved to a larger space 12 blocks farther east and considerably to the north at 30th and Howard Streets on land the congregation had purchased during World War II. The new location was not the only change for the synagogue. A new rabbi, Monroe Levens, persuaded the congregation that in order to grow it should switch from the Orthodox movement to the Conservative movement. One salient difference was that whereas for Orthodox Jews driving a car is forbidden on the Sabbath, for Conservatives, it is permissible if it is being done for a religious purpose such as traveling to synagogue.  That meant Tifereth Israel could draw its membership from a larger area than what was within walking distance.

Baruch Stern, a survivor of Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps, had served as a Hebrew teacher at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Moss Addleson, a synagogue member, introduced Stern to his brother, Rabbi Nathan Addleson of Los Angeles, with whom Stern studied for ordination as an Orthodox rabbi.

About the same time, in response to Tifereth Israel’s switchover, Beth Jacob Congregation, which had established itself in the late 1930s as a Conservative congregation, decided to switch and become an Orthodox congregation. The newly minted Orthodox congregation hired Stern as its rabbi. From a home on Myrtle Street, it moved to a building at 4473 30th Street between Monroe and Meade Avenues.zzzz

Meanwhile, in the mid 1920s, Temple Beth Israel moved from 2nd and Beech to a Moorish style synagogue at 3rd and Laurel Streets. (In 2000, the congregation moved again to a campus east of La Jolla in the University City area of San Diego.  Its historic second home at 3rd and Laurel subsequently was occupied by the Conservative Ohr Shalom Synagogue.)

Rabbis Stern and Levens were close colleagues, who also had cordial relations with Rabbi Morton Cohn of Temple Beth Israel. Jerry Levens, son of Monroe Levens, recalled that the Orthodox and Reform rabbis would often come to their house for dinner. Rabbi Stern could eat there because the food was kosher and Rabbi Cohn “would eat anything anywhere, as long as it was good.”

This was a golden age for San Diego’s Jewish community, with the three rabbis being close friends, who often would deliver lectures at each other’s congregations and frequently co-officiate at life cycle events.

The North Park era of the Jewish community lasted approximately 30 years. In the late 1970s, the congregations sold their buildings along 30th street and followed their members farther east to the College and San Carlos communities of San Diego.  Today Tifereth Israel is located at 6660 Cowles Mountain Blvd. and Beth Jacob Congregation is at 4855 College Avenue.

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(To see the former homes of Tifereth Israel and Beth Jacob, take the Texas Street offramp to Madison Avenue and turn left (east) to 30th Street. Turn right (south). The former site of Beth Jacob Congregation is at 4437 30th Street, between Madison and Meade Avenues.  Proceed farther south beyond major intersection at El Cajon Boulevard to Howard Street.  Tifereth Israel Synagogue occupied the large building at the corner.)
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Next: San Diego Family History Center

Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  You may comment to him at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com or post your comment on this website, provided that the rules below are observed.

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