Call of West Draws Rabbi to Challenge

Career management advisers would probably be appalled by
Stuart Altshuler’s decision.

Spurning job offers from synagogues in New York’s Great Neck
and Florida’s Palm Beach, as well as rejecting the guaranteed incumbency of a
large Chicago shul, last summer Altshuler departed for Mission Viejo.

One of the Orange County’s earliest planned communities, Mission
Viejo is better known for nurturing Olympic athletes than as a capital of
American Jewry. The Conservative Congregation Eilat, the oldest of the city’s
two synagogues, shriveled to 250 families, from 600 in its heyday, after the
departure of its much-liked rabbi, Bradley Shavit Artson, now dean of the 
Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism. In quick
succession, two other rabbis left Eilat in three years.

However, for Altshuler, who will be formally installed as
Eilat’s rabbi at a dinner Feb. 9, his journey West represents a homecoming and
an opportunity for creativity and innovation. By comparison, to him the
prestigious jobs at established shuls in the East and Midwest are less
innovative because time is consumed by life-cycle events, rather than
programming.

A high-energy idea man, in turn scholarly and hip, Altshuler
sees potential in Eilat. His goal is to enliven and enlarge the synagogue
community and expand its breadth as a Jewish cultural center and possibly an
interfaith institute. “It’s very exciting,” he said, “to be part of something
from the ground level.”

Before his arrival last August, such ambitions would have
been dismissed as wishful thinking. Friday night services barely assembled a
minyan.

“They were desperate for change; they were losing members,”
Altshuler said.

One of the first changes was allowing different formats for
Friday night services, which he hoped made services more appealing and less a
formality. One week, teens led the service. Another would include a piano
accompanist. At a third, the rabbi would moderate post-service talks on topical
controversies. Shabbat dinners at the synagogue were also added.

“They’ve given me tremendous latitude,” Altshuler said.
“With a large congregation, sometimes it’s difficult to make changes.”

Size aside, the addition of music was resisted by his
predecessor, Martin Cohen, a New Yorker who helped Eilat conduct a search for a
successor before taking a pulpit back on his home turf. Compared to the West,
music is less commonly heard within East Coast Conservative synagogues.

“I wanted to do it before, but I couldn’t,” said Josef
Chazon, Eilat’s longtime cantor.

“We’re doing things we wouldn’t have tried a year ago,”
agreed Mitchell S. Gutell of Lake Forest, the congregation’s president. “People
are liking it. More people are coming.”

The seemingly good match produced by Eilat’s third rabbi
search in four years was attributed by Gutell to Cohen’s participation. “I
think that was part of what was helpful in finding Stuart,” he said.

While Cohen emphasized traditional practices and let
congregants draw their own personal inferences, Altshuler applies Torah to
everyday events. “He’s demonstrated a different type of leadership,” Gutell
said, citing Altshuler’s enthusiasm for interfaith projects.

“It hasn’t been on our agenda,” Gutell conceded. “Now,
there’s some confidence we can look at things bigger than ourselves. The
leadership is now willing to rock the boat.”

Far from radical, Altshuler said the changes he’s made so
far, and those he envisions, are within the Conservative movement’s boundaries.
“I want Judaism that makes demands of them; not to listen to a show but to be a
participant in it.”

Already, former members are returning, longtime congregants
are getting more involved and membership has grown by 20 families.

Altshuler, 49, grew up in Los Angeles’ Cheviot Hills, the
third son of a high-profile attorney. He studied classical music at his
parents’ urging.

The alluring melody of his own career calling only emerged
in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. After transfering from  UCI to  UC Berkeley
in 1973, he joined Jewish students demonstrating support for Israel and the
Union of Councils of Soviet Jewry, which was pressing to allow Russian Jews to
immigrate to Israel by trying to influence U.S. foreign policy.

At one point during six trips to Russia bringing aid to
Jewish political prisoners, Altshuler helped the family of Anatoly (Natan)
Sharansky, the dissident who came to represent Russian Jewry’s plight.
Sharansky was released in 1986, and Russian Jews later flooded into Israel.

Along the way, Altshuler majored in Russian history at
Berkeley, married, had two children and divorced. In 1980, he was ordained at
the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Ella Leya, who Altshuler married nine years ago, is a
Russian-born musician and composer. Not long after she immigrated to the United
States, they locked eyes at a Washington, D.C., concert, where she was singing.
He recalled her first question when hearing what his profession was: “Can
rabbis marry?”

Their fates intertwined by an improbable combination of
pluck and luck. In 1990, Leya was singing at a Moscow nightclub, when Los
Angeles industrialist Armand Hammer came in with an entourage to celebrate his birthday.
During a break, Leya spoke about 11 fruitless years of filling out immigration
forms with well-connected lawyer Mickey Kantor, who would later serve as U.S.
trade representative and secretary of commerce.

A telegram summoning her to the U.S. Embassy arrived a week
later. She was permitted to leave, but the Soviet government forbade the
departure of her soldier husband. He granted a divorce, and Leya left with
their son, Sergey.

But Leya and Altshuler’s fairy-tale marriage was sobered
when Sergey lost his battle with leukemia in 1995. The couple later would adopt
Micah, now 5, from a Russian orphanage.

Leya channeled her grieving into music, producing the
well-received CD, “Queen of the Night,” in 2001. Since the family settled into
an ocean-view apartment in Laguna Beach, Leya has proved Altshuler’s equal in
energy. She is finishing a second CD of original music, using Russian love
poetry for lyrics, is seeking a producer for a play she has written and is
scheduling concert dates. Her first probably will be at Eilat in May.

“I’m amazed people are very open to ideas,” she said.

The ranch lands may be tiled over, but some of the West’s
frontier attitude lives on.