Talking to Rabbi Richard Camras, and Rabbi Stewart Vogel of HaMakom synagogue in West Hills, is like talking to identical twins. The two native Angelenos, longtime friends and professional colleagues, have strikingly similar career paths, present convictions and future intentions. They are so much in tune with each other, they practically finish each other’s sentences.

They are also retiring together; both will be stepping down at the end of June.

“We both had our own unique timelines,” Rabbi Vogel said. “They were similar. Neither of us felt we were being forced into early retirement. There was a timeline for both of us that happened to fit in.” And when Rabbi Camras’ Shomrei Torah and Rabbi Vogel’s Temple Aliyah merged, it was a way for both of them to go forward.

Rabbi Camras quickly picked up on the point. “When we began thinking about the process of merging our two communities, we raised the issue together that when we believed the synagogue was in a healthy place, it probably would be best for the community to hire a rabbi who would take the synagogue into the next decade.”

How did they both know when it is time to step into – or toward – retirement?

Part of it, Rabbi Camras said, is a feeling. “There’s no certainty,” he said. “Rabbi Vogel and I really wanted to begin to feel that when the congregation was settled enough in the merger that there was no crisis in response to coming together – but that there was excitement and steadiness about a future where we felt it was the appropriate time.”

It was three years ago this month when Shomrei Torah and Temple Aliyah– located one-and-a-half miles apart in the West Valley –  joined forces became HaMakom. Turning to his friend, Rabbi Vogel said it was “so interesting that you and I perceived there were changes in synagogue life – this was prior to COVID, which really set the stage for all the changes we were already anticipating. … we already were seeing the writing on the walls about synagogue life, which had changed in terms of membership, of people coming into the synagogue, of how the synagogue would have to be revisioned.”

The changes are nationwide, Vogel said. “I think many synagogues are seeing a radical shift,” which has triggered long-lasting decisions. “By the way, rabbis are leaving the rabbinate as a result. It’s a long story about what I call The Unbundled Generation. We are dealing with a generation now that doesn’t see synagogue life. It’s a bundle: We are here when you need it. And those values of synagogue life were changing drastically.”

Rabbi Camras believes it is about a systematic change in American life where people historically belonged, and now they don’t. “Not just in synagogue life but in everything. Society changed. They want what they want when they want it, and they get it in a way that makes sense for them.”

Both were trained as rabbis in the ‘80s and ‘90s to think about synagogue life for the 1950s and ‘60s. But toward the latter part of their careers, Rabbi Camras said, they both suddenly realized “that the Jewish community is undergoing a rather significant transformation. What will the synagogue of the future look like? Not that it is going to look like the synagogue of our grandparents. Another question is, who best can serve the Jewish community going forward?

Rabbi Camras also pointed to the upheaval in rabbinic education, and in the decision of rabbis to serve or not serve in pulpits Rabbi Vogel noted there are far fewer pulpit-trained rabbis or rabbis serving in the pulpit today. In Rabbi Camras’ opinion, there is a logical explanation for the earthquake. “It’s a rather demanding profession,” he said. “I think young people today want to try to balance work with all sorts of other aspects of purposeful and meaningful living.”

“They are probably not wrong there,” said Rabbi Vogel.

The latest generation of rabbis, Rabbi Camras said “define themselves solely through their professional work. Pulpit work is incredibly demanding on the individual … and on the family. It’s all-encompassing. Rabbis today, young people today, will happily choose to serve the Jewish community in less all-encompassing, demanding ways.”

Quickly picking up on the topic, Rabbi Vogel said that both people and synagogues changed. “We saw this [broad change] prior to COVID. Recognizing that society and the religious life had changed, the synagogue model needed to change. It’s not about religion. It’s about a different focus of what the synagogue is about. I pride myself on having had a creative rabbinate, trying a lot of different things, changing the music in synagogue life years ago, in terms of bringing people in, of creating programing, as Rabbi Camras did as well, to bring people in.”

They both saw things were changing, and knew that the next iteration of synagogue life was going to be for the next generation. Their job, Rabbi Vogel said was “to prepare the moment.  Many synagogues – when they look at themselves – are willing to say, ‘You know what? Things are changing, but we are going to remain how we are. We will just pray for the best.’”

Even Moses, Vogel said, had to be pushed “God said to him, suffer and move forward. We saw that as the model. Rabbi Camras and I started to talk. We had a timeline.”

Fast Takes with Rabbi Camras

Jewish Journal: Do you have any unfulfilled Jewish goals?

Rabbi Camras: One thing I have learned is that I know less than I would like to know in the vastness of Jewish literature and Jewish learning. I can’t wait to have more time to study.

J.J.: Your favorite hobby?

R.C.: Two. I love cycling (both mountain bike and road bike) and I love reading. I love going fast and going far, days at a time.

J.J.: What kind of books do you enjoy?

R.C.: Everything. I love history, fiction and nonfiction. Everything engages me.

For many Jews, Poland is almost synonymous with the Holocaust. And so it was for Yonah Bookstein when the 19-year-old student first visited Poland

“The survivors I met in Poland in the ‘90s,” Rabbi Yonah said, “they were quite elderly. And they were a very interesting group. Some had been communists, and I spoke Yiddish with them. They had a lot of nostalgia for their childhood. Their kids had left Poland. So there was a big purge in Poland in 1968 of Jews in any position of leadership – medicine, academics.” Poland was his life all through the ‘90s, and with his wife Rachel after they married in 1996.

As a representative of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, and eventually as director, he was able to move around the country relatively freely. By the time Bookstein landed there, “most of the Jews in Poland had intermarried or emigrated or they had very, very minimal connections. Many people didn’t believe Jews had survived the Holocaust. But 150,000 Jews were in Poland, even after the Kielce Pogrom.  They stayed for all kinds of reasons.”

But mostly, the “Jewish community offered a place where there was food – we paid for a minyan in Warsaw and Kraków. There were numerous official Jewish communities. Meanwhile, Lublin was a sub-community of Warsaw. I’ll mention Łódź, too. There were little remnants of Jewish life in all these cities. As director of the Lauder Foundation, I would visit these cities. They had many different needs.“

Decades later, Rabbi Yonah speaks of Polish Jews as if they are mishpocha. “Yes, I became extremely fond of them,” he said. “I love elderly, Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews” – that’s present-tense love, not loved – “they were a rare and a dying community.  Connecting with them always was wonderful. This was something you could rarely experience in the United States: Imagine when people would come into our offices and say, ‘We just found out we are Jewish,’ because many survivors hid their Jewish identity. They didn’t want their kids to grow up with anything.”

Rabbi Yonah found that survivors’ most common reaction to the trauma of the Holocaust was plain and sadly irreversible: “Hide your Jewishness.” The reason: Fear of reaction.  “Absolutely,” he said. He found that even as communism was in retreat across the country and parents were aging, the safest behavior was to mask their Jewishness.

All of a sudden, younger Jews were saying, “If they are their natural parents, they reveal the truth. If they are adoptive parents, it’s a different story.  Many children were not returned.” Rabbi Yonah estimated “something like 10,000 children were not returned to the Jewish community after the war. They were raised by non-Jews. And they drifted away. There’s a famous story in Poland. One of those children became a prominent priest in Lublin. He had been teased his whole life because he looked Jewish. He had dark hair. But he grew up as a Catholic.” When Rabbi Yonah met him, he found the priest to be “a remarkable guy.”  It was, he said, “a very compelling time to be in Poland. “We had people with crazy stories.”

Clearly there was a love affair between the Booksteins, after Rachel and Yonah’s 1996 marriage, and the Polish people and their culture. Throughout the ‘90s, the rabbi reported, “the government was very sympathetic to Jewish-Polish relations. They wanted to build better relations. The president [Aleksander Kwaśniewski] was sympathetic in saying ‘Let’s have good relations.’”

The young American couple felt stronger than ever that “this was a good time to be there and to do our work.”

But was Poland ever going to be a final destination for the Booksteins?  “We were young and we were idealistic,” the rabbi said. “But we had not — we were not the kind of people who said, ‘This is what our career is going to be.’ We were following where HaShem would lead us.”

At some point during their time in Poland—after they had lived there for three years and had two children who were born there – the bris for his oldest, Moshe Chaim, in 1999, was “the first public act that anyone could remember.”

The Booksteins’ commitment to Judaism may have seemed extreme to some Poles, especially those who had grown distant from Yiddishkeit. “Parenthetically,” the rabbi said, “because of this work that we did in Poland, and our demeanor, many people thought we were Lubavitchers. And we were not. However, we admire the Lubavitch movement, their outreach and their love of the Jewish community.”

“Lubavitch devotion to Jews all over the world is beautiful. My rabbi was Rabbi Haskel Besser. The Lauder Foundation supported Chabad and other Jewish institutions all over central and eastern Europe.” But in Poland there was no Chabad presence until the 2000s.

Rabbi Yonah noted that while Jews could live openly in Poland during the ‘90s, “we found that people who got passionate about their Jewishness realized that Poland had a ceiling. Options were limited.” When young Jews became excited about their Jewish roots, they would leave Poland.

Once young Jews flew off to New York or Tel Aviv, their optimism was confirmed, said the rabbi. “They were like OMG! This is what Jewish community could be?”

Jews who remained in Poland were Polish first. They came from “some kind of intermarried backgrounds with all kinds of interesting genealogy. Nobody was going to send their kids to a yeshiva.”

There was pushback if the school ever got too religious. The school was run by a wonderful woman (Helise Lieberman), the rabbi says. She still lives in Poland as head of a foundation.  Rabbi Yonah made sure the school was not called a yeshiva. Otherwise, parents would not have sent their kids there. To give some Jewish feeling, the fact the school had a kosher kitchen, was closed on Jewish holidays and had a Hebrew class, already made it quite remarkable in Poland, he said. It was like the Haredi to the community.

The Booksteins left in 2001 because they felt the community was able to fend for itself. “We wanted to work on American Jewry,” the rabbi said. Ambassador Lauder, in recognition of all the work they did, suggested the rabbi finish his smicha in the States. He was ordained in 2003.

Over the past two decades in Southern California, Rabbi Yonah has been a dynamic force in American Jewish life. As a Hillel campus rabbi, he connected thousands of Jewish students to their heritage. In Los Angeles, he built Pico Shul, a welcoming community for young Jewish professionals, helping dozens find their life partners. Through Shabbat Tent & Lounge, he brought Jewish hospitality to music and film festivals, creating Jewish connections in unexpected places. Today, through his organization, Neshama, Rabbi Yonah creates community and connection while providing spiritual counseling for a growing and diverse audience, from California to Israel, from Hollywood filmmakers and philanthropists to Duvdevan soldiers and Nova Festival Survivors.

Meanwhile, Rabbi Yonah’s newest book, “Denial is a River in Poland: The Aftermath of Europe’s Last Pogrom,” with a foreword by Dr. Michael Berenbaum, was published this month. It is the true story of Holocaust survivors murdered by their neighbors in Kielce, Poland, and how 80 years later, Poland still refuses to accept responsibility.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rabbiyonah/denial-is-a-river-in-poland