Miracle on Third Street

This is the time of year, during the holiday of Shavuot, when Jews celebrate receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. But for a small tribe of Jews in West Hollywood, Shavuot will also be a time to pray for a last-minute miracle that will save their beloved 55-year-old shul, Mishkan Israel, from disappearing.

When Mishkan Israel opened its doors on Third Street in 1954, mainly as a shul for Holocaust survivors, Dwight Eisenhower was still president and nobody in America had heard of The Beatles.  

Today, amid the sushi bars and trendy boutiques of West Hollywood, the shul has outlived its welcome. The building is scheduled to be torn down for redevelopment, and Mishkan Israel must find a new home before June 15. Because their longtime Jewish landlord was kind and generous, he gave them a great deal on the rent, which makes it that much harder to find a new location.  

Who will pray for a miracle? 

First, perhaps, is Helen Lesel, 94, who’s been walking the three blocks to Mishkan Israel every Shabbat for 45 years. Even after her husband of 55 years passed away in 2002, her connection to the shul remains. Helen loves to paint nature — the other day she showed me some of her paintings, which fill the walls of her home — and she loves to walk, although, as she says now in her Yiddish accent, “my feet giving out a little.” 

“We are not decorated, not high class, we like a family,” she says of the shul. “This is really tragedy … but maybe it’s going to be nes [miracle] — you know what nes is?”  

Mazal Davidoff, 83, knows what nes is. She is a sixth-generation sabra from Jerusalem who fought for Israel in the War of Independence in 1948. She saw, up close, the first few breaths of the State of Israel when she became a security guard at the main headquarters, where leaders like Ben-Gurion and Weizmann were making history.  

Today, Mazal makes her famous cholent at Mishkan Israel, as she has for the past 35 years. She calls it “Ashkenazi cholent with Yemenite spices.” Naturally, she can’t stop talking about her son Avi, who over the years has been a major contributor to the shul, doing everything from running the davening to cleaning the tables to giving Torah classes. 

One shul member who’s always loved Avi’s singing and Mazal’s cholent is Adam Berger, 19. He is the son of Shoshanna Berger, who for the past 15 years has been the unofficial shul treasurer and community babysitter. Shoshanna brings Adam to shul in a wheelchair because he has cerebral palsy. At Mishkan Israel, she says, “Everybody loves Adam.” It’s also where he practices his “amazing laugh.” 

Sheila Reich hasn’t been doing much laughing lately. Reich, a relative newcomer to the shul (“only” 10 years), has been walking the neighborhood for many weeks looking for a new location. Because most of the members don’t drive on Shabbat and many are elderly, she needs to find something close. She almost hit the jackpot last week, but the landlord wouldn’t rent to a synagogue. 

She also struck out with the Institute of Jewish Education a block away, where the egalitarian Moveable Minyan has its services and where she was hoping to rent a small space. Their answer, she said, was a polite no. She did find a nice space next to the Orlando Hotel, but the rent was too high. As the clock keeps ticking, Reich keeps looking. Is she praying for a miracle?  

“Not really,” she says, “I’m too busy looking.” 

For the past several years, probably no one has been as busy and as popular at Mishkan Israel as Alexandra Kaufman, a vivacious UCLA grad in her late 20s who has adopted the shul as her spiritual home. Kaufman, who was born and raised in the neighborhood, does a little bit of everything, from walking elderly members who need help, to arranging the kiddushes, to trying to raise money, to simply being the life of the party. 

She certainly was the life of the party when I visited the shul the other day, and she had me meet several longtime members. “She’s like our daughter,” was the line I heard most often, along with “We’d like her to meet a nice Jewish husband.” 

The most somber face I saw that day was on David Ganz, the current president. I got a sense that Ganz is really a funny guy (I asked him the secret to the shul’s longevity, and he told me: “We have a suggestion box, but we never open it”), but that he has become overwhelmed by the prospect of losing a shul he has called home for 45 years — a shul his wife, Jette, calls “very motherly.”  

What will Ganz do if they can’t find another location? 

“Until the last minute, you don’t want to admit it,” he says. “I’m in denial. I really don’t know where I’ll go.” 

He does know, however, where he’ll go on Shavuot. He’ll go to Mishkan Israel to celebrate the same sefer Torah they’ve been reading since 1954. But like the rest of his tribe, he’ll also be praying that before June 15, a miracle will happen and they will find a new home — for the sefer Torah, and for them.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at {encode=”dsuissa@olam.org” title=”dsuissa@olam.org”}.