Congregants Seek to Address Violence

The shadow of this week’s rampage of hate fell across Southern California temples Friday night as Jews celebrated Shabbat, struggling for ways to address the violence that tore through their community.

Reflecting on the shootings that left a postal worker dead and five wounded at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills, rabbis and congregants called for vigilance, gave thanks for the outpouring of support and, in some cases, said they would be posting guards.

At Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge, Rabbi Jerry Brown’s flock has never been in such need of his avuncular wisdom and his reassuring voice.

Two of the wounded, Mindy Finkelstein and Joshua Stepakoff, are members of his congregation and many other temple families send their children to the North Valley Jewish Community Center, the scene of Tuesday’s shooting.

At Friday night’s Shabbat, congregants streamed in, talking about little else besides what happened at the camp.

A group of curious mothers swarmed the Finkelstein family, eager to know what Mayor Richard Riordan said to Mindy during a recent phone call.

The first words the rabbi spoke were about the shootings.

“So many people have asked me what special things we will do as a temple. I told them that we will do what we always do: come together and find strength in our traditions, our prayers and each other,” said Brown, who spent hours at the hospital with the victims’ families and fielded countless phone calls after the shooting.

At a festive pre-Shabbat service, 300 people gathered at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. They sang songs, some in Hebrew, and “God Bless America.” They shared slices of chalah and said a mourner’s kaddish, or prayer, for postal worker Joseph Ileto, who police say was slain by white supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. an hour after he opened fire at the community center.

In West Hills at Temple Aliyah, Rabbi Stewart Vogel noted that it was easy for Jews in the San Fernando Valley--home to a large share of Los Angeles’ 600,000 Jews--to forget about anti-Semitism.

“This incident has created a new feeling of vulnerability,” Vogel said. “Up until now, the Jewish community had felt a sense of safety. Now the question is how do you restore that feeling of safety without creating paranoia.”

At Temple Israel in Long Beach the congregation was told a uniformed security guard will be posted outside services for the near future.

One congregant, 14-year-old Evan Solomon, rose during the services and spoke of harassment he has experienced. He added: “The Jews--us--have been terrorized by almost every group of people. I don’t know what would drive a person to go into a building and shoot children.”

Outside Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Rochelle Ginsburg said the shooting should be of concern to all of society.

“I identify it as an issue of hate that could be directed anywhere,” she said. “I feel that as much as we need to pay immediate attention to things like security, I think we also have to focus our national attention as Americans on the proliferation of hate groups that foster this.”

In Orange County, Rabbi Elie Spitz of the conservative Congregation B’nai Israel in Tustin took heart in the public response to the hate crimes. He said the amount of media coverage the incident received, as well as the massive response by local and federal law enforcement agencies, made the Jewish community feel cared for.

But Rabbi Allen Krause of the Reform Temple Beth El congregation in Aliso Viejo had a different reaction. The hysteria created by the mass media was out of proportion, he said. “The result of it, I think, is it feeds the egos of these crazies.”

Times staff writers Karen Alexander, Bettina Boxall, Jeff Rabin and Neda Raouf contributed to this story.