‘Guiding light’ of O.C.’s Jewish community, culture

Helen B. Aaron, a pioneering organizer of the Jewish community of Orange County who moved to Anaheim in 1948 and, shocked by the near absence of Jewish organizations, spent decades helping create them, has died. She was 96.

Aaron died Thursday of lung disease at her home in Laguna Woods, said her daughter Leah R. Sklar.

Over the last half-century, Aaron was instrumental in the founding of every Jewish organization in the county, said Haim Asa, rabbi emeritus of Fullerton’s Temple Beth Tikvah, who met her in the 1960s.

“Helen was a guiding light of the Jewish community in terms of establishing institutions,” Asa said. “She was highly respected because of her integrity and zeal. . . . She was totally selfless.”

When Aaron arrived from New Jersey, she left behind a large and prominent Jewish population and landed in a county with one synagogue. There are 34 today.

“One of the first questions I asked was, ‘Where are all the Jewish stores?’ ” Aaron told the Orange County Register in 1998. “My neighbors looked at me as if I was out of my mind.”

Then a mother of four, she wanted her children and other families to experience the same sense of belonging to a Jewish community that she had grown up with, her daughter said.

Aaron joined the county’s sole synagogue, Temple Beth Sholom, which was founded in 1943 in Santa Ana. With the quiet confidence she was known for, she started to bring about changes.

By 1952, she had formed the first women’s organization at the temple.

After her first husband died in 1958, she met widower Robert Aaron at the temple. They married in 1960 and shared a commitment to volunteerism and Jewish causes.

In 1964, the couple helped found the first countywide Jewish organization, which is now known as the Jewish Federation of Orange County. She also started a women’s philanthropy division of the federation and served as its first president. More recently, the couple helped establish the Orange County Jewish Historical Society.

Chelle Friedman, planning director for the federation, called Aaron “an amazing woman -- tiny in stature, huge in impact.”

“When Helen moved here, most Jewish people didn’t know each other and were afraid to look for each other,” Friedman said. “That made what she and Bob did all the more amazing. She knew what the future of the Jewish community had to look like.”

In 2006, the federation created a leadership award named for the Aarons. The group also launched a leadership program in honor of the couple, who “inspired countless members of our community to take the reins of leadership,” according to the federation.

Helen Beatrice Garey was born Sept. 13, 1911, in Pittsburgh, the second of eight children of Barnett and Cora Garey. Her father sold furniture.

With her first husband, Harry Gerber, she moved to Anaheim so he could open a furniture business with one of her brothers.

Anaheim had about 13,000 residents at the time and few Jewish children, she later remembered. Her daughter Leah was the only Jewish student at Anaheim High School in 1952 until her brother joined her two years later, the family said.

Before Orange County had Jewish bakeries, Aaron made regular trips with her children to the Fairfax district of Los Angeles.

“We would drive there for rye bread. It was a long way to go for some caraway seeds,” her daughter said. “But it showed why she devoted so much time and energy to the Jewish community. She wanted us -- and others -- to keep our culture alive.”

Robert Aaron, who was an engineer, died in 2005.

In addition to Sklar, of Los Angeles, Aaron is survived by another daughter, Marsha Gerber Remas of Larkspur, Calif.; three sons, Michael Gerber of San Marcos, Paul Gerber of San Francisco and Larry Aaron of San Marcos; three sisters; 13 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

Services will be at 1:30 p.m. Sunday at Temple Beth Sholom, 2625 N. Tustin Ave., Santa Ana.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests contributions to the Bob and Helen Aaron Leadership Fund, Jewish Federation of Orange County, 1 Federation Way, Suite 210, Irvine, CA 92603 or to Temple Beth Sholom.

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valerie.nelson@latimes.com