Sacramento (special) -- Back when Mona Alfi was a student at San Francisco State, one might expect that the activist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee might someday be lobbying legislators. 

But who'd have guessed that she'd be praying for them, as Rabbi Mona Alfi, chaplain of the state Assembly?

Having grown up in a mixed Sephardic-Ashkenazic family in Laguna Beach, where except for attendance at Temple Bat Yam in neighboring Newport Beach, her family believed in keeping their Judaism private, Alfi was drawn into the Jewish orbit by politics.

At San Francisco State, it was AIPAC and organizing fellow Jews to attend the California State Democratic Convention. After college graduation, she worked as an AIPAC professional in Washington D.C. After deciding to enroll at the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College in New York, she remained politically active as a staff member for the Israel Policy Forum in New York. "I created their rabbinic outreach program for them," she said.

Following ordination she became an assistant rabbi on July 1, 1998 at Congregation B'nai Israel here in Sacramento. Congresswoman Susan Davis, who then was an assemblywoman, was coordinating an observance of Women's Opportunity Day in the state Assembly, and invited Alfi to deliver an invocation as the guest rabbi.

Alfi decided to broaden the theme of her invocation, sounding almost like John Lennon when she asked the Assembly men to imagine "a world where everyone is equal and no one is distinguished as being different because of their gender or their race."

Antonio Villaraigosa, a Mexican-American legislator who then was the speaker of the Assembly (and now is a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles), persuaded Alfi to interview for the position of permanent chaplain. 

"I came into his office, and I was very nervous, very intimidated by the whole thing," Alfi remembered. "He looked over my resume, and he was impressed with my strong political background and he said, 'Do you know why I want you to be chaplain?' and I said 'I have no idea why.' And he said, 'because you have a sense of tikkun olam. "

Tikkun Olam --commonly translated as "repair of the world"--is exactly what she believes is not only everyone's duty, but also her obligation to preach. "I think the purpose of the Torah is to make it alive in our day and age," she told HERITAGE. "What that means is going out and being involved politically."

What attracted Villaraigosa, a fellow Democrat, repelled some of the Republican members of the Assembly in 1998. "There was no public controversy," the rabbi recalled. "But there were a number of legislators who chose to abstain from the vote."

Villaraigosa "told me he had gotten several comments complaining to him from some of those members, and their complaint was that I was too political. He said 'she is the chaplain of the Assembly; what do you expect her to be?' and he defended me on that."

Perhaps underlying their complaints, Alfi supposes, was their sense of discomfort. "I was never sure what made them more uncomfortable: the fact that I was a woman, or the fact that I was a rabbi."

Alfi says she attempts to make her invocations relative to the business before the Legislature. "I try to look at what is most pressing and look at that value and concept, and then I will find an appropriate quote and then give a drosh."

Concerned lest too great an emphasis on Jewish sources might fan the "subtle hostility" of some non-Jewish members, she tended to chose quotes from non-Jewish sources at the beginning of her tenure . "I wanted to be ecumenical," she recalled. However, on a day when a resolution dealing with same-sex marriages came before the Assembly, "I gave an invocation, quoting a Republican, perhaps it was Lincoln, saying basically that people's personal lives should not be legislated." Alfi said. "You could see some people raising their eyebrows knowing what I was alluding to there. That was probably my most controversial one."

In June of 1999, Temple B'nai Israel--Sacramento's oldest and largest Jewish congregation--was set aflame by an arsonist shortly after 3 in the morning. Alfi, returning from a European visit, learned later of the details of that horrible day from the congregation's spiritual leader, Rabbi Brad Bloom. 

"The fire department and police department responded amazingly quickly," she said. "If they delayed just a few minutes we would have lost every building on the site and most likely it would have burned into the Land Park neighborhood as well. It was devastating."

Two other Jewish congregations were targeted that day. Beth Shalom, a Reform congregation in the Carmichael suburb, and an orthodox congregation, Knesset Israel.

"The fire occurred on a Friday morning and the next morning we had a bar mitzvah," she recalled. "There was a Methodist group that was having a conference at the convention center and they offered us their facilities to have Friday night services and Saturday morning services so that the bar mitzvah could be held. They also passed the hat and by Shabbat they had raised $5,000 to give us."

Also poignant was the response of Sacramento residents. "That Sunday night we had a community-wide service and 5,000 people came to it. There were TVs set up in the convention center for another couple thousand. It was broadcast live throughout Sacramento. Except for Governor Davis (who was in Southern California and sent his wife, Sharon, to represent him), we had just about every important state official as well as almost every member of the non-Jewish clergy," Alfi said.

Members and staff of the Legislature were outraged by the arsons. "I can remember the Chief Clerk (of the Assembly) telling me how devastated he was by it. He gave us a letter as well as a donation to the library," which had been destroyed by the blaze.

Alfi was reappointed as chaplain for this term of the Legislature without any controversy. She suggested one reason the appointment was so non controversial was that her name was presented in the same motion as those of other non-elected officials of the Assembly, like the chief clerk at the chief sergeant-at-arms.

As chaplain, Alfi occasionally is asked by members of the Legislature- interestingly, the non-Jewish ones--for counsel on issues troubling them. But as much as she helps people to grow, she says the Legislature has been a growing experience for her.

"Part of this is because my father was an immigrant to this country from Iran," she said. "My mother's family is classic Ashkenazi. She was from Southern California but her family were New York Jews, Romanian immigrants who came at the turn of the 20th Century. 

"I was always raised with a very intensive loyalty to this country and what it has done for us. So to be able to stand in the Legislature and be given such an honor is incredible to me. My parents passed away when I was a child, and I was raised by my grandparents, so when I stand up there and say the Pledge of Allegiance, it makes me very aware of why my father chose to come here."