1999-10-01 Beth Jacob's Rabbi Avram Bogopulsky |
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By Donald H. Harrison San Diego, CA (special) -- It’s a long way from the Borrough Park section of Brooklyn to the State University area of San Diego -- both geographically and psychologically. Luckily, Rabbi Avram Bogopulsky served small Orthodox congregations
in Binghamton,
In the neighborhood are three kosher dairy restaurants -- Langs Loaf, Eva’s and Schmoozer’s -- a larger concentration of frum eating establishments than anywhere else in the city. Additionally, Beth Jacob’s own kitchen is serving up kosher meals on a daily basis for senior citizens and refugees from the former Soviet Union. The College Area Jewish Senior Center is operated in the synagogue’s social hall by Jewish Family Service. There also is a mikvah (ritual bath) in the San Diego area to which Beth Jacob members as well as members of Chabad of San Diego have easy access. Bogopulsky envisions intensifying the Orthodox presence in the area. He wants to reestablish a San Diego area kollel -- a learning/ teaching academy for rabbis in training -- and he has made preliminary inquiries to San Diego city officials about stringing an eruv -- a symbolic boundary -- around the area to enable observant Jews to carry on Shabbos, “which means that they can push their strollers and carry their babies.” “If you ask a person who is trying to relocate to an Orthodox community what are the three top concerns, the answer will be a day school, mikvah and eruv,” Bogopulsky said. “We have two out of the three and we are trying very hard for the third.” Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School in the Kearny Mesa area and Chabad Hebrew Academy in Scripps Ranch compete to enroll children through 8th grade from Beth Jacob,who must be driven to school in either case. Meanwhile Torah High Schools -- one for boys, another for girls -- were begun this year for students in the 9th and 10th grades. Continuing learning for adults also is a priority for Bogopulsky. On Sunday evenings, he teaches a Talmud class; Wednesday nights a class on the biblical prophets and judges, and Thursday evenings he leads discussions on the weekly Torah portion. On Shabbat afternoon, his wife, Leah, often teaches a course for women “and then an hour before mincha services I give a class on the halachic (Jewish law) aspect from the portion of the week,” Bogopulsky said. The educationShaal rhythm changes, of course, during Jewish holidays
when “we give the High
Various speakers help the members of Beth Jacob Congregation stay plugged into the Orthodox mainstream, no matter how far away San Diego may seem. For example, a San Diego visit by Rabbi Abraham Twersky, a noted psychologist, will be sponsored jointly by Beth Jacob Congregation and Congregation Adat Yeshurun, a sister Orthodox synagogue located in La Jolla. Beth Jacob will observe its 60th anniversary Oct. 24 at a dinner that will launch the writing of a new sefer Torah. On the weekend of Dec. 25, Dr. Mandell Ganchrow, national president of the Orthodox Union, will serve as Beth Jacob’s scholar-in-residence. “What a person would see in a synagogue in any large city -- New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami -- or in Israel, you will find here in San Diego at Beth Jacob,” Bogopulsky said. “We have visitors from Los Angeles and other cities, and they can’t
believe the level and the
* * * The Beth Jacob rabbi grew up in Brooklyn as the
son of Edward Bogopulsky, a drapery and
“When a person grows up in a ghetto type community, you think every
Jew around you is
But having served the tiny Orthodox communities of Binghamton, where he was a day school teacher, and Charleston, where he was an associate rabbi, “you broaden the horizons and you see the world differently,” he said. “You realize that everyone is not like you, yet we are all the same:
we are all Jews,” he
Bogopulsky began learning those lessons as a boy in an elementary school
called Etz Chaim
Following graduation, Bogopulsky went to Neveh Zion yeshiva, outside Jerusalem, for nearly two years, then enrolled at Shaarei Torah Academy in Monsey, N.Y. where he came under the influence of Rabbi Berel Wein. Besides being the head of the yeshiva, Wein served as a pulpit rabbi. He also had a background as an attorney. “The goal of the school was not to have everyone become a rabbi,” Bogopulsky recalled. “The goal was to have everyone become a Jew who could contribute something to the Jewish people. “I enjoyed seeing him in this role, helping people, and what made it
click that I wanted to be
Besides taking Judaic courses route en route
to his ordination, Bogopulsky also took secular
“I had a few priests for professors,” he said. “They treated us
yeshiva boys with utmost
Were any old-fashioned theological debates ever held between the Jews and the Catholics? “Never,” Bogopulsky replied. “We weren’t there to debate. We were
there for the courses.
At the yeshiva, Rabbi Laibel Reznick, his Talmud teacher, became his closest advisor. “Rabbi Wein was the overall rabbi. He was accessible any time you needed him, but he was such a busy man that my personal relationship with a ‘rebbe,’ as we call it was Rabbi Reznick with whom I would learn on a regular basis. “Until today, I call him on a constant basis with questions that are
beyond the scope of the
Bogopulsky said that for pulpit rabbis, “there are many questions that
come up or situations
“It is important for every person to have a rebbe, a teacher, a mentor,
and even the greatest
Bogopulsky said his decision to become a pulpit rabbi was a determinant in the kind of woman he would seek for a wife. “Knowing that a person would be going out of the New York area to ‘out of town’ --anything out of New York is ‘out of town’ -- you had to marry someone who would be a partner in your work,” Bogopulsky said. While he still was in yeshiva, he met Leah Rosen “who had just come back from learning in Israel, in a seminary, and six months later in February of 1989 we were married. I continued learning in the yeshiva for 2 1/2 years in what is called a kollel, where a person gets a stipend from the yeshiva in order to continue their studies from when they get married. My wife...went to work before we had children and she taught at West Orange Hebrew Academy in West Caldwell, N.J.” Their children are daughter Yehudis, 9; son Yisrael, 8 (who also is
known as “Sruly”); son
Bogopulsky’s first job was as a Judaica teacher in the Jewish day school of Binghamton, N.Y. He taught the 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade students, while his wife taught the 5th graders. After two years he “became an assistant rabbi
at one of the oldest synagogues in the country"
“There I started getting my experience a a pulpit rabbi,” Bogopulsky said. “Rabbi David Radinsky who was my mentor at that time was a big help. He was an excellent rabbi to learn from. He is there now 30 years in Charleston. He was very accommodating to anything I needed. “He let me take on the roles of the rabbi and the rabbinate to explore,
to do things to test
Charleston’s Jewish community numbered about 4,500 but of these only
about 20 families
“I think we made an impact then in helping a lot of families become
more traditional as they
He stayed in Charleston for three years until he assumed the Beth Jacob
pulpit in 1996,
Bogopulsky said his intense Jewish education combined with his experiences
in communities
“It gave me enough of the tools to teach and educate any type of Jew
-- a learned person on a
Membership of the synagogue had dipped below 200 families prior to the beginning of Bogopulsky’s tenure. The number has remained the same, but the demographics have changed since he arrived there, Bogopulsky said. Now there are many more young families; more children are being born into the congregation, and the future looks bright, he said. * * *
He helped to organize some off-the-record luncheon meetings between Orthodox and non-Orthodox rabbis to address communal concerns and to ease some tensions that developed as the “Who Is a Jew” issue became more heated in Israel.
the Lawrence Family JCC which included presentations and songs by representatives of the various streams of Judaism. Observant Jewish men are prohibited from listening to a woman singing a solo -- so the question arose “even at a function like this what happens if a woman cantor from another movement sings during the program?” Bogopulsky responded that “in the halacha, if there is group singing, it is permissible for the woman to be leading the singing. Myself, personally, I sing as loud as I can. I hear myself hopefully.” He added: “I want to make any program one that will b comfortable for
all Jews to attend. ..
Bogopulsky credited the late Phil Schlossberg, a Holocaust Survivor who was active in several congregations in San Diego, for encouraging Beth Jacob Congregation to participate in the JCC’s Jewish Book Fair. “He really offered me the insight of saying that people want to her the Orthodox point of view, and you should be available to that, not close yourself off from it. ...We have to be in the light. It has to be known that we are in existence. The book fair is something that we should support.” The rabbi made an allusion to the biblical story of Jonah to express
his feelings about the
“When Jonah was on the boat, they asked him ‘what are you?’
He answered ‘I am a Jew.’
“Brothers and sisters fight,” Bogopulsky said. “My own children
fight. I have arguments
“We let our outsides sometimes get in front of our insides.”
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