San Diego (special) -- Rabbi Arthur Zuckerman says from the day in 1991 when he was hired as Congregation Beth Am's spiritual leader, his philosophy was "if I worry about the kids, the parents will worry about the building." 

As a new Moorish building takes shape in Carmel Valley, one has to conclude that Zuckerman did a lot of worrying indeed about the children. The beautiful new domed synagogue is destined to become a San Diego County landmark. 

For many years, children at this Conservative congregation in Carmel Valley have become bar/bat mitzvah by reading from a sefer Torah which once had been owned by a congregation in Roudnice, Czechoslovakia. While the synagogue was destroyed in the Holocaust, its Torah was looted by the nazis and taken to a museum in Prague where, numbered and catalogued, it was to remain part of a collection about a people the nazis had hoped would become an "extinct race." 

After World War II, the Czech government kept the objects in a museum until agreeing to turn them over to a non-profit Jewish foundation in Westminster, England, which set about restoring the Torahs to use in synagogues around the world. 

The history of that Roudnice Torah played on the imaginations of Beth Am's congregants and especially on Michael Witkin, the architect who designed the new building. He went to Roudnice to see what, if anything, still was standing. The synagogue was destroyed but near the cemetery there still stood a wall of a ritual hall--a place where the Jews of that town prior to the Holocaust had taken their dead to be ritually washed and watched prior to burial. Witkin, emotionally moved by the remnant, sketched and photographed the wall. 

In the new Beth Am complex, which will be dedicated over a June 11- 13 Shabbaton, a replica of the wall has been built to serve as a free-standing entry way. Ellyn Sisser, the congregation's program director, explained "you are going to walk through the past to the present to get to build the future." The present is the beautiful sanctuary with its high dome; the future are the children who will learn and practice their Judaism in the sanctuary and pass it on to following generations.  Once inside the synagogue building itself, a congregant will walk into a lobby which will have ample room for a gift shop, then into an inner vestibule where he or she can find a prayer book, a kippah, and tallit, and perhaps pause for a moment before joining the others in prayer.  The sanctuary will seat at least 613 people (one for each commandment), and be expandable to accommodate many more when the divider between the sanctuary and the social hall is removed. Off the bima are two little rooms--which can be used for wedding preparations by bride and groom- and adjacent to the social hall are two kosher kitchens--one for dairy, the other for meat.

TORAH AND REMEMBRANCE WALL  Rabbi Arthur Zuckeman holds Holocaust Torah  that inspired the remembrance wall behind him. {Photo by Moti Shalom}

The social hall is designed to accommodate approximately 350 people in a sit-down luncheon.
The sanctuary and social hall are part of the first permanent phase of Beth Am's complex. The school and administrative wing, now in trailers, will follow. And in progress is a small amphitheater, where students can put on small plays. A mikvah and other amenities also are planned. 

Such an ambitious construction program is possible only in a growing congregation, and that is what Beth Am has been doing in leaps and bounds ever since Zuckerman accepted the position after serving as an assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth El. 

Zuckerman -- known fondly as "Rabbi Zucky" to the children of the congregation as well as to the adults -- estimated that there were fewer than 200 family "units" in the congregation upon his arrival in 1991 at Beth Am's previous home in rented quarters in Solana Beach. 

Dr. Mark Moss, who served as a board member at Beth Am until becoming the congregation's executive director, said membership had grown by 1995 to 412 households, with 200 children in the afternoon Jewish Learning Center (JLC) and 20 children in the pre-school. By 1998, membership was 646 households, with 335 children in JLC and 134 in the preschool. 

Carmel Valley is one of the largest growth areas of San Diego but Moss, Sisser and Hannah Estrin, the director of youth programming who is about to begin rabbinical studies at the University of Judaism, all suggest that Zuckerman's personality may be as important or even more important than geography in accounting for the congregation's expansion. 

"I think people feel comfortable with him," Moss said. "They feel that they are welcomed by him. They feel that he cares about them. He is concerned about them." 

Sisser said "the loyalty that congregants have for Rabbi Zuckerman is amazing. I never hear anything but positive things from the congregants." 

And Estrin said Zuckerman "has a connection with people. He brings people here simply because of who he is and how he interacts with them. When he teaches at Hebrew High, our kids go to Hebrew High because they know he can take his class." 

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So who is this rabbi, anyway? Highly energetic, a million things at once kind of guy, he suggests that he takes "tremendous pride in ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)"; that his life is an example of how one can "take ADD and make it productive, make it work for you, instead of against you. I think with rabbinics, it has worked for me. I like to get things done. I like to do things. I don't want to be bored." 

Zuckerman believes that "by the time you wake up, the day is half over already" so he tries to cram as much into each day as possible -- whether that be running, sometimes kayaking, carrying on telephone conversations on his mobile phone while driving between life cycle events; teaching at his own congregation as well as in a variety of programs sponsored by the Agency for Jewish Education; serving as a chaplain for the San Diego Sheriff's office, and being a family man for his wife Simi (formerly Susan), and sons Nevo and Amitai. So enamored is his congregation of their rabbi that members successfully nominated him to carry the Olympic torch for a portion of its coast-to-coast route to Atlanta in 1996. The only surprise during the run was that the athlete wearing a kippah and carrying a torch didn't try to juggle something else along the way. 

Zuckerman was born in Brooklyn on July 18, 1953 -- a day which local newspapers recorded as the hottest in 48 years. His Orthodox parents, Max and Sylvia Zuckerman, sent him to Toras Emes Elementary School and to Rabbi Jacob Joseph High School. While attending the latter, he became an activist in the B'nei Akiva, an Orthodox youth group, and was a regular participant at demonstrations at the United Nations in behalf of oppressed Soviet Jewry and against adversaries of Israel. 

Following graduation in 1971, he served a month as a camp counselor at Camp Moshava in Honesdale, Pa., then made aliyah to Israel. After attending ulpan at Bar Ilan University for his first month, he went to Kibbutz Ein Hanatziv in the Beit She'an Valley where for the next ten months, his work schedule was divided between milking cows and studying Jewish texts. 

Zuckerman joined the Army to fulfill a two-and-a-half year commitment, becoming part of the Nahal, whose units divide their time between working on a front line kibbutz and military operations. He was assigned to Kibbutz Alumim in the northern part of the Negev Desert along the Gaza Strip. Today the Shaar Hanegev area is linked with San Diego's Jewish community through a program sponsored by the United Jewish Federation focusing on Ibim student village, close to Alumim. 

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Zuckerman's unit patrolled railroad tracks in the area to make certain that terrorists did not sabotage them. After the war was over, his unit travelled to the Suez Canal to help load supplies captured from the Egyptians that could be utilized in Israel. 

He was invited to a wedding of one of his friends--and there he met Simi (then 'Susan') Siegel, an American student studying at Tel Aviv University who had "crashed" the wedding with a friend who had been invited. She was surprised that the Israeli soldier spoke such good English. Soon after they started dating, he was transferred to an artillery company in northern Israel which answered attacks from Arab guerrillas based in Lebanon. 

How as a rabbi today does he feel about possibly having killed people with the artillery barrages? It was a matter of self-defense, he replied. "According to the halacha (Jewish law), one is permitted to defend oneself. This is not 'Thou shalt not murder' ... It doesn't say 'you can't kill.' If someone is firing at you, you have permission to fire back." 

If a conscientious objector came to him for counseling, he said, he would advise that person that "everyone has to deal with their own conscience. They may be able to do something else in the field, some other responsibility. Everyone should do something. I don't believe in people not doing anything. Even those who study Torah--there is a group that studies in the yeshiva and still goes into the military. They can be a truck driver. Or a cook." 

When he could, Zuckerman hitchhiked from his unit to Tel Aviv to be with Simi. He found out that after attending public school in Long Island, she had become a Jewish activist-- a member of the Jewish Defense League, in which she had studied karate. "She was a Kahane-nik," Zuckerman said. 

They were married July 5, 1976 on Long Island. As his parents by this time had also made aliyah, they travelled with him back to New York, where the Siegels had a large family. For more than a year the newlyweds resided at the Alumim kibbutz, where Zuckerman helped to set up the livestock program based on his earlier experiences as a student kibbutznik in the Beit She'an Valley. Their son Nevo was born in 1978. 

After the kibbutz, the couple decided to try moshav living -- picking a cooperative settlement in the vicinity of the artist's village of Ein Hod in the Carmel. "We were there a year and a half," he said. "But I didn't like the moshav; there were more (social) parasites there compared to the kibbutz. So I decided I would come back to the States, and get my degree in agriculture." 

He studied poultry science at the State University of New York at Farmingdale and at the University of Maryland, where he received a bachelor's of science degree in poultry science. While in graduate school at the University of Maryland, he was hired as a research assistant. 

About this time, the Zuckermans had a family discussion about whether their future should be in the United States or Israel. "We came to the conclusion that we weren't moving back to Israel," Zuckerman said. "I said 'if I am staying in the States, I want to have an impact on Jewish life' because I saw what was happening. I had grown up in an environment that was very Jewish, yet there was all this assimilation. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could have an impact on it." 

His father-in-law met Rabbi Yonah Fradkin of Chabad of San Diego, and suggested that Zuckerman might make a wonderful teacher at Chabad's day school. Fradkin invited Zuckerman to come to San Diego and to try out by teaching a class at the school, then located near San Diego State University. 

Zuckerman remembered that for that interview in 1986 he had "brought some baseball cards with me...and when I went to teach the class on Chumash -- it was a third grade class -- I went inside and said to the students 'Anyone who is following and paying attention, I will be placing baseball cards under your Chumash. Don't touch them now please.' Every single kid followed the lesson intently. ..." 

He taught first and third grades at Chabad for about three years, while at the same time teaching courses the High School of Jewish Studies, known familiarly as Hebrew High. His wife, meanwhile, worked as an administrative assistant to Rabbi Moshe Levin of Congregation Beth El. The Zuckerman's second son, Amitai, was born in 1988. 

Sarah Siegel, Zuckerman's mother-in-law, kept suggesting that he consider studying to become a rabbi. "I just enjoyed teaching," Zuckerman said. "But everywhere I would go, whether it was Chabad in Rancho Bernardo, or working with students at Beth El, or at Hebrew High, the discussion of 'gee, you should be a rabbi kept coming up.'" 

Zuckerman said his switch from Orthodox to Conservative Judaism didn't come all at once, but was part of a process. Zuckerman parts company with Orthodoxy principally over the issue of egalitarianism. He believes women should be permitted to participate in all aspects of Jewish religious life. 

Levin was supportive of Zuckerman becoming a rabbi. He had him serve as his assistant for two years at Beth El -- "Torah reading , leading services, visitations at hospitals, teaching classes, everything but officiating at weddings and things of that nature." 

Levin also "recommended that I find a program that I could take. I contacted the University of Judaism but at that time they did not have a rabbinical program. I was able to find a program that was out of New York -- a yeshiva on Long Island called the Tifereth Israel Rabbinical College. I did my studies by correspondence. Instead of doing it by internet as is done today, I did it through letters and cassettes. It took me two years to finish up." 

He said he received a "traditional Orthodox smicha" in 1990. The following year, after Rabbi Wayne Dosick left Congregation Beth Am to become a well-known author of Jewish books and leader of the Elijah Minyan, Zuckerman was asked to officiate at a Friday night Shabbat service. 

Zuckerman said he thought instead of just going up for Shabbat, why not visit the synagogue--it was just up Interstate 5 a few miles--during the week and see what goes on? "It just so happened that the religious school, which was called the Jewish Learning Center because 'religious school' is like a four-letter word, was in session. The seventh grade class was preparing for the service which I was going to lead. I spoke with the teacher at the time--Dalia Handrus--and near the kitchen there was a little candy store and for $1. I bought 20 pieces of licorice. 

"I went over to the kids--like I did before with the baseball cards--and I said 'you will be doing the responsive reading-- here are two for you. You will be doing the hatzi kaddish, here are two for you.' And the kids went home and said, 'there is this nice rabbi' and we did a Friday night service that someone would think that we had prepared for six months. The kids had a great time, the parents had a great time, and I never looked back." 

In a few weeks he received an invitation to become only the second rabbi of Congregation Beth Am. 

Zuckerman's office is a welter of religious books, personal souvenirs, papers, and candy and stickers for the children who are welcome to pop into his office whenever the door is not closed. "I have kids coming in here all the time because they want the stickers," he said. "When I do the preschool on Friday mornings I will give them stickers and sometimes when I am standing at Starbucks (a coffee shop), the kids will come up and say 'hi rabbi.'" 

Besides the fact that he likes children, Zuckerman said it makes good sense for a rabbi to develop a rapport with youngsters. "A rabbi can have an impact on an adult to a certain extent....You have far more chance of making a connection, having an impact on where the child is heading in their Judaism as compared to adults because most adults are set in their ways." 

* * * 

Before becoming executive director at Beth Am, Moss had been director of Men's ORT and prior to that executive director of Congregation Beth El, where he and Zuckerman originally had been colleagues. At Beth Am, he successfully lobbied Zuckerman and the board to support an expanded preschool program. "I think a large number of people have joined the synagogue wanting their children to be part of the preschool," Moss said as Zuckerman vigorously nodded agreement. 

Beth Am's preschool director is Verlayne Robinson, and the Jewish Learning Center director is Harriet Wolpoff. Along with Hannah Estrin, the director of youth programming, that makes three of the six top staff members at the synagogue involved with some stage of youth development. 

Rabbi David Kornberg, who was ordained in the Conservative movement in1995 and has worked since as a chaplain in New Jersey, recently was hired to become an assistant rabbi to Zuckerman. 

Kornberg will begin work at Beth Am this summer. With Estrin heading north, the youth programming portfolio at least temporarily will be added to Kornberg's tasks of teaching b'nai mitzvah, coordinating Shabbat services and helping Zuckerman with life cycle events and visits to the sick. 

Knowing Zuckerman's high-energy level, it is difficult to imagine him doing any less -- even with an assistant rabbi. So it is not surprising that the expectation at Beth Am is that as the synagogue grows, so too will its already diverse schedule of programming and activities.