San Diego (special) -- Members of Congregation Beth Israel were aware that the man who served as their scholar-in-residence last week was the editor and principal author of the Torah commentary to which they refer during nearly every Saturday morning Torah service.

What they didn't know, until their senior Rabbi Jonathan Stein told them, was that Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut also was the man responsible for the practice in Congregation Beth Israel for those standing on the bimah to turn and face the Holy Ark when reciting the Barchu and Amidah prayers.

"When he was the scholar-in-residence at my (previous) congregation in Indianapolis a few years ago, after worshiping with us on Friday night and Saturday morning, he took me aside and he said 'I love your worship service; I want to make one suggestion: Turn and face the Ark during the Barchu and the Amidah,'" Stein recounted. "I have done it every Shabbat since." Stein began his introduction of Plaut at services last Friday night by telling of his "fantasy that someday I am going to walk into a synagogue on Shabbat morning and they are going to take out the Torah and

Cantor Emeritus Sheldon Merel, Rabbi Sheryl Nosan, Rabbi Jonathan Stein, Rabbi Gunther Plaut, Rabbi  Dana Magat and Cantor Arlene Bernstein at Beth Israel

somebody is going to say, 'You can find the reading, this morning, on Page 742 of the Stein.'

"It is not going to happen for so many reasons," Stein said after the laughter in the packed Reform congregation died down. "But you can imagine the thousands--tens of thousands--of people who every Shabbat morning in Reform and Conservative and Reconstructionist and, I'll bet even one or two Orthodox here or there, say 'what page in the Plaut is the Torah reading on?'"

Plaut was a refugee from nazi Germany who served as a chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, and later served as a pulpit rabbi in Chicago, St. Paul and Toronto. Author of 23 books, of which "the Plaut"- formally titled The Torah: A Modern Commentary -- is the best known, Plaut served as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis as well
as president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

Described by Stein as "our greatest living Reform scholar, our most prodigious and prolific author and the person who has had the greatest impact on Jewish adult education," Plaut quickly put the congregation at ease by quipping he would have been happy to have just sat there and let the introduction go on longer. 

He paid tribute to Stein, whom he had met on several previous occasions; mentioned that he and Cantor Sheldon Merel, cantor emeritus at Congregation Beth Israel, had once been colleagues at Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, and that he also had gotten to know Rabbi Sheryl Nosan, the rabbi/ educator, in Toronto.

"Rabbi Magat, you are the only stranger," he told the congregation's second rabbi, Dana Magat.

Plaut discussed the Book of Esther at Friday night services; engaged in an interactive study session with congregants on Saturday, and told the story of his own life at A Sunday morning presentation.