The rustification of Rabbi Penner

ALPINE—It was understandable why the late Rabbi Samuel Penner was unfamiliar with
the ways of the countryside.

Born in Poland, he had immigrated as a child before World War II with his family to The Bronx. Thereafter, he had spent much of his life studying Torah and Talmud in yeshivas.

However, his wife, Sheba, was determined to rusticate the rabbi, andpersuaded him in 1980 to purchase a four-bedroom, three-bath home on 2 1/2acres of land in Alpine. Sheba brought in 750 yards of soil and had 27 fruit trees planted, along with gardens for vegetables, herbs and roses.

During the week, the Penners lived in Alpine, in what he liked to call "The Garden of Yidden." Before Shabbos and Jewish holidays, the Penners would drive down the mountain to La Mesa to be near Congregation Beth Tefilah, where he served as the pulpit rabbi.

Sheba remembers that other Jews had preceded them to Alpine, but as Jews they still were something of a novelty in the mountain town, located along Interstate 8 about 25 miles east of San Diego. "We would have Seven Day Adventists come by to proselytize us, and I would invite them in for tea or lemonade," Sheba remembered. When the evangelists would start discussing
Bible with her, Sheba would ask: "Do you speak Hebrew or Aramaic? I have someone in the household who knows the original languages of the Bible."

"One young man, I will never forget, came back and told me he had decided to become Jewish," she said. "He didn't like the idea that he didn't know the original language. I told him being a good person was the most important thing."

Often what Rabbi Penner was doing in that home office was working on a book called The Four Dimensions of Paradise, in which he explained that there are four levels of Torah understanding: literal, metaphorical, ethical and mystical. Sheba published the book following her husband's death in 1986.

"If you take any portion of the Bible and look at any sentence in all four dimensions, it yields an incredibly rich way of looking at it," Sheba said. "Until I met Sam, I found some of the Bible quite boring."

Another of the rabbi's projects was recording conversations concerning religion and science with his close friend, the late Dr. Jonas Salk, inventer of the polio vaccine. Before their deaths, the two friends had taped 18 hours of conversations and planned to publish them, edited, in a
book to be called Revolution of Wisdom. The two friends got together at many places, including the Penner home in Alpine.

"Sam liked the tranquility, the opportunity to just write and be still," Sheba rememberd. "For me it was a natural way; for him, special and different.... He learned the names of trees... I remember one time we had to plant one, and it was raining, and he asked, 'How do we do that?' Watching
him dig, he might as well have taken a spoon. He didn't get the idea at first that the roots had to go in.... We came back to the house soaking wet, hysterically laughing."

She remembered that one year she presented her husband with a Jaffa orange tree, which they planted outside the sliding-glass bedroom door that led to a deck. "We also had an etrog tree... The first time I planted a fruitless mulberry, he asked what is the big idea of sitting under a tree. I sat under it and had him lie down with his head in my lap, under the dappled sun. He
liked it. He hadn't been close to nature since he was a young child."

The rabbi's conversion to nature lover was far from complete, however. "Our neighbors would come over with their horses and he would say 'nice horsey' and go the other way. Nevertheless, he loved wearing his cowboy hat from Mexico."

On another occasion, he summoned Sheba and told her with alarm: "There's a wild animal on the porch." Sheba went out and found a big Siamese cat curled up. "You mean the cat?"
she asked.

"That¹s a cat?" he responded incredulously. Eventually, they adopted the cat and named him Menachem.

The Cohns get into civic affairs

In 1987, Guenter and Jutta Cohn decided they'd had enough of San Diego apartment house living. A real estate agent brought them to Alpine. While Guenter, an attorney, went inside, Jutta remained outside admiring the view overlooking the valley.

"Come into the house and look," Guenter called.

"No need," said Jutta. "Let¹s take it."

Jutta enjoyed freezing the juice from her oranges for a year-round supply, canning peaches and making kumquat jams, but construction of dense boxy apartments in the town area of Alpine caused her concern. How long would it be before the beautiful community became indistinguishable from San Diego itself?

With some prompting, she decided to run in 1992 for the Alpine Planning Group. She remembers the date precisely because her name was on the same ballot as those of the first President George Bush and his challenger Bill Clinton. One of her Gentile supporters, fearing there were anti-Semites in the area, asked her if she were prepared for the possibility of obscene
phone calls or crosses being burned on her lawn.

Jutta's family had been one of the few Jewish families that had remained in their homes in Berlin throughout the entire nazi period, including World War II. There were about 1,200 Jews, living in the shadow of Hitler's government buildings, who lived under various discriminatory restrictions but were never deported from their homes. Guenter also came from a German family, one that had fled to Shanghai, China, to escape nazi persecution.

"We both decided that if Hitler couldn¹t get rid of us, I certainly wasn¹t going to let a few rednecks in Alpine do likewise, so I did run (for office) and I enjoyed the process very much," Jutta said.

There were no untoward incidents during the campaign— the friend's  warning, though well-intentioned, proved unnecessary. "There were six positions and I came in seventh," Jutta said. The showing was quite respectable, as it was in the middle of what was approximately a 14-person field.

Her appetite for civic affairs thus whetted, Jutta next became involved in the local Friends of the Library branch, eventually becoming the organization's president.

"We had a program of grandparent readings, so twice a week I went to read to the little children, and interestingly enough, when it was Chanukah, they would have books on Chanukah sent to the library, and Pesach, books on Pesach. And people checked them out; there were several Jewish families living there then."

Guenter meanwhile became involved on the board of the Alpine Community Center, which offers programs for Alpiners ranging in age from preschoolers to seniors.

"Each year they had a formal fundraising event called 'Christmas Calling' and I participated in that — not the Christmas part, just the calling," said Guenter. "It was a dinner dance with an auction."
All the while, the Cohns remained active members of Tifereth Israel Synagogue in the San Carlos area of San Diego. Guenter had served years before as one of the Conservative congregation's presidents.

Occasionally, Alpine Jews would meet each other at the market or the community center, and the idea of starting their own chavurah would come up. However, the level of religious observance of the potential members varied too greatly to make the idea attractive in Guenter's eyes. Furthermore, he added (as almost all Alpiners will), it really isn't that far from Alpine to San Diego. "It was only 30 miles to my (law) office downtown, and only 22 miles to Tifereth."

Eventually, however, the Cohns decided to leave Alpine and return to the San Carlos/Del Cerro area. As they got older, they decided a one-story house would be more practical, and that San Carlos/Del Cerro would be closer to medical facilities.

Also, Guenter conceded, they wanted to live in a more Jewish area.

Llamas on the Worm Farm
Oscar and Olga Worm closed down their San Carlos-area catering business and moved to a five-acre farm in Alpine four years ago. Like the Penners and the Cohns before them, they soon began producing some of their own food.

In one of their gardens, they grow lettuce, beets, turnips, radishes, carrots, dill, spinach, beans, cilantro, strawberries and soybeans. In another, corn is the predominant crop. In a large coop, they keep hens whose eggs they sell at the local market.

However, the Worm Farm— they make the joke about their name before anyone else is tempted to— is more famous in Alpine for the llamas that Oscar and Olga keep as pack animals that can ply the trails of the nearby Cleveland National Forest.

"A Jewish family raising llamas? That must be unique," I commented to Olga. "Apparently not that unique," she replied. "There¹s a company in Escondido called My Yiddishe Llama!"

Although the llamas occasionally are rented to other companies that offer rides for children, for the most part they wile their time away at the Worm Farm three miles east of Alpine. As an Israeli might say, lama lo? (Why not?) They are doing their bit to help the ecology.

Oscar explained that he grows his vegetables organically, meaning "no foreign chemicals, no commercial fertilizers, no commercial insecticides. I just go through and pick off the bugs by hand or live with it," he said.

He feeds leftover produce to the llamas, which in turn produce the manure he uses for fertilizer. "It's the cycle of life," says Oscar. "I like to recycle stuff; it's my personal rendition of how life ought to be."

He points to black plastic sheets that screen some of his fields. When he found the material, he said, "it was all along the side of the roads and they used it when they were putting in the fiber optics. All they were going to do was take that stuff and pitch it into landfill. So I said, 'Well, give
it to me and I will use it.'"

Oscar grew up 50 years ago in the Mission Gorge area of San Diego, near the Old San Diego Mission. At the time, dairy farms predominated in the area where Kaiser Permanente now has its main hospital. In summers, his father and mother would go to Wisconsin to spend time on a farm.

"Some people like downtowns; I just like to be in a rural atmosphere," Oscar said. "Once we moved out here, I wondered what I would do with the land, so I decided to grow stuff. It's not practical, you can't earn a living at it, but you can spend $100 a month and go to a spa and get sweaty, or you can spend the same $100, get the same exercise and then get to eat organic
vegetables. Mostly, I guess, this is my organic spa."

Olga, the Jewish half of the couple, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., but as an 8-year-old moved to Pocatello, Idaho. While she didn¹t live on a farm, she lived in such proximity to them that she became familiar with their rhythms.

When she came to San Diego, she worked as a Hebrew school teacher, later opened her own shoe store, and later still opened Becker's Catering with Oscar.

Having been involved in Jewish life in Pocatello, Olga continued her involvement in San Diego. She joined the Sisterhood of Tifereth Israel Synagogue and the San Diego chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. Eventually, she rose to the presidency of both organizations.

Olga said one of her claims to fame was being the only Sisterhood president to be pregnant during her term of office. Her second daughter, Marla, and first son, Scott, were born during that period, delighting other members of the board, who were mostly grandmothers. With her oldest daughter, Lara, then of elementary school age, the Sisterhood board members enjoyed passing
the children around.

"I had a play pen set up in the social hall, so when I was setting out cookies for Shabbat, my kids all thought they had 50 grandmas."

Olga's NCJW presidential term was completed earlier this year. A Jewish advocacy group for women, children and education issues, NCJW every so often sends delegations to Washington to lobby members of Congress for liberal legislation. Each NCJW member speaks to her own representative in Congress, and as an Alpine resident Olga drew Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon).

A highlight for Olga was a debate that lasted 90 minutes with the conservative congressman, in his office, on the subject of abortion as well as her desire that more federal money be spent for day care for children.

She said Hunter took the position that women should remain at home with
their children.

Daughter Marla Worm this year graduated both from Granite Hills High School and from the evening High School of Jewish Studies, operated by the Agency for Jewish Education. Asked what it's like being a Jewish teen in Alpine, she responded: "I love living up here. The
only thing I don't like is that it is so far away from everything. If I didn't have to go down to civilization, I would love it, but I don¹t like riding back and forth."

Many of Marla¹s friends are from Tifereth Israel Synagogue and Hebrew High School — friends that she has had all her life. Others from Granite Hills High School are curious to learn about Jewish customs.

"We had a Chanukah party up here one night," remembered Olga, "and Marla was the only Jewish one. They played dreidel all night, ate latkes, learned Jewish expressions, sang the songs and the prayers, and they were thrilled to learn it."

For Marla, suggested Olga, being raised in Alpine is similar to what Olga experienced growing up in Pocatello. Having to explain about Judaism to non-Jewish neighbors "was what made me so active in the Jewish community to begin with. In Brooklyn, we weren¹t ... everyone was Jewish."

The Worms and a foster child, Heather, 16, are active performing in a show that they produced recalling the old USO shows for servicemen. Like Oscar, Heather is living a Jewish lifestyle but has not converted.