Encinitas, CA (Special) -- Of the 700 families which belong to Temple Solel, one or possibly two actually were born and raised in the Encinitas area, according to Rabbi David Frank. Everybody else moved to the small coastal city in northern San Diego County from somewhere else. 

Robin Rubin, administrator of the Reform congregation, said the fact that almost everyone has roots somewhere else has given the synagogue a special purpose. It is not just a place to pray, she says. "We are everyone's second family." 

For example, said Frank, "there is a woman right now who had a very serious surgery. We have a complete telephone network to stay in communication with her, to offer her prayers and offer her support, and to take care of her son because she is a single parent mom. 

"There is a real caring about the needs of our Temple members and we try very hard to meet them," the rabbi added. "We have matched up people for employment. ...We have made shidduchim (matches) here where husbands and wives have found each other here and the community has been privileged to be part of the celebration." 

The rabbi said that Rubin knows every family that belongs to the Temple and can greet each of them by name at High Holiday services. About Ellen Fox, director of the 600-student school, he said: "She meets every week with a religious school family and she takes their picture and she puts it up onto this big board in her office. 

"The reason that we have so many kids going to Israel is that Ellen personally calls every seventh grade family, and we are talking about 70 phone calls here, to explain to them the scholarship program and the savings program we have for Israel, and to encourage them to participate." 

The congregation also is an advocate of Jewish summer camps and weekend retreats for its youth. As an indication of the feeling of community, Frank said, "the owner of Milton's Deli in Del Mar -- David and Ginger Levy, they are members here -- he called me and gave us money to send kids to summer camp. Forty-two scholarships were given for this summer to go to camp. We publicized it, that there was a $250 scholarship available, first come, first serve. He received a stack of thank you notes. He said the family sat around the dinner table one night just reading those notes." 

Fox and Rubin were instrumental in creating a Chavurah Chesed (Kindness Friendship Group). "We will take the key of the home of a family who has lost a loved one, and we have a whole list of people who are called, and they prepare a meal of condolence," Frank said. "It is brought by a group of volunteers to a home; it is set up, and when that family comes back from the funeral, a complete meal is there waiting--all cooked by our congregation." 

Volunteerism also is evident in the school. For 8th and 9th grade students, who are post bar/ bat mitzvah, Fox said, "there is an elective program that is taught both by teachers and by Temple members who just love to teach but aren't necessarily teachers. 

"For example," the school director added, "I have a doctor who teaches Jewish biomedical ethics; a lawyer who teaches Jewish law; a woman who is a gourmet cook who teaches Jewish cooking. We have a couple of artists in the congregation and they teach Jewish art." 

Assistant Rabbi Ted Riter developed a program for Temple Solel youth who have gone on to college. He sends them e-mail on a regular basis, and also sends them packages for significant Jewish holidays. 

Creating this sense of "family" and "community" requires a relatively large staff, Frank said. "Most 700-family congregations don't have (besides a rabbi) an assistant rabbi, a full time-cantor, full-time administrator, full-time school director, full-time Hebrew School administrator, full-time preschool director, and, soon, a full-time youth director." 

Like a cruise line which advertises its high ratio of staff to passengers, Temple Solel similarly operates on the philosophy that to deliver services requires plenty of hardworking personnel. 

"I would say that is to the credit of our lay leadership," said Frank. "They are firmly committed now to the idea that we are not here to make money, to make a profit, but that every dime that we take in needs to go back into serving our members and strengthening their Jewishness." 

When newcomers come to the Temple and are feeling tentative, Rubin said, "I say to them 'you know you don't have to pay any money to go to services; come and join us any Friday night.'" 

"The doors of Temple Solel are open to everyone," Frank said, building upon Rubin's theme. "There is very little that a non-member doesn't have access to. The only thing is the High Holy Days and that is only because we have a major space restraint. We have to do double services." 

The rabbi said "there is a little bit of a misnomer in our Jewish community about how expensive it is to belong to a synagogue or to participate in communal life." 

In fact, he said, "most programs are open and accessible to people who aren't members, who are just passing through or who want to come in. But what it comes down to is that everyone has a basic desire to give something, to contribute. I have found that time and time again, people will say 'Robin I have to pay; I have to be a member; I have to join' because they are excited about the community and they have to be a part of it." 

The sense of community is emphasized both in Friday night and Saturday morning Shabbat services, according to Frank. Whereas some congregations like to have outside lecturers come and talk on Friday nights, Temple Solel prefers to reserve most Friday night services for congregational singing led by Cantor Kathy Robbins and for prayers and readings led sometimes by Rabbis Frank and Riter and other times by various members of the congregation.   Frank said that the egalitarian congregation is more "traditional" than "classical" in its adherence to Reform Judaism, meaning that it tends to utilize a lot of Hebrew prayers and songs during its services, and that kippot and tallitot (skull caps and prayer shawls) are donned on a voluntary basis throughout the congregation.  Recently, Frank received compliments from Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the former president of the

Sanctuary at Temple Solel in Encinitas

Union of American Hebrew Congregations, on how participatory Saturday morning services at the congregation are. In relaying Schindler's compliments, Rabbi Janet Marder, coordinator for Reform Judaism's Southwest region, said Schindler wanted to know especially "how did you develop congregational prayer on Shabbat morning, certainly not the norm in Reform Temples." More specifically, she asked, "How did you resist the tendency to privatize b'nai mitzvah?" 

By that, Marder referred to the tendency in some congregations to turn the entire service over to the family of the bar/ bat mitzvah, with every reading, Torah blessing, Ark opening and other honors given to family members of the celebrant. While such a process may please the bar/ bat mitzvah family, it also can tend to make non-related members of the congregation feel like outsiders. 

Frank said that "I am very process oriented and I would never ... by decree implement a change. There has to be a process behind it. Changing our approach to Shabbat morning involved forming a spirituality task force that met for two years with members of the congregation to flesh out what the changes would be, to try them out on a trial basis when there was no bar or bat mitzvah, and ultimately we were able to craft a Shabbat service that is congregationally oriented rather than exclusively for a bar/ bat mitzvah family." 

Although members of the family receive honors, they do not receive all of them and the bar mitzvah ceremony is incorporated into the morning service, rather than vice versa, Frank explained. 

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When Frank succeeded Rabbi Lenore Bohm as the rabbi at Temple Solel in 1991, the congregation had approximately 400 family members. "It was on the cusp of becoming large," Frank said. 

Having served as an assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y., for two years, and then as associate rabbi for six years at Temple Beth Hillel in North Hollywood, CA., Frank brought to Temple Solel the experience of having worked in large congregations. 

One of the differences between large and small congregations is that the larger ones need "more organizational structure," Frank said. "Policies have to be in place, decisions can't be arbitrary, and there have to be established procedures so that it is fair to everyone. 

"When it is a small congregation and there are 13 bar mitzvahs a year, you can make all kinds of changes. If people don't want a family service that night, it is not big deal. It is easy to accommodate 13 families. Now, we have 70 bar mitzvahs a year. You can't accommodate 70 families in exactly the same way. You have to set up ground rules that are fair for everybody, so that the dating procedures are uniform for everybody and no one feels that another family or another Temple member got greater consideration than they did." 

Yet, even though there is more organizational structure, Frank said, it is important to "make sure that it doesn't become impersonal. " 

Frank had grown up in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, where he was a member of Temple Judea, a Reform congregation in Tarzana. His first rabbi was Hans Hirschberg, who had immigrated from Germany to the United States during the 1930s. His next rabbi was Steve Jacobson, who recently served as part of Rev. Jesse Jackson's mission to Yugoslavia to win the release of three American POWs. 

The synagogue of Frank's youth was not a very "hamische" place, but Frank said that his parents, Harrison and Barbara Frank, more than made up for the lack of warmth with their "decision to have a strongly Jewish home."  "It was really to my mom's credit because she put it all together," Frank recalled. "Every Friday night, we had a Shabbat table set with a white table cloth. All the blessings were recited, and each and every holiday was celebrated in the home. She bought the full arsenal to bear on it, from decorations in the home to buying records and tapes.

Rabbi David Frank

Appropriate holiday music and all the various foods and customs were part of it." 

Frank's younger brother, Paul, after studying in Israel went on to become Orthodox. "His background is math and science, so he works in that world of computers and mathematics and so forth, and he is at Johns Hopkins setting up programming for their research." But "Judaism became the central element of his life, and we have had a lot of interesting discussions. He is quite learned now." 

Despite differences between Orthodox and Reform observance, "my brother and I have a wonderful relationship and what I appreciate most about my brother is that he believes first and foremost in the principle of shalom bayit (peace in the home). ..." 

Whatever the ritual differences between them, Frank said, "we always work it out: we are able to eat together, we are able to do everything together." 

Their sister, Rusty, became a professional tap and swing dance teacher as well as an ecological activist. "She took Russian in college and she was with Greenpeace when the Russians were doing whaling, and she would go out in dinghies and speak to them with a megaphone and try to dissuade them in Russian from their unecological practices." 

Frank majored in religious studies at UC Santa Cruz and later was ordained by Hebrew Union College in New York as a rabbi. 

"What distinguishes Temple Solel from the synagogue of my childhood is that I think we are truly...an open, accepting place and that is a comment I hear so often from our members," Frank said. "They feel Solel is completely inclusive. That is not to say that we don't maintain boundaries and that we don't make ritual distinctions between Jews and non-Jews but it is done in a very sensitive way and it is done in a most inclusive way, and done in a way that respects everyone and respects our approach to Jewish tradition." 

Estimating that about 30 percent of the congregation is comprised of intermarried families, Frank said he tells such couples that it is important for them to make Judaism the exclusive religion in their home. He said he tells parents that "in any other important area of their lives, parents would have to be united and reflect one position, even if behind closed doors they disagree. When it comes to bedtimes for a child, one parent doesn't say 9 p.m., and the other parent say 8, because what you are effectively saying is that the child doesn't have a bed time. When it comes to expectations of behavior, one parent doesn't say, 'it is okay to hit,' and the other doesn't say 'don't hit,' because then there would be no rules about hitting. 

When it comes to a religion, parents also need to be united or otherwise the message is that 'you, as a child, don't have a religion.'" 

The non-Jewish spouse can take an introduction to Judaism course with Rabbi Riter, and an additional six-week study program is available with Rabbi Frank. There is a reading list available of books that are stocked both in Temple Solel's library and its gift shop. Additionally, "we have many chavarot (friendship groups) in our congregation--I think we have over 20 chavarot, and I definitely encourage all of our families to associate with a chavarah. And that is a good way to develop a Jewish support group." 

Still, there have been issues. One family insisted on giving their child a Hebrew name that referred to the names of both the Jewish parent and the non-Jewish parent. Frank said for the purpose of Hebrew naming, the child could only be identified as the child of the Jewish parent "because we view that Hebrew name as the covenantal name... the name by which they are called to Torah, the name by which they are ultimately buried, the name that will be inscribed on their ketubah (marriage contract) and it is the name that links them to every life cycle event and the Jewish people. And the non-Jewish parent is not part of that covenant." 

The family left Temple Solel in protest, and "it was sad for us, heart wrenching for me not to be able to convey it in a way that was satisfactory, but that is the tight rope we walk, especially in the Reform movement, maintaining appropriate boundaries and at the same time being inclusive," Frank said. 

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Because the congregation has outgrown its present home at 552 S. El Camino Real, it now is planning to build a new facility on what is now a vacant lot at the corner of El Camino Real and Manchester. 

What Frank estimates will be a $12 million capital campaign has not begun yet, but planning for the facility has involved many congregants. The concept "is one that is very congruent with Temple Solel, which means that the entire building is designed to create a sense of community," Frank said. 

"There is going to be one central hub to the building which will serve as a meeting place, and it will be the unifying feature of the whole building. Anyone going to any program, whether they are seniors, religious school students, pre-school students, will be walking through this central area and meeting each other," the rabbi added. 

"Right off the center will be a coffee house where people can just go and sit and relax with each other, a library, and a gift shop, and also hallways leading to all the other buildings." Whereas the present facility is about 15,000 square feet, the new facility will be about 50,000 square feet, Frank said. 

The architect is Ron Goldman, who recently completed the new campus for the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. 

"We convened focus groups in our congregation, a whole series of focus groups, where people gave their input," Frank said. 

"We had very consistent input from the focus groups: they wanted simplicity, warmth and accessibility for the seniors," he said. 

And there was one other word that the congregants stressed over and over again, according to Frank. They felt it important to maintain and build upon the sense of "community."