Apr 30th 2008, 00:00

This is our last month of the Religious School year. I think I say it every year, but it’s true – it seems like it was just September and we were being reunited after a long summer vacation. Yet, here we are again, recounting the months of Jewish growth and kvelling at how much our students have grown in their knowledge as well as their pride of Jewish identity.

This year ends with the hope of an exciting future for our school. It hopefully won’t be too much longer until we begin the long awaited construction of The Asa Center for Lifelong Jewish Learning. We will pack up the books and supplies that have occupied the upstairs building, and we will look forward to helping them find their new home in a real school building that has adequate storage and bookshelves.

As much as I can’t wait to say good-bye to the old building, I have to admit that those walls hold a lot of good memories for me. As a teen, that building was where I led my first junior congregation service and delivered a “sermon” during Religious School back when TBT was located in Brea. I served as a teacher’s aide for the 5^th grade and then 2^nd grade as a high schooler. Then when we moved to our current location, I had my office there as the Religious School secretary (you may remember our educators Dan Lenchner and then Cantor Eli Cohn z’l – I worked for them).

Returning to TBT in 1989 as the director of education, my office again was in the upstairs building until I assumed the responsibilities of temple administrator and moved to the main building. But my resources and school files are still in the upper building, and all that will need to be packed up and stored until our new building is completed.

It amazes me that such strong memories and feelings can be attached to a physical structure. It was May 1, 1959 when my family arrived in Orange County from Chicago. I was 6, and after a long week’s drive across country, we pulled into my uncle’s miniature golf course in Anaheim, and then were introduced to our new home/apartment. It took a few weeks for that place to feel like home. We joined the nearby synagogue, Temple Beth Emet. I started religious school the following September with Rita Mann as my teacher (I recently saw her at a community event – what a reunion!). I loved my Jewish education, but I never really felt at home in a synagogue until my family came to Temple Beth Tikvah in 1966. I guess it was love at first sight as we walked into our first Shabbat service and I saw choir members in robes with flowing blue sleeves – I just had to be one of them. From that moment on, TBT has been home, whether our sanctuary was at the YMCA, a renovated fraternity house, the room that now serves as our social hall, or our current sanctuary.

As much as the bricks and mortar serve as physical temple, it is important to remember that more than the structure, it is the community that really is what is important. It is the verbal greeting that we receive that is really the welcome mat. And it is the invitation for involvement that keeps us enveloped in the community. For years our theme has been “TBT – The Place to Be.” May it continue to be so for generations to come.