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On Sunday, September 29, the Jewish new year known as Rosh Hashanah will kick off the High Holy Days, the most important holidays in the Jewish calendar. But if you go looking for a temple in Mountain View you won’t find one.
That doesn’t mean that Jews in Mountain View don’t practice their religion, just that they, like many others all over the South Bay Peninsula region, have to drive to a neighboring city to come together with those who share their faith. The San Francisco Bay Area has the fourth largest Jewish community in the United States according to the Jewish Community Federation (JCF) and within the region, Santa Clara County has the highest concentration of people who identify as Jewish.
So, where do Mountain View Jews pray? According to Jewish faith and community leaders, it’s nearby in Palo Alto, Los Altos and Los Altos Hills.
According to Ellen Bob, executive director of Etz Chaim, and Rabbi David Booth of Kol Emeth, which are both in Palo Alto, understanding the dearth of synagogues in Mountain View is a matter of studying history and migration in the Bay Area.
Bob said that Jewish people first arrived in California in waves during the Gold Rush. One hundred years later, the promise of jobs, affordable housing and sense of community pushed them south to the Peninsula, she said, where the growth of the aeronautics and engineering industries attracted those with advanced degrees.
The post-World War II housing boom pushed more families into the suburbs, and those who sought connection and community looked to establish their households where Jews were already settling, in Palo Alto. A Jewish day school and a high school was established in the Palo Alto city limits. Education, Bob said, “is everything to us,” a central tenet of Jewish life.
Rabbi Heath Watenmaker of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills said, “I think there is something really powerful about coming together. In Judaism, gathering as a community is core to Jewish practice and Jewish life. You can’t really be a Jew alone.”
Rabbi Booth said that city limits pose little deterrent for families to attend services — of the families that belong to the Kol Emeth congregation, only one-third live in Palo Alto.
Rabbi Watenmaker’s congregation, which was also the first congregation in the area, is composed of families from all over the South Bay Peninsula region.
Watenmaker said that more of their younger families live in Mountain View, due in part to the cost of housing in the region as well as the availability of homes.
Though families are willing to drive to the secluded synagogue, Watenmaker and other congregation leaders are working to establish satellite programing in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and San Jose where an increasing number of their congregants live.
Rabbi Watenmaker said that during the High Holy Days Beth Am rents a more centrally-located space where all of the congregants can gather at one time. “It’s really powerful to see 2,000 to 3,000 people engaged in prayer and reflection; seeing the size of our community,” Watenmaker said.
Melissa Dinwiddie, a resident of Mountain View who attends services in Palo Alto at Etz Chaim, said she questioned her Jewish identity growing up. Dinwiddie appreciates that members are diverse in their personal practice of Judaism.
But if in the 1960s and 70s families could easily move to Palo Alto with the promise of an affordable home, excellent schools and a dependable job, this is no longer the case.
The housing crisis affects younger parents with less established incomes and a similar desire to provide a robust life for their children. And even more established families are being impacted by the cost of living, and having to make, as Rabbi Booth said, “a very wrenching decision” about whether to struggle to remain in one’s faith community, or move, and provide a more economically stable life for their family.
The newest waves of Jewish migration to the Midpeninsula is from Israel. Tova Birnbaum, Director of Jewish Content at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto, said that the first wave of Israelis arrived in the 1980s to take part in the tech boom, and again in the 2000s and once more now.
Israelis moving into the area bring a new perspective and energy to the existing Jewish communities, Birnbaum said, and because there are more housing opportunities in the South Bay areas like San Jose and Los Gatos, the new families are a part of the driving forces behind Jewish community growth outside of Palo Alto.
Birnbaum said that Israelis seek out religious communities at Beth Am and Kol Emeth. As congregations grow to accommodate those who come from vastly different culturally Jewish environments, they adapt their sense of Judaism, and in turn, Israelis may learn to Americanize their sense of Jewishness. There is room for all forms of Judaism in the community, said Birnbaum: “There are so many ways to be Jewish.”
Ray Levy-Uyeda is a former newsroom intern for the Voice.
Ray Levy-Uyeda is a former newsroom intern for the Voice.
Ray Levy-Uyeda is a former newsroom intern for the Voice.
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We are so fortunate on the Peninsula to have several vibrant Jewish congregations, each with its own practices and culture, and no territoriality. We cooperate with and support each other, including doing joint programs at various times during the year. This is not the case in many other communities and is a testament to the hard work of creating community among some of our foremost rabbis over the past 30 years or so.
(BTW, Congregation Etz Chayim is spelled with a “y”.)