By Donald H. Harrison 

While Rabbi Monroe Levens drove the family's black Chevrolet from Oak Park Illinois, where he had served as spiritual leader of the West Suburban Jewish Center to his new post in San Diego, where he would lead Tifereth Israel Synagogue for nearly three decades, his wife, Lillian, passed kosher salami sandwiches from the front seat to their three boys—Jerry, Raphael and David—in the back seat.  

It was the summer of 1948 when there were few places to find kosher food in Middle America. It was a time without freeways, when cross-country car trips took a lot longer than they do today. From the boys' viewpoint, the long trip had benefits as well as disadvantages. The good thing about it was there was plenty of time to hear and rehear treasured family stories illustrating the great love the rabbi and rebbetzen had for each other.  

The drawback was that day after day kosher salami sandwiches can become tiring, no matter how good they are.  However, the resourceful Levens boys solved that problem. Whenever  both parents carefully watched the road ahead, Jerry, Raphael and David would slip their excess sandwiches to the family dog who rode  in the back seat with them.  You may take this as a maxim: Dogs never tire of kosher salami sandwiches.

One of the kids' favorite stories was the one about their parents' blind date in Minneapolis, where they had grown up. The rabbi-to-be took Lillian to see "Rose Marie" at the old Metropolitan, bought her a Hershey bar, and together they strolled on Xerxes Avenue.  Later, Lillian took the middle name "Xerxes."  

Another favorite tale they had their parents tell and retell was about the time when Monroe left Minneapolis to study for his ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary. A wealthy New Yorker engaged the rabbinical student to tutor his daughter—his very eligible daughter—and when Lillian heard about it, she suspected the New Yorker had a shiduch in mind. Not about to lose Monroe, Lillian—generations before Barbra Streisand played Yentl—put on boy's clothing, tucked her hair under a cap, and hitch-hiked safely to New York, where she thwarted the New Yorkers' amorous schemes.  Lillian and Monroe were married on June 28, 1931.

Jerry and Raphael recounted these stories and many more last night, but David, unfortunately, was unable to leave his home in Los Angeles for the occasion. The Levens' brothers' presentation immediately followed  regular Kabbalat Shabbat services at Tifereth Israel Synagogue at 6660 Cowles Mountain Blvd., the congregation's third physical home in its century of existence. 

The two brothers recalled that when their family arrived in San Diego, it was in time for their father to become the first rabbi in the congregation's second home at 30th and Howard Streets.  The congregation had been on its own journey up to that point, traveling geographically from its first home on 18th Street below Market Street and philosophically from the Orthodox movement to the Conservative movement.  Their father was the congregation's very first Conservative rabbi.  In the 57 years since becoming a Conservative institution, the synagogue has had only two other rabbis: the late Rabbi Aaron S. Gold, and its current spiritual leader, Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal.

The Levens boys excitedly set out to explore the new Tifereth Israel. They remembered finding a modernistic structure surrounded by weed fields, They were amazed that the ceiling boasting a huge Magen David stretched over the large sanctuary without any visible architectural means of support. "Clearly," quipped Raphael, speaking from the cantor's side of the bima, "this was a congregation founded on faith!"

Rabbi Levens' proved his reputation as a great orator when he delivered his first sermon on Rosh Hashanah of 1948.  His appeal that day helped raise $110,000 in pledges for the synagogue—an amount that nearly six decades later still sounds like quite a lot. In December of 1948, the rabbi officially was installed by Rabbi Jacob Kohn, dean of the graduate school of the University of Judaism. That same month saw the issuance of the inaugural edition of the Shofar, the monthly newsletter that the congregation has published ever since.

The religious school had no facility of its own, so classes were spread out through the sanctuary. Sunday school was attended by 245 students and Hebrew school by 65 students. The principal who presided over this was Leon Elkind—and here many in the Friday night audience began to chuckle with the memory. Elkind always made a point of telling the students his name should be stressed on the last syllable El-KIND. But that didn't stop him from rapping an errant student's knuckles with a ruler when he thought the occasion demanded.

Lillian Levens and the new Sisterhood—led by Lillian Newman and Anne Ratner—decided to stage a pageant called "The Jewish Home Beautiful" in which various scenes from a Jewish woman's life were created in the "living tableau" style so popular today at the Laguna Beach Festival of the Arts. Imagine, members made "a scene" in synagogue, and other congregants  looked on approvingly.  A great Christian friend and honorary member of Tifereth Israel Synagogue—George Scott—was so impressed with the production, he invited the ladies of Tifereth Israel to re-create it in the display windows of the Walker Scott  Department store downtown.  Thank goodness, there were plenty of mannequins to use in place of the Sisterhood members.

Jerry Levens, speaking from the rabbi's side of the bima,  recalled the great friendship his father enjoyed with the two other pulpit rabbis in the city at that time—Orthodox Rabbi Baruch Stern of Beth Jacob Congregation and Reform Rabbi Morton Cohn of Congregation Beth Israel. 

The sons recalled Rabbis Stern and Levens engaging at their home together in Torah study. They remembered the wonderful story-telling of Rabbi Cohn, whom they called "Uncle Mort."  The Levens' home near the synagogue also drew visiting rabbis of the three movements: the Levens kept kosher so the Orthodox and Conservatives were comfortable there, but they also were appreciative of the trends that were reshaping American Judaism, so the Reform likewise felt at home.  The trio of Stern, Levens and Cohn worked together on numerous project, and often helped officiate at each others simchas.

Once 20 members of the Southern California region of the Rabbinical Assembly of America came to the Levens' home for dinner, which Lillian had prepared in advance. However, she felt too ill to serve it, so left it to the boys to do.  In the kitchen, Raphael and David noticed that no soup had been prepared, and doesn't every Shabbat dinner start with soup?  So one ran to the home of congregant Joe Kader (whose son Bud smiled broadly in the audience) where they procured Mix #57, kosher split pea soup, which the company for which Kader worked, Bernard's Foods, prepared for the military and for people going on camping trips.  

The boys dumped the mix into a pot, heated it to the right temperature, poured into bowls, and proudly brought the course into the rabbis. After waiting an appropriate length of time, they returned to the table and found that all the rabbis had left the soup barely untouched.  They couldn't figure out why, until they tasted some in the kitchen.  "Forever after, Mix #57 became the codeword in our house for inedible," Jerry recalled.

The Levens brothers paid tribute to the congregation's first full-time cantor, Joseph Cysner, who built a mixed choir of men and women and brought a new level of spiritualism to Tifereth Israel. They recalled how in 1951 Tifereth Israel hosted the Vice President of the United States, Alben Barkley, at an Israel Bonds Dinner.  Just three years after the rebirth of Israel, Barkley proclaimed: that “in the midst of war and strife and the danger of tyranny, we free men can point with pride to the young nation of Israel as one of the hopeful signs for the future of humanity. The rebirth of Israel is so vital not merely for the preservation of large sections of the Jewish people, but for its example of the spiritual well-being and regeneration of mankind.”

Rabbi Levens endorsed the idea of a separate Jewish mausoleum at Greenwood Cemetery, and although among some Jews substituting above-ground crypts for graves in the ground is controversial, both Rabbis Stern and Cohn agreed to join Rabbi Levens in judging a contest for naming the mausoleum. Freida Mallen, whose family owned a furniture store on El Cajon Boulevard, submitted the winning name, Sholom Mausoleum.

In August of 1953, the synagogue dedicated a new educational building and social hall adjacent to the sanctuary building.  The new structure was designed by Milo Berenson, a congregant. Here, numerous clubs and activities flourished, as Rabbi Levens had hoped they would.  He was a believer in the idea that the synagogue should be the center of Jewish life, not just a place for prayer, but for study, recreation, cultural events.  Levens gave many speeches at the new center—as well as at numerous venues throughout San Diego and California on the issues of the day. Perhaps he gave too many speeches.  In 1955, he literally lost his voice.  He had to be treated by a renowned Beverly Hills specialist, Dr. Mervin Myerson, in whose waiting room he one day encountered another patient, Groucho Marx.

It was at this juncture in the story that Jerry and Raphael Levens lost their voices—well, sort of. Their stories had gone on for an hour following the conclusion of the 6:15 p.m. services, and Ralph Barnes, chairman for the evening and a past Tifereth Israel president, sensed that sentiment among the congregants was divided. Some members wanted the Levens' brothers to continue their story right to the end of their father's tenure in the late 1970's; others were more attuned to the calls of their stomachs. Those in the latter category  knew that the Sisterhood had laid out goodies for one of its celebrated oneg Shabbats.  Heck, some people were so hungry they gladly would have traded places with the dog in the back seat of the old Chevrolet to get at one of those kosher salami sandwiches! 

So, as such things happen in those synagogues where love and pragmatism co-rule, a compromise was struck.  The Levens brothers agreed to return to the pulpit on the first available date, perhaps in February, to finish the story of the "Life and Times of Monroe and Lillian Levens."  Everyone went cheerfully into the Cohen Social Hall. where, as in many happy Jewish stories, everyone got themselves a nice nosh.