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![Text Box: Article from OC Jewish Life—September 2008
Rabbi Goldfarb sets high mark at Temple Beth Ohr
-Harriette Ellis
Genuine Celebration
The weekend of September 12 portends to be a highly anticipated moment in the life of La Mirada’s Temple Beth Ohr when Rabbi Mark Goldfarb officially accepts the spiritual leadership of the temple from soon-to-be Rabbi Emeritus Lawrence Goldmark.
As the eighth rabbi of the 50-year-old Reform synagogue, Goldfarb is already serving the congregation with his hallmarks: a welcoming smile, an endearing hug, and an infectious enthusiasm that reveals his love of people, Judaism, and teaching.
Located in a cozy corner of LaMirada, surrounded with trees and accessible streets, the temple, originally started as a Jewish community center, is now undergoing some renovation, so when Rabbi Goldfarb and I met, he felt it necessary to apologize for his office — obviously in some disarray. “This is our phase two operation,” he said cheerfully, feeling no discomfort at the temporary disorder. “Number one is almost complete. And phase two and three” are soon to come with remodeling of the sanctuary and bimah, he explained.
He was anxious to tell me about the programs that are ongoing or will begin in the fall, such as, the religious school adding a new Hebrew class based on the Union for Reform Judaism’s Mitkadem method whereby students learn Hebrew at their own pace with online support and “offering kids a greater flexibility to learn Hebrew,” he said, “with a whole multi-media opportunity.” A senior activity program provides book reviews, field trips (recently to the Skirball in Los Angeles), and other such gatherings, while its adult education program sponsors a yearly lecture series.
While there for only a few months, Goldfarb is already familiar with everything going on. “Our sisterhood has been tremendously busy all through the years, and it’s vital and vigorous.” The brotherhood, he said, is in the process of “rejuvenating itself,” with baseball and bowling in the plans. He’s particularly proud of the youth programs that include a youth choir and youth band, as well as an adult choir, which performs during services under the direction of Cantor Shannon McGrady Bane, a vested cantor. Both Goldfarb and Bane teach in the religious school, he noted.
“One of the things that attracted me [to come] here is the genuineness of the congregants; they want to be together and to celebrate their Judaism,” he continued. “We have great teachers, some teaching in the public schools and colleges in the area. We offer a comfortable, intimate setting, with about 200 family households. This is a small city,” but the congregants come from all over – from La Mirada, Whittier, La Habra, Cerritos, Anaheim, Anaheim Hills, Long Beach, and Orange, he pointed out.
In order to accommodate members and attract new ones, Rabbi Goldfarb said the synagogue instituted a pre-service oneg where people can come in right from work — “if they get off early enough, they can have a bit of a nosh, eat some cheese and crackers, and enjoy some wine or soft drinks, a friendly nosh to tied them over [the service], which we start at 7 p.m. We finish at 8, then bless the challah, have some wine during another oneg and some schmoozing, and then they are on their way home – early!”
But Goldfarb didn’t come to these ideas right from rabbinical school. “For five years I sat in the sanctuary as a congregant, before serving as a congregational rabbi,” so he feels he knows both sides of the fence, so to speak. “I know both sides of the congregation, and I believe I can better serve my congregation [with this experience]. I have a different view of the rabbinate.”
He graduated from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1991. Prior to his rabbinic training, and after his undergraduate years at OSU, he worked in the family retail business in Dayton for a while. Then he turned to the food industry, working in fine dining in upscale restaurants. “I became a maitre d’,” he chuckled. “It wasn’t your normal route to being a rabbi.” During that time he helped start a hospice in Columbus, revealing a propensity to giving service. In the early eighties, and married, at a time of depression across the U.S. and with no job on the horizon, he and his wife Deborah packed up and left for Europe, Greece, and ultimately Israel, where the two lived on a kibbutz for five months. There the seeds sprouted, he reflected.
Upon the couple’s return, Goldfarb enrolled in rabbinical school, but that was no shock to his friends when he announced his decision, since he had often thought of being a teacher. After living in Israel, “I wanted to be reconnected to my Judaism. It was always important, but I never found a way to manifest it.”
Early in Goldfarb’s rabbinical life, he explored the chaplaincy, enrolling in advance training with 1,600 hours of internship required. “ For the last five-and-a-half years, I worked in hospitals, hospices, and prisons, and most recently at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange. It was intense.” He is now a boardcertified chaplain. “My own teachings have changed dramatically over the years,” he said, due to his many experiences as a chaplain.
Now, much of what he uses on the bimah comes from his experience as a chaplain, and having prayed with Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, as well as Jews. “In the hospital we prayed at the drop of a hat. I find that human suffering is the great equalizer. Just how broad that suffering really is. People going into and out of surgery” — they all have faith, then he was reminded of the old military saying: “There are no agnostics in a foxhole.”
He’s convinced that everyone has faith of some kind – even those who protest that they have no faith. In his earnest desire to make worship more meaningful, he explained why his congregants “don’t just read the prayers. Sometimes we have a brief discussion right in the middle of a service. I want [my] congregation to experience the prayers.”
“Judaism,” he offered, “doesn’t provide answers to challenges [we face]. It invites us into the struggle whereby we search for the answers. And God says, I am here to wrestle with you in your search.”
In his 17 years in the rabbinate Goldfarb has served as rabbi to congregations in Texas, Michigan, and Ohio, and more recently as interim rabbi at Temple Israel of Long Beach. He and his wife, Deborah, who is the executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Long Beach and West Orange County, are the parents of Arielle, 20, Benjamin,18, and Micah, 13.](image577.gif)
