Vallejo synagogue hosts three-day celebration of Sephardic history

Solano County’s oldest (and, for more than a century, only) synagogue owes its existence in large part to the small but mighty Jewish community of the Greek island of Rhodes.

That history will be outlined in a 40- to 45-minute presentation by Dr. Michael Policar during a planned several-day event celebrating the 75th anniversary of Vallejo’s Congregation B’nai Israel’s synagogue building.

Like most U.S. Jewish congregations, the 100-plus-year-old Vallejo group was founded mostly by Ashkenazi Jews who came here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But about a third of the Vallejo temple’s founders came from Rhodes, which, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, was home to a Jewish community for 2,300 years.

Oral tradition has it that Roman-era Jews settled on Rhodes after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD, and some say even earlier than that, according to Israel Hayom.

Rhodes’ Jewish community became mostly Sephardic when those fleeing the Spanish Inquisition arrived, and the synagogue in Rhodes, Kahal Shalom, Greece’s oldest functioning synagogue, was built in 1575. Earlier ones were destroyed.

The Rhodes Jewish community was rendered all but extinct on July 20, 1944, when all of the island’s 2,000 Jews were deported. Only 151 Jews from Rhodes survived the Holocaust.

Currently, some 40 Jews live on the island, according to the Jewish Virtual Library.

Ralph Pierce of American Canyon is nearly the spitting image of his maternal grandfather Raphael Pizante, who left Rhodes’ Jewish quarter in

1907 at age 13 and, after earning his fare by selling cigarettes and sandwiches to miners in Turkey, left for America at 15. After arriving in New York, he made his way across the United States, going from synagogue to synagogue washing dishes for room and board. He eventually landed in Vallejo and became one of CBI’s founders. Pierce and his children and grandchildren remain affiliated with the congregation that Pizante helped found.

Policar said that while CBI’s services are done in the Ashkenazi or Israeli styles, at least one Rhodes-inspired tradition survives — the technique for blowing the shofar, the ritual musical instrument made from a ram’s horn.

“My uncle, Albert Abouaf, was the shofar blaster at CBI starting in the 1930s,” said Policar, a professor emeritus of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at University of San Francisco School of Medicine.

By 1967, Abouaf was no longer able to do it and Policar became his protégé – a responsibility he took seriously, he said.

“Regardless of where I was living (in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York), I was able to return to CBI for the High Holidays and blow the shofar almost every year for the past

56 years,” he said. “When I was an Ob-Gyn resident at UCLA, I was a member of the Rhodes Sephardic synagogue in Los Angeles and saw first-hand how different the Rhodes liturgy was from what I was used to. Even the way that I blow the shofar is the Rhodesstyle that I learned in L.A.”

CBI’s 75th synagogue anniversary celebration is scheduled to last three days, with a Jewish-centered catered community gathering event on Thursday, April 20, to include tours of the synagogue, including the courtyard murals, the library and the sanctuary with its beautiful tree of life, glass and sand windows created and installed by Geraldine Ensminger in 1999. An exhibit of historical documents is also planned, and Solano County dignitaries including past and present elected officials are expected to attend.

In addition, a reception is planned for Sunday, April 23 to include Jewish/Israeli-centric catered hor d’oeuvres and entertainment in addition to the Policar presentation and historical documents exhibit. It is also hoped to be a reunion of past religious school students and their families and others.

If

Evening Bible Study.....7:00 PM www.vacavillecofc.com