There are no wooden faces when ‘model’ grandpa takes the bimah

There was a moment during Josh Meltzer's bar mitzvah when the congregation let out a collective gasp.

It wasn't a Berkeley earthquake rattling the foundation of the seismically challenged synagogue at 1630 Bancroft Way.

Josh himself didn't think there was anything particularly earthshaking about his reading of the first four sections of the Torah portion (Numbers 1:1-4:20) or his speech after the Haftarah ("Each tribe can't exist by themselves; they are dependent on each other").

And there certainly wasn't anything shocking about the way the son of Faith and Ross Meltzer of El Cerrito was dressed on May 26 (black pinstriped suit, white shirt).

In fact, at the precise moment of the congregants' sharp intake of breath, it was the 13-year-old's grandfather who was on the bimah, and he had just unveiled something astonishing.

Leon Steinberg of Flushing, N.Y. -- a former woodworker and carpenter for the city of New York and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and a builder of ships, boats and buildings -- had been making models since he was a teenager. Now, for members of Beth Israel, the 78-year-old carpenter had made a miniature, wooden version of the congregation they were planning to construct.

"We had this Styrofoam model, and it was hard to be inspired by it. It was really sterile, and it had no soul," said his daughter, Faith Meltzer. "It was obvious it had to be in wood. We needed something that had more soul. I knew my father could do it."

Termites had gnawed the foundation of the 77-year-old Orthodox shul. Damage from the Loma Prieta temblor meant a seismic upgrade was necessary. So, the 200-household members decided it was time to raze and rebuild. They got the idea to copy a 17th century wooden synagogue burnt by the Nazis in Przedborz, Poland. Steinberg's 1-1/2- by-2-foot replica gave Beth Israel's congregants a glimpse of their future.

"He was inspired by the project, too," said his daughter. "It was just beautiful seeing everyone's reaction. He got on the bimah and unveiled it, and everyone just gasped. Silence, and then surprise, then a gasp the whole congregation in unison made."

The model is an important way for the synagogue to sell the idea of the new 8,000 square-foot structure to potential funders. According to Rabbi Yair Silverman, congregants have raised $2 million. Now they must campaign for the $3 million more needed to break ground in spring 2002.

Silverman said the synagogue sent out 125 applications for grants from various foundations, both national and international. "We're very excited," he said, but have "yet to receive confirmation of any bottom-line gifts."

That is, except for a grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Silverman declined to give the actual dollar amount but said it's "definitely in the mid-six figures."

Yet the sentiment of recreating a relic from a bygone era is priceless. There were "so many gorgeous synagogues; during the war, most of them were burned down, some with congregants inside them," said Faith Meltzer. "The only record of this one is an old photo and people's memories."

Erecting a replica of the 1690 Polish synagogue in Berkeley where modern Jews will gather is like establishing "almost a living monument to a vanished Jewish community," she added.

As if to prove today's community is alive and thriving, Josh, a 6-foot-1-inch, Tehiyah Day School seventh-grader, invited 40 kids and 20 adults to join him later that day aboard a ferry boat for a sunset cruise on the Bay. It was the culmination of a year's worth of work -- not only attending Hebrew classes two hours per week, but also showing up for all of his classmates' b'nai mitzvah, something that took up his "entire Saturday," he said. "Sunday, I sleep really late and make up for all the time I lost."

And, he's sort of a chip-off-the-old-block, but instead of model synagogues, he builds model rockets. He's got a 3-foot Aim-9 Sidewinder Missile sitting in the garage right now, waiting "till I can find a time to launch it," he said.

His grandfather's other gift to him has become Josh's bar mitzvah gift to the synagogue.

Made of plywood and individual pieces of wood, "the model is more or less a copy, modernized, of a Polish synagogue that was made in the 17th century," said Steinberg. "It's made of logs. It's a log cabin. That is what the shul wanted."

Because he couldn't go out and buy logs that were 3/32 of an inch in width, he had to make them himself and glue them together. "It took two months of all kinds of hours," he said; he doesn't know how many. He had to alternate the lightness and darkness of the logs so that they would stand out. "You can't show something that small without changing the colors."

Steinberg worked from a blueprint given to him by the synagogue. "I decided to do it," said the carpenter. "I thought...my kids could grow up and say, 'You see that, Mom? Zayde made it.'"