A fund to help rebuild the ravages of a June 18 arson attack at three Sacramento-area synagogues now tops $235,000 and is growing daily.
Donations continue to pour in from throughout the Jewish world to Sacramento’s Congregation B’nai Israel and Kenesset Israel Torah Center and to Congregation Beth Shalom in nearby Carmichael.
“We’re getting support from every state in the union — Texas, Alabama, Connecticut, you name it,” said Beryl Michaels, executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region, which is overseeing the Unity Fund.
“Checks for $5,000 and over are coming from foundations and synagogues. But most of the fund has come from individuals.”
The mail brought in a flurry of activity Tuesday when a check from actor Paul Newman arrived. Michaels declined to say how much the film star contributed.
Support, too, is flowing from the non-Jewish world, including churches, organizations and individuals.
Meanwhile, assessments on the damaged synagogues show the $1 million announced in initial estimates by law enforcement officials may be a low figure. Congregation board members say rebuilding in the near future will be problematic even with insurance payments.
But the federal government is ready to make up to $6 million in guaranteed loans available for rebuilding efforts, said Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who visited the charred sites June 22 and urged congregations “not just to rebuild but to expand…while you’re at it.”
An investigation into the coordinated, predawn attacks on the three synagogues continues, staffed by 100 federal and local law enforcement agents. Literature attributed to the World Church of the Creator, an Illinois-based hate group with five chapters in and around Sacramento, was found at Kenesset Israel Torah Center and Congregation Beth Shalom, two of the three targeted synagogues.
That same Illinois hate group made the news when one of its former members allegedly went on a shooting spree in Chicago over the July Fourth weekend and eventually committed suicide.
Authorities also are probing another firebombing in Sacramento that occurred at 3:10 a.m. last Friday. Vandals firebombed the Choice Medical Group, an abortion clinic only blocks from Kenesset Israel. Coincidentally, the arson at the Orthodox synagogue took place at nearly the same hour two weeks before. No printed material was left at the clinic, however.
Investigators refuse to say if they believe both arsons were connected.
As the probes continue, the three synagogues are trying to put the arsons behind them and rebuild.
Although a task force ultimately will oversee the dispensation of the Unity Fund, many things remain up in the air.
“We’re homeless,” said Steve Haberfeld, president of Kenesset Israel. “We’re in a state of suspended animation. We’re just not sure what to do.”
Law enforcement officials first estimated damages to the former frame house at $30,000 but the congregation learned yesterday it will cost more than $200,000 to renovate the site because of more stringent building codes.
The local Jewish federation “is urging us to rebuild at another location instead,” Haberfeld said. “Insurance will cover up to $130,000 in costs [but] we have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, bring the structure up to code. This building is about 50 years old — asbestos was acceptable then.”
The earliest assessments by public safety officials included only structural damage. Those estimates were pegged at $30,000 for Kenesset Israel, $100,000 for Beth Shalom and $800,000 for B’nai Israel.
Well-wishers from synagogues and Jewish community agencies, as well as private individuals, are forwarding building supplies, pianos, books, videos, in-kind services and money to the Unity Fund and to the individual synagogues.
The dizzying montage of the Chicago shootings atop the Sacramento arsons of two weeks ago has punctured the inflated sense of community spirit that had buoyed Northern California Jews.
Ellen Rosen of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council described the sight as “eerie” after bringing a car load of books to B’nai Israel, the synagogue that lost its entire library in the fire.
“I finally realized that this was the synagogue where I gave the eulogy for my stepfather about four years ago…where my girlfriend’s daughter and stepsister’s son were married,” she said. “About 50 to 60 cartons of ashes were in a neat row in the parking lot. The roof was blackened and gone, the windows shattered, the trees and plants scorched. A police security car was parked by the entrance to the parking lot. Being face to face with that horrible destruction creates numerous emotions: fear, grief, rage among them.”
Jennifer Kaufmann, a past president of B’nai Israel, said: “There have been a lot of offers relating to the library. We’re trying to coordinate with the federation to make sure we don’t duplicate.
“There’s a real sense of ruach [spirit]. A company lent canvas tents, [S.F. Congregation] Emanu-El is loaning prayerbooks, and [Santa Rosa Congregation] Shomrei Torah loaned a portable ark.”
The American Federation of Musicians Local 12 and the Capitol Chamber Players will perform a benefit concert, including the serene Adagio from Victor Ewald’s Symphony in B Flat Minor, on Sunday at B’nai Israel. The chamber players will also perform the String Trio 1944, composed by Gideon Klein while in the Terezin concentration camp. Klein later died in Auschwitz. Proceeds from the concert will go to the Unity Fund.
Mazel Tov, the Geary Street Judaica and book store in San Francisco, is closing and will donate its entire inventory to the congregations, owner Laurel Rest said. And Afikomen Bookstore in Berkeley is selling books for the B’nai Israel’s lost library at a discount price — and will pay to ship them.
Congregations from as far away as Adelaide, Australia, have sent donations to try to offset the losses: “We feel the outrage of all civilized people at such unnecessary destruction,” said Rabbi Lenore Bohm of Adelaide’s Beit Shalom.
Offers came, too, from Illinois, where the most recent tragedies occurred: “I would be very pleased to send some books from my personal collection after you have a place to put them,” Rochelle S. Elstein, a manager at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston, Ill., wrote to B’nai Israel. “It is tragic that such violence is still part of life in the United States.”
A donor from the Netherlands summed up the unsettled feelings that emerged as the thumping confidence of community rallies died down. “In one way I’m confident that everything will be restored and will be nicely rebuilt,” said Monique Belinfante-van Gelder. “Books will come in again. But as a Jewish woman, born after the war [1953], daughter of two survivors and mother of two girls, I find it hard to explain all these things to them.”