Jews like San Diego has never seen

Five hundred eyes focus on the foreskin of the infant son of Rabbi Yonah Fradkin. A drop of wine is applied to the infant’s lips while a dozen rabbis pray in a fervent, swaying motion. The patriarch. Rabbi Shmul Raichik, appears like a vision from King Solomon’s Court.

The enormous fringed tallis (prayer shawl) magnifies sagacious eyes that pierce through dark sockets while it covers the long white beard and envelops most of his thin, bent body. The mohel, Rabbi Jacob Shechet, has traveled with his special instruments a distance of more than one hundred miles. Swip! His experienced fingers quickly make the circular cut, completing the infant’s initial covenant with the Creator of the Universe.

As blood spurts from the tiny genitalia, the infant cries. The father beams as his fourth child is named in honor of several of the renowned rabbis from the vanished community of Lubavitch, once the center of Russian Chassidic life.

The room suddenly ricochets with spontaneous chants. “Mazeltov! Mazel-tov!” enlivens an 8:30 a.m. December Monday. Spirited handclapping, dancing, singing, accompanied only by the Chassidic fervor within the hearts of the revelers, then begins. While the room melts into one abounding, kinetic force, eight-day-old Shneur Mordecai Zalman Dov Ber Fradkin is carried off to another room, is placed in a pram, and promptly falls asleep.

Rabbi Fradkin exhorts the witnesses first to wash their hands and then to enter the adjoining room for a feast. Rabbi Shechet exchanges his white surgical coat for more traditional dark apparel, and then joins the festivities. In the hallway that separates the two large rooms is a poster of a cartoon figure in soldiers’ khakis, pointing an exaggerated finger. The caption reads, "THE ARMY OF HASHEM (G-d) WANTS YOU!”

Huge banquet tables are laid with fine white tablecloths on which rest in platters a considerable fortune in lox. As it shimmers phosphorescently, it transmits the ancient Jewish affinity for fish (and vice versa) — Jonah and the Whale, for instance; also, the unscientific legend that Zionist fish swallowed all the water in the Red Sea. thus allowing the children of Israel to escape Pharaoh’s army; then, they (the fish, that is) spit out all the water they had swallowed, drowning the Egyptian soldiers.

Centuries-old Jewish custom dictates that every male infant be ushered into the world amid an array of herring. In addition. there is a huge assortment of smoked fish, whitefish, and salmon mousse, also imported from another city more than a hundred miles away. A traditional braided egg bread called a challeh, also imported, over which a blessing is said in Hebrew by the father of the just-circumcised honoree. sanctifies the moment. “Blessed art Thou. O Lord our God. King of the Universe who bringeth forth bread from the earth.”

For just a few kopecks more are quart bottles of Chivas Regal, Seagrams Seven, Kahlua, Amarctto, quality, wine, and a gigantic bottle of Smirnoff vodka. For the nondrinkers there is orange juice and large quantities of caffeine.

Visiting dignitaries, some of whom look like direct descendants of Marc Chagall’s lithographs of Torah-bearing, wistful, black-cloaked men, travel not by horse or wagon from distant Sholom Aleichem snowy villages within the Pale — places near Vilna, Lublin, and Minsk — but by jetliner and automobile from within the vast, sun-soaked megalopolis — from Los Angeles to Chula Vista — to 6115 Montezuma Road in San Diego. “When they call me, I come,” says the Cuban-born mohel, Rabbi Shechet. “I’ve even flown to Hawaii to do a bris [circumcisionI. My slogan is Have tools, will travel!”

“Bagels?” inquires Hannah Kahn, a recent emigre to Del Mar from Capetown, South Africa. “Where are they?”

“They’re all gone already,” someone answers.

“Nu? Maybe there’s a bialy?”

“Such fressers [big eaters]!” says Rabbi Shechet with a grin.

After most of the food and some of the liquor is consumed, Yonah Fradkin, host rabbi, assumes the role of master of ceremonies. He welcomes those gathered at Chabad House on Montezuma Road to this simeha, or joyous occasion. ”Simehas should be shared,” he explains as he motions to a huge display of grapes, oranges, and bananas. “This fruit is a present from Hashem [God] to the family. The objective of Yiddishkeit [Jewish soul] is to share. We don’t keep joy all to ourselves.” He smiles warmly as he lights up a Lark. “We spread it around.”

As he invites some of the visiting rabbis to the podium, he introduces them by congregation and notes their accomplishments. The elderly Rabbi Raichik explains what he terms the “Jewish irreversible connection to God.” Then he reminds the guests sternly in perfect English, but with a decidedly Eastern European accent, of where they are. “We are in exile,” he says. “We are not in our land.”

Babies are crying and older children are growing restless. There’s an unusual amount of smoking in the room and the cacophony of cross-conversations takes on the air of an animated poker game. Continual interruptions are drowning out all sounds except those of one’s own voice, making it impossible to hear the words of the old patriarch, to whom little attention is being paid. "Shu!" [“Hush!”], implores Rabbi Fradkin.

The din temporarily abates and the visiting sage continues. He speaks of the arrival of the Messiah. “He will come to lead us to Eretz Yisroel — the Holy Land.” says the West Coast spiritual advisor. Those in the room are patient. No one asks when. It is clearly a matter of faith — of time.

Next Fradkin introduces a young bearded rabbi whose earlocks are pushed behind his ears and whose white satin fringes dangle from his waist. Aron Leiberman, the most recent Chassidic emissary to San Diego, runs the La Jolla Chabad Center. “Okay, Rabbi, you’re on!” Fradkin announces theatrically while Leiberman also lights up a Lark, then takes center stage and begins with a smile. “I’m looking for a connection,” he says, “a parable.”

He finds one. Speaking metaphorically about the meaning of the gathering in terms of the history and tradition of Chassidic Jews, he invokes the w isdom of the ancient prophets. Although he interjects appropriate humor, the audience is sustained only for a few moments. The pace slows considerably when Leiberman concludes his circumcision speech. Fradkin takes this opportunity to hum a minor-key melody and lead a group of followers in characteristic Chassidic dancing and singing around the banquet tables.

At least a dozen men in assorted head-gear — black fedoras. Homburgs, yarmulkes of every fabric, texture, and color (satin, knitted, crocheted, white, black, pale blue, red) — join in the circle as it grows larger and larger. Young students, middle-age businessmen, and bearded old patriarchs dance ecstatically around the tables with an intensity equivalent to the most fervent praying. Rabbi Shechet. the mohel, who is on his way to the airport to catch a plane, joins the circle of whirling men. some with male children perched atop their shoulders and with satin fringes flying from their waists, all dancing round and round the tables.

Though he is more than 3000 miles away in Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, the presence of Menachcm Mendel Shneerson. known affectionately as the Rebbe by his million and a half followers and admirers on six continents, permeates the room. Shneerson. the son of a renowned mystic, was born in Russia in 1902. His phenomenal mental acuity not only exhibited itself in Talmud and torah studies in his homeland, but later at the University of Berlin and at the Sorbonne. where he studied electrical engineering. He arrived in the U.S. in 1941 and worked in the Brooklyn Navy yard, where it is rumored that he contributed to the development of the nuclear submarine.

Aside from his secular involvement, Shneerson has been at the helm of the world Chabad sect of Chassidim for thirty years and has been hailed by various heads of state for his work in education and morality based upon the Chassidic philosophy of hyperactive brotherly love. Inspired by the theme of the Talmud — “One who saves a single life is considered as if he saves the whole world” — he has led tens of thousands in such unlikely outposts of Judaism as Tokyo, Melbourne, Dublin, Istanbul, Casablanca, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, and La Jolla. Recently, Jimmy Carter declared the Rebbe’s birthday, April 13, National Education Day in honor of the white-haired mystic.

The Rebbe was moved by his own impact on world leaders. Furthermore, he recognized nearly a decade ago that California was a mecca for the alienated and a breeding ground for cults, the counterculture, drug addiction, and a haven for runaways. He also knew that nice Jewish boys like Lenny Bruce, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin were gurus of the Sixties-era radicalism. The solution, he proclaimed, was a concentrated Chabad movement (Chabad is an acrostic of three Hebrew words — chochmah. wisdom; binah, understanding; and baas, knowledge) to counter the increasing alienation and offer an alternative to the spiritually starved who were turned off by their parents’ brand of Country Club B’nai B’rith Pastrami on Rye Judaism.

Since the Chassidic movement had reached its lowest ebb of influence during the Sixties, due in part to the vast Jewish assimilation which followed World War II, the Seventies were the opportune time fora Chabad resurgence of the activism and outreach which distinguishes this sect from other forms of Chassidic Judaism.

Saving lives was given priority. Moral absolutism was the weapon against moral relativism. The notion of blending with the American mainstream was looked upon as weakness. “History makes us different. Tradition makes us different,” they argued. Mildly scornful of suburban, checkbook Judaism, the Chabadniks championed instead an all-inclusive, one-to-one involvement, one which required a total effort.

So the Rebbe established a Jewish Peace Corps. He sent his bearded, kaftaned emissaries to California to establish programs designed not only to ignite spiritual sparks in the roaming bands of lost souls but ultimately to benefit the whole of society. And because these programs were to offer warmth and unconditional love not only in a spiritual sense but in a material one, food, clothing, and shelter twenty-four hours a day were provided to keep the apostates faraway from the Moonies, Hare Krishnas, El Fatah, Jews For Jesus, and from the hordes of heroin vendors.

At a huge conference at Lubavitch World Headquarters (named for the Russian city where this offshoot of Chassidic Judaism began) in Brooklyn, the Rebbe was presented with a golden key to the first Chabad House, founded at UCLA. Touched by the symbolism, he spoke the following words: “My hand will be on the door of this house to keep it open twenty-four hours a day. Chabad will grow like a chain of shopping centers and spread from the West to the North, from the North to the South, and then to the East.”

The Rebbe was right. His emissaries went forth and multiplied and twenty-nine more Chabad centers sprung up in California. From his own pocket, the Rebbe contributed ten percent of the first year’s operating expenses to establish the Chabad House in San Diego eight years ago. After that they were on their own. Staffed by his rabbis from Russia, Canada, and various U.S. cities, aided by outside consultants (doctors, psychologists, and social workers), these anachronistic-looking, fundamentalist, God-intoxicated, dybbuk-dealing holy rollers became crisis-intervention specialists and contemporary saviors of the rebellious generation of California Jews.

---

As the Fradkin festivities wind down and guests return to their normal Monday-morning occupations, and rabbis to their scheduled appointments, an energetic coterie of live-in men (mostly students) begin the task of cleaning up. Faces vary from blond, blue-eyed, casual surfers clad in yarmulkes, jeans, and Levi work shirts, to dark-eyed, intense, studious types. They pitch in with brooms, dustpans, and trays to clear tables, sweep floors, and stack chairs.

Jay Gelbart, twenty-two-year-old son of an Auschwitz survivor, is a civil engineering student from Fullerton who will graduate from SDSU in May. “When I first came to State, I lived in an apartment with roommates and was deeply involved in the higher levels of the Campus Crusade For Christ,” he says. “I was looking for something I hadn't found in my own background and I readily accepted their proofs that Jesus was the Messiah. After being heavily involved with them for over two years, on campus I bumped into a rabbi wearing a cowboy hat. He invited me to Friday-night services at Chabad House and I went just out of curiosity. I was amazed by the tremendous spirit they had. I had never experienced that kind of spirit before except with the born-again Christians. At Chabad House they showed me love and they encouraged me to look more deeply into my own background, which I began to do. They taught me to use an intellectual approach, not an emotional one. I had an open invitation to the rabbi’s house and I was impressed with the way family life was conducted. I liked what I saw. Three semesters ago I moved in. I’m getting married in December — to a girl I met here at Friday-night services.” He smiles. ‘‘And then I’ll probably buy a condominium.”

Ben and Keith have been Chabad House residents for nearly a year. They each pay seventy-five dollars a month for a newly carpeted private room that contains a bed, chest, and a large desk. “This is a good place to stay straight,” says Ben.

“There’s no pressure on me,” adds Keith. “No one pushes me into anything. Sometimes I pitch in by addressing envelopes. Someone got kicked out for bringing in nonkosher food. They had to sterilize the oven. That’s what they’re really strict about. I’m a vegetarian, though, so kosher food isn’t really a problem for me.

Not only is the eighteen-room former fraternity house occupied by SDSU students, it is refuge to any male in need of spiritual and/or material comfort. (Women are not permitted to live in, and only married women may visit the upstairs living quarters.) Irwin Rosen, for instance, a fortyish, newly divorced professor from Michigan, arrived in San Diego several years ago and while he searched for an apartment, a car, and his identity, he lived rent-free at Chabad House. “I felt good being there,” said Rosen at that time.

Enter Rabbi Moishe Leider, second-in-command at Montezuma Road’s Chabad House. A comfortable camaraderie exists between Leider and the live-ins. They call him Moishe and he apparently likes it. “I need to appeal to students if I want to reach them,” he says after completing a prayer session in the living room, “and that’s why I dress like this.” He points to the leather cowboy hat he often wears over his yarmulke. “Sometimes I play my twelvestring guitar — and I don’t wear a kapote [kaftan]. After all, SDSU is their turf so it behooves me to speak their language and not look so different. Maybe these little gimmicks help them identify with me.”

Other methods of bridging the chasm between eighteenth-century-style Chassidim and the contemporary culinary and coronary Jews of San Diego County have occurred to Leider. “Last October we had five comedians from the Comedy Store in La Jolla come here to entertain. We served all-you-can-eat kosher Chinese food. The whole deal cost only $1.50 each. It went over big and it attracted people who might not have ordinarily been here. Soon, Jeff the Juggler will be entertaining here, and we’re trying to get Michael Dean. We reach out to people with whatever tools are at our disposal — entertainment, cooking classes, whatever — without violating our own codes.” According to Rabbi Leider, these externals are the only concessions made by the Chassidim to Eighties Califomianization.

Although prayer sessions are held three times a day in the living room of Chabad House, Friday-evening services, which herald the Sabbath, are always a special event, after which a twelve-course kosher dinner (prepared by a Grossmont student) is served free of charge. A "stump the rabbi” session usually follows. Between lighthearted conversation, folklore, and song, Leider the raconteur slips in some history. He tells tales of the nomadic bands of Jewish mystics who roamed across Eastern Europe under assumed names during the Renaissance (which was paradoxically the Dark Ages in terms of Jewish history). “These wanderers deliberately disguised themselves as cobblers, tailors, and sometimes simpletons in order to work more effectively. They were, in fact, Cabalists,” explains Leider. “They were shunned by the Jewish establishment, which at that time was restricted to scholars only. Commoners were excluded.

“In the early 1700s, one such mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov (Master of the Good Name) traveled from village to •village communing with villagers, God, and nature, and managed to popularize the movement which eventually democratized Judaism under the following precepts: sincerity of belief, serving God in joy and happiness, doing divine precepts in a zealous manner, acknowledging that everything happens due to divine providence, and love of fellow human beings. His followers were mockingly called ‘Chassidim' meaning ‘Pious Ones,’ by the establishment,” continues Rabbi Leider. “Emissaries were sent across Europe to spread the word of this new. all-inclusive, joyful concept, which soon swept across parts of the Ukraine, Poland. Galicia, Lithuania, and Hungary like a tidal wave.”

The tidal-wave effect was attributed to the Baal Shem Tov’s central doctrine of love and his philosophy of joy — where good deeds superceded the minutiae of ritual law. According to the Baal Shem Tov, the steps to the Throne of God were laughter, song, and dance, and these acts were considered the highest forms of devotion. This affirmative philosophy dispelled the blight of the Jew ish Dark Ages, in which massacres, pogroms, Czarist edicts, and economic privation characterized the Jewish plight. Followers sought refuge in the mysticism of the Cabala (a collection of works known as “The Hidden Wisdom”) and the superstitious, shadowy world of dybbukim and demons. It was the Chassidim who played the role of universal comforters, sustaining the life force exemplified in the famous Hebrew toast "L'Chaim,” which means “To life.”

According to Leider, as the movement took hold there was a lot of motion — traveling from city to city to study and to spread the word. “A famous rabbi, Shneur Zalman of Liadi, traveled to the city of Lubavitch. Know what that means in Russian? I’ll tell you. It means the city of love.”

It was in Lubavitch that Rabbi Zalman wrote the Tanya, a holy book which not only popularized Jewish mysticism but gave intellectual understanding to Chassidism and became the basis of the branch of Chassidim called Lubavitch, or Chabad. Although the city has since been destroyed. its name is immortalized in concrete on Chabad buildings throughout the world.

It is the descendants of these sages of Lubavitch who acted as intermediaries between God's and man's desires, who today seem by outward appearances to be virtually unaffected by twentieth-century social revolutions. Yet they are blitzing California's cities and campuses with mobile units (accommodating at least fifteen people at a clip). 3:00 a.m. rap sessions, booths in public parks, and counseling sessions in jails and prisons. This breed of California Chassidim have taken the “brother’s keeper” concept literally and are forging a bond of unity between past and present by keeping their homes open day and night for those in need of a hot meal or a place to crash.

Rabbi Leider’s own spiritual odyssey began more than a decade ago when, as a history major at York University in Canada, he considered entering the rabbinate “until one weekend when I went with a youth group from my Toronto neighborhood to Lubavitch Headquarters in Brooklyn. I tell you, it was almost a mystical experience for me. I was drawn to the Rebbe and to the others on an emotional level. My family, of course, was stunned and my eventual decision to become a Chassidic rabbi drew tremendous opposition from them. My leaving the country was also a concern. I went to a Talmudic yeshiva [academy] in Israel until I felt I was ready for the Lubavitcher Chassidim. Eventually, I was accepted into the Lubavitcher mainstream and finally became ordained in Brooklyn,” he says. “Now my parents are ecstatic about what I’m doing.

“So here I am teaching in a Chabad Hebrew School for nonreligious kids. But we’re exposing the kids to the real thing. We’re giving them choices they don’t get from their assimilated parents. Then, of course, it’s up to them. Raphael Minkowitz, another Chassidie rabbi, runs the Hebrew Day School in National City. Tuition costs about $200 a year, which is really cheap. We’re flexible, though, and there are full scholarships for those who can’t afford it.- Everything we do is on a sliding-scale basis.

“We’re not out to make Lubavitcher Chassidim out of anyone. We have two standards: one for ourselves and another for others in the community,” Leider explains. “As a teacher. I’m a one-hundred-percenter, not a hypocrite. I practice what I preach but I don’t demand or even expect it from others.”

Besides presiding at kosher spaghetti or Chinese dinners and teaching Hebrew to “nonreligious kids,” Moishe Leider does a lot of on-campus outreach work, adult education, and is on the Clergy Credential Committee at the county jail. “There’s no way to escape political and secular involvement,” he says. “I’ve recently been counseling one of the ABSCAM people. And at MCC [Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego] there’s a Mafia hit man stashed away in a secluded wing because he made a deal* — he’s testifying against the Mafia. He requested kosher food so the authorities sent me in to discuss it with him. Well, his reasons were not entirely pure. He was into natural foods and he felt that kosher food would be healthier. Since everyone makes deals nowadays, I said I’d make a deal with him, too. I’d come to visit him as often as I could and I’d bring him lots of reading material. After a while, after he had digested the material, if he felt that he wanted kosher food for spiritual reasons, I’d see to it that he gets it,” says Leider.

“We get lots of calls from police, hospitals, parents, and kids in trouble. These calls are mostly from Jews who are unaffiliated with any synagogue but they come to Chabad for help. They come to us but we also go out and look for them.”

Every few weeks the Chabadniks send a van (they call it the Mitzvah Tank) to Balboa Park. They set up an information table near the fountain, near the Scientologists and Hare Krishnas and fundamentalist Christians. Discussion and open raps are invited, information dispensed, and those with Semitic faces are encouraged to explore the basic facets of Judaism. “Last spring I attended the Krishna festival.” recalls Rabbi Leider. “The head swami is a twenty-eight-year-old Brooklyn boy. Badri Naryan is his Krishna name now. He’s got an intense spiritual longing that had never been satisfied by his own people. This is why we have to get there first, before another group does. He’s been with the Krishnas for a long time now and it’s too late for us. His secretary is also Jewish.

“The Krishnas taped our conversation and from what I hear, those tapes are being used. Maybe I made a mistake allowing them to tape me. I called the swami several times because I wanted to continue the dialogue but was told via a messenger that future discussion would be pointless because I wasn’t open to change,” Leider says with a shrug.

The Chabad rabbis live within walking distance of Chabad House because it is forbidden to drive on the Sabbath. A visit to the Leider home, a recently purchased two-story affair on Cresita Drive, reflects a dually dominated atmosphere. Four portraits of the hauntingly sweet, bearded face of the Rebbe hang in the living room, with its pale green carpeting, dark furniture, and bookcases containing nothing but Hebrew law and scripture. At the same time, visitors are immediately aware of children and their equipage. Srulik recently had his first birthday, and Bryna her third.

The word Shalom is inscribed in brass on the outside door knocker. A wooden mezuzah (a small, rectangular piece of parchment inscribed with certain Deuteronomy passages, rolled up and inserted in a case) is nailed in a slanting position to the right-hand door post as a talisman against evil. Mezuzahs are also affixed to every indoor door post to insure that no evil will be visited upon the Leider household.

Sura Leider, wife of Moishe, mother of Srulik and Bryna, daughter of a Los Angeles cantor, has just returned from teaching preschool at the Hebrew Day School in National City. Doorbells are ringing all the time; students are coming and going. Some are temporarily living with the Leiders, whose home is continually open for conversation, meals, and lodging. Some are doing errands, making “strictly kosher” snack runs for other students. “The only items I buy here in San Diego are fruit and vegetables. Everything else comes from L.A.,” laments the rabbi’s wife. “You can’t even get a kosher loaf of bread in San Diego.”

After growing up mostly in Los Angeles in a home where some but not all religious observances were kept, Sura Leider graduated from SDSU with a degree in psychology. Stimulated by her own spiritual yearnings, she traveled to Brooklyn to continue her studies at the Chassidic yeshiva, where she met Moishe. Several months later they married. “Chassidim don’t actually date. The purpose of spending time with someone of the opposite sex is to get married,” she explains as she nurses Srulik.

“At first my decision to become Chassidic was a slap in the face to my parents. After all, who was I to become holier than they? Eventually, though, they accepted it when they realized that it wasn’t just a phase and that I was serious in my devotion and my search for God.”

Out of San Diego’s 40,000 Jews (a conservative, rough estimate), only forty local women obey the Torah commandment of the mikveh (ritual bath), according to Sura, who participates in this ancient rite of purification designated exclusively for women. “In other cities the mikveh is open day and night — twenty-four hours — but not here. So you have to make an appointment. There’s a yearly membership fee, too,” she says. She compares the effects of the purification process to what has come to be known in certain California circles as rebirthing. “Married women go to the mikveh every month exactly twelve days after menstruation begins. During those twelve days, there’s no physical contact whatsoever between husband and wife. Not even a touch on the shoulder. Why? We don't, necessarily question why. It's one of the commandments and we do it strictly on faith because we know that God knows what’s best for us."

Sura describes the twelve days of every month as a time of reflection when each partner has his and her own physical space, and explains this as the reason why Chassidic couples have separate beds. "During that time, we’re communicating only verbally and that’s the time when the husband/wife relationship really develops. Then, on the twelfth night (only at night), we purify ourselves. First we take a bath and then a shower. Then we comb out our hair, remove all make-up and nail polish, and totally immerse ourselves in the waters of the mikveh and say a blessing under the supervision of a religious woman. During that time, when we’re not breathing (during immersion] and we’ve just finished menstruating, we’re thinking of death in the sense of losing the potential for life. That’s why it can be compared. I suppose, to rebirthing," she explains. "The mikveh itself is different from a swimming pool. It’s about the size of a jacuzzi but it’s rectangular in shape and it’s about chest high. It holds 200 gallons of natural water — rain or snow, for instance — that has never before been contained. The one here in San Diego is on La Dorna Avenue, not far from the campus. It’s actually part of a private residence. We rent the space and of course there arc separate entrances and two separate pools, one for women and the other for men.

"I was very excited and nervous when I first started going to the mikveh. I suddenly felt very connected to my roots — to God. Because sex is such a holy experience, a husband and wife are like a bride and groom to each other each month. The abstinence is worth it.

"Men can go to the mikveh before the Sabbath or before holy days to be purified. But for men it’s on a voluntary basis and they go during the daytime. For married women, though, it’s a commandment, and we go only at night," she adds as she puts Srulik on the floor and adjusts her long, brown wig.

Since hair is considered a female’s crowning glory, when a woman marries she is obligated to cover her hair at all times, either with a head scarf or a wig. The same rule applies to widows and divorcees. "Exposing your hair is the equivalent of going out in the street naked.” explains Sura, who is wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved blouse and long skirt in compliance with the Chassidic dress code for women.

Besides teaching at the Hebrew Day School, the twenty-five-year-old rabbi’s wife runs small, informal classes and study groups at home in the evenings. The discussions deal with such subjects as proper behavior for an engaged couple, a bride and groom, family life, and feminism. “Chassidism is perfectly compatible with feminism.” she insists. “Women are separate but equal — different but equal. I never feel oppressed. God was a good guy; He created women perfectly. Men need to be circumcised to become perfect. Certain outsiders get upset because they say that women are separated from men by a curtain during prayer services, but you could say just the opposite — that men are kept separate from women. It all depends on how you look at it. Take the marriage contract. for instance. The man is responsible for his wife’s sexual needs but the reverse doesn’t hold. If a woman isn’t gratified, that’s considered grounds for divorce.” Opponents of Chassidim who observe the women teaching children and housewives under the title instructress, for instance. who see them changing diapers, lighting candles, typing, and doing KP in general, view Chassidic men in the more visible role and women in the servile role. Especially in light of the tremendous strides made in twentieth-century female advancement, the antediluvian practices of the Chassidim (despite Biblical rationale that women achieve higher spirituality than men due to their reproductive ability) are considered repugnant by those outsiders who insist that Chassidic women are still riding in the back of the bus.

For those critics. Sura has a quick answer. “The home is the center of life. The activities that take place in the home are more important, more Godly than what transpires at the synagogue. And who is the center of the home? The woman!” Other young San Diego couples involved in the soul-searching process have been flirting around the Chassidic fringes. Debbi and Avi Arieli are neighbors of Rabbi Leiberman and his family in La Jolla's Broadmoor Condominium complex. Debbi, 26, comes from a nonpracticing Jewish family in Montreal. Her husband, Avi, 30, a Sabra (native Israeli), manufactures infants wear on Miramar Road. They recently moved to La Jolla with their son Adam, now six months old, and immediately contacted the La Jolla Chabad Center..“It all began when I was about twenty-three years old,” recalls Dcbbi. “The rebellion era had cooled off and I was on the verge of getting married. I looked for some well-defined expectations of marriage roles, I looked for role models. The Chassidim sponsored a weekend for future brides. I went and it added depth to my life; it changed my life. Their attitude is so positive and I needed to be around a strong, positive force. Now I have something to give to my son, a day-to-day thing, a code for living.”

Debbi says she’s attracted to the Biblical link, to tradition, to ancestry — the same attraction that compelled Alex Haley to go to the Gambia River and ask questions. She agrees that it is the rituals that help keep Judaism alive. “Once I started showing an interest in learning, there wasn’t anything the Chassidim wouldn’t do for me. They were wonderful. When I didn’t follow the rituals, though, I noticed that there was a little tension. I’ve been to the mikveh a few times but the abstinence is too hard for me to keep. I’m a real toucher,” she laughs. “The “hands off policy is tough. But the laws of mikveh do add dimension to a marriage.”

Avi, grandson of Polish Chassidim, says that in Israel it wasn’t necessary to be involved in ritual, “but now I.need something to bring me closer to my roots.” Because he feels threatened by the dangers of assimilation (which, he is convinced, leads to intermarriage) for his infant son, he goes to Chabad on weekends to pray and to make friends. “These are very intelligent, interesting people, ninety percent professionals — doctors, lawyers, engineers. We instantly have something in common and there’s a sense of community, of warmth. And I actually enjoy the praying because I understand the language. It’s beautiful poetry. For instance, it compares the Sabbath to a bride in white, welcoming the essence of purity and beauty. And the praying — we get so involved in it that we sway like a flame that refuses to burn out.”

“I don’t go to the services,” says Debbi, “because the baby takes up so much of my time. But I do go to classes at least once a week. At Rabbi Leiberman’s condominium there are classes in family life, led by the rabbi’s wife, Sheindel. Sometimes we discuss the Evil Eye.” Debbi isn’t so sure about the Evil Eye (ancient folklore that claims misfortune can be warded off by certain invocations, by spitting three times, by throwing salt over one’s shoulder, and by wearing certain charms, especially the color blue). And about the Cabala, both Arielis beg ignorance. Debbi contends that every faith has a portion that only the elite know and in Judaism there are stringent laws, she says, determining who studies the Cabala. “They prefer that you be over forty and married. It takes a very stable, trained mind,” she says. The cryptic Cabala is rumored to be an aristocratic body of esoteric knowledge, a mystical brew of diverse ingredients combining Pythagorean numerology, Zoroastrian dualism, Judaic ethics, neo-Platonic emanations, and medieval Christian asceticism. It has remained a mystery since its creation by scholars in thirteenth-century Spain and for that reason is referred to as “The Hidden Wisdom.”

The La Jolla Chabad Center where Avi Arieli prays and luxuriates in the poetry of Classical Hebrew is actually a rented suite of offices in the new, posh office buildings on Villa La Jolla Drive, just opposite the El Torito restaurant. What first greets a visitor’s eyes are books. Books of Hebrew law and codes, and holy books which lie next to a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s August, 1914. A huge caricature with a slogan in bold letters (UNCLE MOISHY NEEDS YOU - TO EAT KOSHER) invades the rarefied atmosphere. On another wall is the seventieth-birthday portrait of the charismatic Rebbe. “I run the whole show here,” announces Rabbi Leiberman. “I’m the chief (and sole) fundraiser, administrator, teacher, caterer, bookkeeper, receptionist, and coffeemaker. My wife teaches in the day school and I run this place.” When the phone rings, he answers it with a simple, “Hello.”

“There’s been some small hassles with management in this building and I have a hunch that they regret locking themselves into a five-year lease with me last May. The manager was extremely upset with the mezuzah hanging on the doorpost because I didn’t ask for permission to hang it up.

“There are times I think I make people uncomfortable,” Leiberman continues. “When I walk along La Jolla Shores with my beard and my fringes. I’m reminding people of what a Jew really looks like.

“We’re different in structure from temples and synagogues. For instance, we don’t create building funds or charge membership fees. No one has to ‘formally’ belong. Anyone can just drop in here and they’re welcome. People’s needs come first. Programs come first. Then, somehow, we find the money to implement these programs. I don’t need a Jewish-built building to play basketball. Know where I play basketball? At the Y. A building is a building!” he says.

“We don’t have any particular approach. Whatever we do is with open arms, and if we don’t do that, someone else will. I feel like a family practitioner — available at all hours as a consultant to troubled people — to those who have fallen from the cradle.”

Ordained in Brooklyn in 1976, Leiberman is a member of the Rebbe’s Peace Corps. “I’m here in La Jolla with the Rebbe’s blessing, of course.

“The Seventies heralded the resurgence of Chassidim,” says Leiberman. “This happened after the Sixties’ bubble burst. We presented an intellectual challenge to the students of the Sixties who are fighting a twenty-year background of nontradition. What do we do? We try harder! We elevate people to a higher level by having them perform one mitzvah [good deed) at a time. You can’t learn the whole alphabet at once. You’ve got to learn it one letter at a time.”

Back on Montezuma Road one of the Chabadniks warms the motor of the “Mitzvah Tank,” which will be transporting the traveling mohel to the airport. In his office, where the Rebbe’s ubiquitous seventieth-birthday portrait hangs. Rabbi Yonah Fradkin is taking a few calls regarding a March 1 banquet in the Grand Ballroom of the Sheraton Harbor Island Hotel, with Gerald Ford as the featured guest speaker. “So how much can I put you down for?” asks Rabbi Fradkin of an eager donor. “That’s very kind of you. Very, very generous. Shalom,” he says as he hangs up the phone. “You think I like doing this? I don’t! This part of the job I don’t like at all but someone has to do it. right?” He sighs.

Yonah Fradkin grew up in a Chassidic community in Montreal, studied at the Lubaviteher yeshiva around the corner from where he lived, married a girl from a Chassidic family, and within five years he and Leah had four children. “Now that's what I call family planning.” he says with a grin. “Chassidim don’t practice any form of birth control. Somehow, God provides, so we have as many children as we can.”

With his shock of dark, wavy hair, his deep, intense eyes, and his long black kaftan. Fradkin’s appearance is striking; without a doubt, he could be cast as an extra in Fiddler on the Roof without a costume change. “The kapote [kaftan] we wear on the Sabbath and on holidays and other special occasions is actually called a Prince Albert coat,” he explains as he points to the thin black sash around his waist. “This is what European aristocracy wore in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. When it went out of fashion, we started wearing it. Why? There are 613 Torah commandments altogether. One of them is about wearing your finest clothes on the Sabbath — and this is the finest. It’s equivalent to a tuxedo. But clothing is just tradition. The real key to the spirit of Chassidim is mitzvah — good deeds.

“San Diego is really growing spiritually.” he says. “In the eight years since Chahad has been here, there's been enormous growth. Why? We’re accepting — that’s why. For instance, kids can come in here wearing shorts on the holiest of days and we welcome them With open arms. If they dared to walk into a reform temple or a conservative synagogue dressed like that, they’d be thrown right out. We accept without condition. Where do you get unconditional love and acceptance? Here!”

In a push for moral absolutism and in an effort to make fundamentalist Judaism palatable to youngsters, Fradkin has supervised the development of material inducements. Chances to win ten-speed bicycles and fifty-dollar gift certificates to Toys R Us are offered to those kids who are willing to “Join the Army of Hashem" by obeying the commandments and by performing the daily required rituals. Newly immigrated boys from the Soviet Union are guaranteed a brand-new hundred-dollar bicycle when they become circumcised here in San Diego. “Circumcision is illegal in the Soviet Union,” Fradkin says, “but there is a vast underground movement and believe me, underground yeshivus and underground mohels are alive and kicking today in Russia. There are those, of course, who cannot manage to reach the underground. If they manage to get out of Russia and come to San Diego, we take care of them. Some of these boys are already thirteen years old and when they’re circumcised, we have to arrange for hospitalization. It hurts! You better believe it!” He grimaces.

“The mohel, Rabbi Shechet, he’ll travel anywhere he has to just to circumcise these boys — and he won’t charge a penny. He’s a wonderful, dedicated man. Once these boys from Russia come here and make a covenant of the flesh with God, they’re welcomed into the community. The bicycle is a sort of a welcome present.”

By now it is nearly noon. Infant Shneur Mordecai Zalman Dov Ber Fradkin opens his tiny eyes and begins to cry. Tears from the waters of Babylon blend with the waters of La Jolla Shores. The Chassidic hope of the Twenty-first Century, perhaps the new millennia, is nourished and then lolled back to sleep.