By Dan Aznoff, JTNews Correspondent
It was a move that was meant to be.
That’s what members of Olympia’s Temple Beth Hatfiloh are saying. They recently decided to move their congregation into the spacious confines of the Christian Science Church, two blocks from its current historic home at the south end of the Puget Sound.
“We’ve been searching for a new home for as long as I can remember,” said Jeffrey Trinin, a member of the building committee at TBH. “The search probably started a few months after we moved into this building 60-plus years ago.”
According to the published history of the congregation by Eva Goldberg, the original building at the corner of 8th Avenue and Jefferson Street in downtown Olympia has provided a home for worship for longer than any other synagogue in the state.
The building is not the oldest synagogue in Washington, and there are older congregations. But the classic old wooden structure in Olympia has provided uninterrupted home for worship and Torah study longer than any other in the state.
Jacob Goldberg, the owner of Goldberg Furniture, and Earl Bean, the founder of Olympia Supply Co., headed a small, but determined Jewish community that incorporated under the name B’nai Hatfiloh to purchase a small corner lot at near the Olympia waterfront in 1937. The synagogue was dedicated as Temple B’nai Hatfiloh one year later.
To serve a growing Jewish population in the South Sound prior to 1940, three virtually identical synagogues were built.
Only the cement front steps remain on an empty lot in Aberdeen where the synagogue in that city once stood. The second, in Centralia, has passed through the hands of numerous owners over the years. It currently houses an antique dealer and a decorator.
The shul in Olympia is the only synagogue of the three still being utilized for its original purpose.
The two-story building has a sanctuary and offices on the upper level. The bottom floor is a large open room that has been partitioned in an attempt to provide some privacy for religious school classes. Rabbi Seth Goldstein explained that the current facility is really limited to only two activities at one time, a strain on the religious school as well as the numerous committees searching for a place to meet.
Beth Halpern, chairperson of the TBH building committee, said she was pleasantly surprised last year to find that the Christian Science Church’s board had just voted to sell the impressive brick building with hopes of finding a smaller house of worship.
“Something just felt right the minute we walked in the door,” said Halpern. “The building felt spiritual, without being too Christian. There were no crosses or stained glass like so many churches.”
The church was built in 1925 with theatre type seating and a large lobby area, butwithout a kitchen. The downstairs features a massive open area that could be used for receptions and holiday celebrations.
Negotiations and escrow closed quickly. Members of Temple Beth Hatfiloh will begin the to move 65 years of memories after their new home undergoes a series of alterations beginning in July. The initial phase of improvements will include additional classrooms, a second-story suite of offices, and renovations to make the building fully accessible.
The ark at the old shul is built into the wall, so that will be left behind. But congregants will take the sliding wooden doors from the ark and the memorial wall from the rear of the old sanctuary.
First and foremost on the movers’ list will be the handmade shulhan mounted on the bima. The wooden and glass lectern was created by a member of TBH in the shape of the Hebrew letter shin as a memorial to the Hollander family, which helped establish the Jewish community in the South Sound.
Both the Jewish community and the state capitol have gone through dramatic changes in the six decades since the little white synagogue hosted the wedding of Percy Bean to Ann Zlotnik, three years before the United States entered World War II.
Mountains of dirt from the surrounding hillsides were used as landfill to create the Port of Olympia, and commercial progress of the city resulted in the temple being several blocks from the waterfront. The congregation has transformed as well, from strictly Orthodox worship to increasingly more Conservative, then Reform to its current affiliation, since 2000, with the Reconstructionist movement.
Membership after the War dropped to little more than 20 families, with services relegated to a small group of dedicated worshipers. By the early 1960s, the Women’s Auxiliary and the Men’s Club merged their meetings and activities in an effort have sufficient representation for successful events.
The 25th anniversary of Temple Beth Hatfiloh in 1963 served as a catalyst to attract unaffiliated Jews back into the fold. The flow of newcomers to the Northwest in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s provided another boost in membership.
The increasingly diverse membership resisted affiliating with any single Jewish movement, however, and the members remained committed to their close-knit Jewish community through long periods without professional clergy.
Temple Beth Hatfiloh hired its first part-time rabbi in 1985. Three years into the tenure of Rabbi Vicki Hollander, the congregation voted to purchase seven rural acres east of Olympia with hopes of building a campus to house both a house of worship and the growing religious school.
But that plan was quickly put on the back burner when preliminary estimates for the first phase of clearing the site topped $6 million. The congregation has retained ownership of the wooded acreage.
In 1989, the congregation contracted the part-time services of Marna Sapsowitz to serve as both rabbi and educational director. Sapsowitz divided her time for more than a year between the Jewish communities in Olympia and Yakima.
Finally, after a year of commuting across the state and around Mt. Rainier, Sapsowitz accepted the challenge of becoming the first full-time rabbi in the 53-year history of TBH. Her tenure lasted 13 years.
The congregation’s need for additional space became acute a year ago when Rabbi Goldstein took over the bima at TBH. Goldstein immediately reached out to the young adults in the area, including members of the Jewish Cultural Center at Evergreen State College.
Bernie Friedman, president of the congregation, also credits the young rabbi with boosting the religious school enrollment past 75 students for the very first time. TBH membership has grown to 150 families.
“I was greeted my very first day with the news that we would be moving,” Goldstein said with a smile. “This is a great building with a very rich history, but it’s clear our needs have outgrown this structure.”
Halpern said the timing of the phone call from the church, as well as the warm feeling she and other members of the building committee felt when she walked through the door, told her that the long search for a new home for Temple Beth Hatfiloh was finally over.