By Manny Frishberg, JTNews Correspondent
Sephardic Jews have been a part of the Seattle community since the beginning of the 20th century, when two men arrived in the Emerald City from the Ottoman island of Marmara, off the coast of what is now Istanbul, Turkey. Two years later, in 1904, Jack Policar and Solomo Calvo met another patriarch of Seattle’s Sephardic Jewish community, Nissim Alhadeff, who had recently arrived from the Isle of Rhodes.
Within three years more than 50 Sephardim lived in Seattle, spurred in part by the inclusion of Jews in the Ottoman Empire’s military draft in the years leading up to World War I. Most were young men, some of whom went back to Turkey to marry and bring their wives to Seattle. By 1910, some 40 Sephardic families, from Tekirdag and Constantinople (now Istanbul) as well as the islands of Marmara and Rhodes, made their homes here.
Between 1908 and 1914 10,000 Sephardic Jews emigrated to the U.S. In the beginning, all the Sephardim in Seattle celebrated Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in a rented hall with an Ashkenazic rabbi coming in to blow the shofar. But differences in their practices led the groups of Turkish and Greek Jews to hold separate ceremonies.
While 90 percent of the emigres settled in New York City, an estimated 600 Sephardic Jews lived in Seattle by 1914. That year, they founded that what is now known as the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation. Three years earlier, members of the community from Tekirdag had taken the first steps to form a permanent synagogue following Sephardic traditions by purchasing a a sefer Torah and, two years later, negotiating with the Bikur Cholim congregation to buy their old building at 13th and Washington Streets, along with part of their cemetery. When the deal was finalized in 1914, the new shul was inaugurated, named for a synagogue in the old country and Bikur Holim was born.
In late 2004, descendants of those early Sephardic pioneers and their friends and supporters gathered to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the formal founding of this enduring institution.
Lysa Almo, who chaired the committee that put on the event, said about 300 people associated with Bikur Holim attended the November 21 gala anniversary dinner at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel.
“There were several things that happened. We had a wonderful historical video that was presented that night,” Almo said, adding that virtually everyone attending had some family members represented in the video, which included historical records and personal reminiscences of the congregation’s first nine decades. The video was built on the work done over this past year by congregation member Eugene Normand, who compiled a decade-by-decade history of Sephardic Bikur Holim that was published in their monthly newsletter.
Almo said reading the historical account “just really brought our synagogue out of just bricks and mortar of a building and put a human element to it and what those people went through to start our synagogue.”
The anniversary gala was also used as an opportunity to advance the mission of the congregation.
Almo said the ladies’ auxiliary used the occasion of the gala to inaugurate a new scholarship fund for high school seniors, dedicated to the memory of long-time member Sarah Benezra, who passed away unexpectedly last year.
“She was an extremely active member of our synagogue and her parents were members of the synagogue,” Almo said. “It’s really very special that they chose the 90th anniversary to kick-off the scholarship.”
The auxiliary also took advantage of the gathering to highlight the congregation’s decision to attempt to double the synagogue’s endowment, from approximately $250,000 to a half-million dollars.
SBH member Al Maimon said that until now, the main purpose of the endowment was to support a $2,000 scholarship offered to every Bar and Bat Mitzvah at the synagogue for furthering their Jewish education.
“The intent,” said Maimon, “is for it to be used between their Bar Mitzvah and the end of high school.” He said about 50 children of the congregation have taken advantage of the offer, which provides up to $400-500 a year.
“Most of the children have used it for day school education because the price is high, but there are some children who have chosen to use it for other authorized programs like the Alexander Muss High School program,” he said. This year, in addition to growing the endowment, he said they plan to expand its purpose to fund social and religious projects adopted by the congregation.
“We thought it was appropriate in 2004 to put the spotlight on the endowment fund,” said Maimon, “to have the scope and the breadth of applications be larger as well—have it support cultural and social programs, educational programs, preparation of religious and ritual materials.” Among the projects they hope to support with the expanded fund is “developing a set of prayer books that respond directly to our liturgy and our practice, because it’s pretty unique,” he said.
“We’ve been working on the whole portfolio of liturgical prayer books, so that kind of program is something that we would like, to have an ongoing fund that permits us to develop them and keep them up-to-date,” Maimon continued. “We also have cultural programs unique to the Sephardic tradition and we want to promote participation of them and to do things that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”
Maimon, incidentally, “literally grew up in the congregation,” according to Almo. His grandfather Rabbi Abraham Maimon became the second rabbi of the congregation in 1924
A third project, also inaugurated at the 90th anniversary dinner, was the synagogue’s Legacy Project, which Maimon explained has a dual purpose:
“One is that it serves as a fitting tribute to the history and tradition of the synagogue, which tells the communal and the individual stories of the communities that people came from to form what we know today as Sephardic Bikur Holim,” Maimon said. In addition to collecting the oral histories to be preserved and presented to the members, he said they are also expecting it to be a way to raise additional money.
“Participation in that Legacy Project will involve a financial commitment that would go to the endowment fund,” he said, “so that, through the building up of the story of the past, we are also looking to the future by contributing to the endowment fund so this wonderful story can have a few more chapters to it.”
“So many people came that had strong histories in the synagogue,” said Almo about the anniversary celebration. “It was just really beautiful.”