The Arizona Daily Star

Published: 12.13.2004

Torah gets new home
Or Chadash members inaugurate temple site
By Tim Ellis
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star

Julie Sebag provides music as she and members of Congregation Or Chadash take turns carrying the congregation's Torah.


It was a homecoming of a different kind Sunday by more than 250 members of Congregation Or Chadash, who turned out to help bring their holy book to its new home.
Members of the Reform Jewish congregation walked the Torah in a sort of slow-moving relay race from the Tucson Jewish Community Center, 3800 E. River Road, to the site of their new campus at 3939 N. Alvernon Way.
There, a short service was held, followed by a celebration with a barbecue cookout, and singing and dancing to a mix of modern pop, oldies and traditional Jewish music.
The throng of singing, clapping congregants rejoiced because the Torah was coming home and because there was a home to take it to. Members of the 270-family congregation have had to hold services and religious classes at several places around Tucson while they looked for a home of their own.
Sunday's procession passed by the Tucson Hebrew Academy and the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona, where Or Chadash has held services and religious-instruction classes since its formation in 1995.
The crowd parted as the Torah approached its new home, a newly renovated, 4,000-square-foot, 60-year-old ranch home on the 4.5-acre parcel just north of River Road that the congregation bought in 2002.
As it approached, congregant Marilyn Devore blew the shofar - a ram's horn that traditionally is sounded at religious services.
"I'm terribly excited, because it's been years now that we've been trying to get our own temple. We've worked so hard," said Bonnie Klahr.
"It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience," said Klahr, who was walking to the congregation's new campus with her son, Max, 10.
Some compared the event to the biblical account of the Jews wandering in the wilderness before finally finding the Promised Land.
"We've wandered in the desert for 10 years. Now, we have a home - a home with its own ark," said Janece Cohen, the congregation's cantor, referring to the cabinet in which the Torah is kept.
The ark was paid for by fund-raisers organized by seventh- and eighth-graders in Or Chadash's religious school.
The front of the ark that holds the Torah was decorated with the Hebrew word for God made from mesquite that previously adorned the ark of Tucson's biggest Jewish congregation, Reform Jewish Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road. The word in wood was fashioned by Carol Kestler, an artist and member of Or Chadash, which also is a Reform congregation member.
Rabbi Thomas Louchheim said bringing the Torah completes the congregation's transition to its new home.
"We've ritualized this transformative moment," Louchheim said. "It's an expression of thanks."
The new site is well-situated, he said, near the Hebrew Academy and Jewish Federation offices, and just west of the Junior League of Tucson Inc., 2099 E. River Road. Or Chadash will continue to hold services at the Junior League facility until the completion of a new 9,000-seat congregation center to be built on the North Alvernon property. That project is expected to be completed in summer 2006, said Howard Paley, congregation president.
Paley said the congregation hopes to begin offering religious instruction next fall in three portable classroom buildings that are now on the site.
Two of the portables were bought from St. Gregory College Preparatory School, said David Nathanson, a congregant and former contractor who's helping to coordinate development of the new campus. The fill dirt used to build up the ground underneath the portables and the site of the congregation center was trucked in from a construction project at a Christian church on North Country Club Road between East Pima Street and East Grant Road.
"We need this, because the congregation is growing," Nathanson said. "And it's really going to grow now that we've got a permanent home."
? Contact reporter Tim Ellis at 573-4176 or at ltellis@azstarnet.com.

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