Honey and Poi: The Origins and Development of Congregation Sof Ma’Arav in Honolulu Hawai’i

By SOF History project

It isn’t often that a small lay-led Jewish conservative congregation gets its photos featured in the New York Times Weekly Magazine. The impetus for such coverage was a Congregation Sof Ma’arav (Sof) member-initiated publication titled When You Live in Hawaii, You Get Very Creative During Passover Cookbook. The cookbook is just one example of how this little congregation in the middle of the Pacific prompted and promoted its members to consider and execute creative and collective achievement during its forty-seven-year history.

This book will review the questions that Sof has struggled with during its time: conversion, egalitarianism, religious education, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism affiliation, finances, and skill levels. In each instance, people, ideas, and programs enabled Sof, standing alone, to cope with these issues without losing its sense of purpose.

Hopefully, the Sof’s story will amaze the reader as much as it has its author. The story itself is built on three legs: document collection and organization, library research, and group/individual interviews. This book will be successful to the extent that it does justice to many people who have nurtured it in the past and inspire present and future members to recognize their responsibilities to insure its continuance.

The book ends with some ideas for discussion and planning. Having established itself as a successful enterprise, Congregation Sof Ma’arav is now asked to look beyond itself and outward toward assuming a larger role in fostering the health of the Jewish community of Hawai’i and of Hawai’i itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984560537

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 by Sof History project.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018912483

ISBN:              Hardcover           978-1-9845-6055-1

                        Softcover             978-1-9845-6054-4

                        eBook                  978-1-9845-6053-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/19/2018

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Dedicated to the leaders, leyners, mentors, and workers who

have made Congregation Sof Ma’arav so important to the

personal, religious, social, cultural, and spiritual lives of

Jews and non-Jews in Hawaii for over four decades.

Contents

Preface By Sof Member Dr. Alex Golub

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Glossary , acronyms, and dates

Before the Beginning (1850-1959)

In the Beginning (1960–1971)

After the Beginning (1972–1979)

The Middle Years (1980–1999)

The Modern Years (2000–2016)

In Retrospect

Looking to the Future: Ideas for Discussion and Planning

An Afterword and an Update

PREFACE

I AM DELIGHTED TO be able to write this preface for my friend and research partner, Dr. Mathew Sgan. This book is unique. It is a history of the Congregation Sof Ma’arav (Sof), the Conservative Jewish synagogue to which I belong in Honolulu. In it, Mat describes the creation of Sof, its history, and its organization in great detail.

In this carefully-researched book, Mat shows us the details of how Sof was organized, funded, and run. It is very much a book of the congregation and for the congregation, designed for readers who know and care about the families that are described within these pages. Not only does Mat tell Sof’s story in these pages, he has also compiled a separate Appendix that documents its life, including pictures, lists of bar and bat mitzvahs, and other information.

But this book is more than that. Although Mat’s book is the study of a single Jewish congregation, his narrative is also a story about the Jews of Hawai’i, and it will be of interest to anyone interested in the Jewish people or the history of these islands. Despite all the ink that has been spilled on the history of Hawai‘i -- and the even more vast oceans of ink spilled over the history of the Jewish people -- there is almost nothing written about the Jewish community in Hawai‘i. There is no doubt that this book will become a key text for anyone seeking to understand our faith and the place we are so committed to. Modern anthropologists have coined the term ‘collaborative anthropology’ to describe research projects which are based on the inclusion of community members as co-authors rather than as mere research subjects. This book is more than just a piece of ‘collaborative anthropology’ in which I allow Mat to participate. In fact, it is just the opposite! Mat is the ‘lead author’ of this study, and I served merely as a research assistant. The author himself is writing about a group in which he is an active participant. It gets personal! That aspect is reflected in Mat’s use of ‘I’. ‘we’, and ’our’ in many parts of the narrative. I am happy to have helped him in any way I could. I hope more anthropologists follow our lead and find ways to support local people as they conduct their research and learn about their own culture and history.

   In the course of this research, Mat and I discovered people with carefully organized collections of newsletters, maintained archival material, and unpublished but important documentation. One of the book’s strengths is the way Mat ferrets out and synthesizes these sources. My fervent hope is that this book is the first, not the last, account of Jews in Hawai’i. I hope that it will inspire many readers to continue working on this history.

   Working with Mat on this project has been a pleasure. This is not only the study of a community–—it is the study of my community. Helping Mat conduct this research has given me a sense of the value and significance of Congregation Sof Ma’arav. I hope that in reading this book you get a sense of that value as well.

Dr. Alex Golub

Associate Professor of Anthropology,

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

O UR ENDEAVOR TO build the Congregation Sof Ma’arav (Sof) narrative on the basis of documents, interviews, and library research has its own set of angels who have made the impossible task more likely. Some aid came from professionals, some from longtime Sof members, some from just plain members, and some from an occasional participant. We are grateful to all. We have made every effort to include all relevant materials that we came across either in the narrative or in an Appendix.

Our Document Collection efforts were greatly assisted by former presidents and officers of Sof who realized early on that we are a people of words and deeds and that these records should be preserved for the benefit of succeeding generations. Robert and Bernice Littman, Fran Margulies, and Sally Morgan were most helpful in providing stacks of minutes, bulletins, photos, programs, membership lists, and bulletins from the earliest days. Judy Goldman and Don and Sandra Armstrong supplemented those documents with newsletters from the middle years.

The Sof newsletters, particularly those edited from 2000 to 2007 by Alida Rutchick, were of great value. The absence of a newsletter post-2009 has limited our ability to access, understand, pass on, and benefit from those years. More importantly, the newsletters played a significant informational and inspirational role for the congregation.

Sof in recent years has tried to rely on its website and emails rather than publish a newsletter for congregant communications. That step has limitations. The website and emails are valuable, no doubt, in introducing Sof and in advising visitors of the dates and times of Sof activities, but they are otherwise limited in impact and use.

Library Research depended heavily on the kindness of professional assistance. Todah rabah (thanks a lot) to Sof member Ann Rabinko and her staff at the UH-Mānoa Pacific Area Studies section for their compilation of newspapers and periodicals of the Jewish Federation of Hawaii, the Hawaii Jewish News, and other magazines that detailed various efforts to form Hawai`i Jews into some sort of Jewish community. The period of 1980–1997 or so was most alive with communal building efforts.

Patrick McNally, head of the Hawai`i and Pacific section at the Hawai`i State library, and his staff were very helpful in advising how best to use the newspaper files, articles, and books relevant to learning more about Sof Ma’arav’s development in the context of the larger Jewish, religious, and civil currents of Hawai`i during the time periods involved.

The Levinson Krupp Library at Temple Emanu-El, under the direction of Sof members Sally Morgan and Deborah Washofsky, also a Temple Emanu-El member assisted by Charlotte White (Sof), played its part enabling us to better understand Jewish life in Hawai`i before and after Sof Ma’arav was founded. Being able to discuss with Deborah and Sally such a valuable document as Kirk Cashmere’s draft of The History of Jews in Hawai`i was of great value.

We are deeply indebted to Kirk Cashmere (1955–2002), who provided us with background information through a draft of his History of the Jews of Hawai`i. (He went on to study law and made his mark in many areas of civil rights in that profession.) Kirk was very involved in Jewish affairs in Hawai`i throughout his adult life, including active participation in Sof Ma’arav. His yeoman work of identifying Jewish individuals, marriages, and events by searching and recording information from the wills and trusts maintained at the Hawai`i State Archives is important for our understanding of Jews in Hawai`i during the nineteenth century up to World War II.

We were also fortunate to have as a friend Larry Steinberg, who is the volunteer archivist for Temple Emanu-El (TE.) With his background in historical archaeology in Nevada, Larry takes a broad view of his collections and interprets his responsibilities to include all things Jewish in Hawai`i. That means not only folders titled Sof Ma’arav, but also biographies of many affiliated with other Jewish organizations in Hawai`I, as well as nonaffiliated Jews who make news for one reason or another. The TE archives proved to be a valuable source of information for the Sof History Project (SHP.)

Group and Individual Interview Sessions added an important dimension to our narrative. We are indebted to Temple Emanu-El for its cooperation in making a room available for our group discussions. The sessions were taped and sent to Rev.com for transcription. Many thanks to Laurel Sgan for coming to the aid of her father and setting up the transcribing system.

Naomi Olstein provided an interview tape and Sof newsletter article about Robert and Bernice Littman’s arrival in Hawai`i and their four-plus decades of leadership of Sof Ma’arav. Jennifer Rachels very helpfully transcribed that valuable tape recording.

A meeting with Craig Howes, director of the Biographic Research Center at the University of Hawai`i–Mānoa (UH-M), was very productive. Craig provided technical and process information about the modern world of interviewing. His comments on the general outline for the endeavor refined and advanced our tripod approach