One of my greatest accomplishments began during one of the lowest points in my life. I was in my rabbi\u2019s office at the synagogue where I\u2019d grown up and where my beloved grandfather, Alfred Wolf, had been a senior rabbi decades earlier.<\/p>\n
I had so many cherished memories of this place. Wilshire Boulevard Temple is a landmark synagogue in the heart of Los Angeles where stars and studio moguls worshipped during Hollywood\u2019s golden age. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a historic address there.<\/p>\n
I spent my childhood worshipping under the sanctuary\u2019s soaring 10-story dome and scampering upstairs from Hebrew class to my grandfather\u2019s office, where we\u2019d play games or he\u2019d enthrall me with one of his wise stories. The synagogue was showing its age by that time, and the congregation was dwindling, but I was too young to notice. I was always happy there.<\/p>\n
STRENGTHEN YOUR FAITH WITH THESE BOOKS FROM OUR SHOP<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I was not happy now. I was nearing 30, a professional filmmaker. A few weeks earlier, just a month before our wedding, my fianc\u00e9e and I had abruptly broken up. I was crushed and bewildered.<\/p>\n The whole reason I was back at the synagogue after years of lapsed membership was my approaching marriage. Like so many young people, I\u2019d abandoned my faith in college. Yes, I treasured my Jewish upbringing. But God and worship seemed like relics from my childhood.<\/p>\n I poured out my heart to Rabbi Leder. He consoled me and tried to help me understand that, though today felt awful, it wouldn\u2019t always feel this way.<\/p>\n Now I was meeting with him in his spacious office, with its fireplace and beautiful, if worn, wood-paneled walls, when he said something unexpected.<\/p>\n \u201cI have an idea that might take your mind off your romantic troubles. As you know, we\u2019re about to start a big renovation project here. The temple is falling apart. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen the tarp we put up in the sanctuary to catch the plaster falling from the dome. Hebrew-school classes are shrinking. People have even advised us to sell the campus to one of the big Korean churches in this neighborhood.\u201d<\/p>\n He looked at me intently. \u201cWe are not going to sell. We are going to save this place and reinvent it as a vital place of Jewish community. It\u2019s going to cost more than a hundred million dollars, but we\u2019re going to do it right. What if you and your film company documented the process, making a few online videos for us to keep donors abreast of our progress? You seem to have enjoyed being back here. This would give you a reason to stick around.\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE: A SANCTUARY FOR ALL<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t sure how to respond. My company mostly makes narrative and commercial films, not documentaries. It seemed like a huge responsibility. But then something struck me. Rabbi Leder was right. I had enjoyed being back at the temple. Anticipating marriage and kids had changed my thinking about faith.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t necessarily want to become a regular worshipper. But I didn\u2019t want to lose touch with my spiritual heritage either. And yes, making a new kind of film would distract me from my heartbreak.<\/p>\n \u201cOkay,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll give it a try.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon I was setting up interviews and documenting the start of renovation. I quickly realized that I would have to film more than construction. The temple\u2019s legacy was at stake. I\u2019d have to explain what it all meant.<\/p>\n I talked with temple leaders and learned about the synagogue\u2019s history. It was Los Angeles\u2019s first Jewish congregation, founded in 1862 as Congregation B\u2019nai B\u2019rith (\u201cChildren of the Covenant\u201d), with a handful of families, when L.A. was just a small frontier town. The original building was designed to look like a church, to deflect anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n The congregation grew until, by the 1920s, temple leaders realized that the city\u2019s Jewish population was moving west, closer to the movie studios that were making Hollywood a household name.<\/p>\n The current temple was dedicated in 1929. It featured the lavish domed sanctuary, along with black marble, gold inlay, and murals commissioned by the Warner brothers who had founded the iconic film studio.<\/p>\n For decades, the temple was nationally prominent, the hub of Jewish Hollywood. But beginning in the 1980s, just as I began attending as a kid, decline set in. L.A.\u2019s Jews moved out to the suburbs. The neighborhood around the temple got rougher.<\/p>\n READ MORE: FASTING FOR YOM KIPPUR<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Photos from the Hebrew school show gradually diminishing classes, until just a few kids were being confirmed each year. My family probably wouldn\u2019t have attended the temple if my grandfather hadn\u2019t been a rabbi there.<\/p>\n In recent years, though, the neighborhood had changed yet again to become a magnet for Korean immigrants and young hipsters\u2014including young Jewish families. I filmed the construction, but by that point I knew the building wasn\u2019t the whole story.<\/p>\n Wherever I went with my camera, people talked not about architecture but about their lives at the temple. Their faith. Their memories. Their family history. A past president of the congregation told me about how he fainted at his own wedding and my grandfather, who was officiating, caught him.<\/p>\n A longtime member opened a photo album for me in her living room. Every milestone in her life seemed to involve the temple. She too had known and loved my grandfather.<\/p>\n I could hardly keep track of how many lives this grand place of worship had touched. The building, I realized, mattered only insofar as it drew people together.<\/p>\n The reality of the place was the relationships it fostered. And the countless ways people experienced God during Friday prayers, at High Holiday services, in Hebrew school, even at the Jewish summer sleepaway camp my grandfather had founded in Malibu, the first of its kind in the western United States.<\/p>\n The ways people experienced God.<\/em><\/p>\n How long had it been since I\u2019d thought seriously about God? By the time I started college, I na\u00efvely considered myself too worldly for faith. But things had happened since then. A few years earlier, I\u2019d been staying over at a friend\u2019s when I woke up in the middle of the night and felt a powerful urge to get back to my parents\u2019 house right away.<\/p>\n I could neither explain nor resist the urge. Alone on the road, I began thinking about death and I felt very frightened. Then, out of nowhere, a strange calm came over me and I thought of my grandparents. I pulled into the driveway at home and saw the lights on.<\/p>\n My mom and younger sister were inside, crying. My grandfather had had a stroke and died\u2014right at the moment I\u2019d felt that sudden calm in the car.<\/p>\n I hardly told a soul about that experience. Now, interviewing people for what was growing into a full-length film, I realized what a strong force faith was in people\u2019s lives. Was it strong like that for me? I thought back to my most formative faith experiences.<\/p>\n READ MORE: COOKING TO SHOW YOU CARE<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n To be honest, not many happened during worship at the temple, which I found kind of boring as a kid. No, I\u2019d experienced God more indirectly, often through my grandfather.<\/p>\n He wasn\u2019t just the wise, vigorous man who\u2019d taken me on hikes and played games with me in his office. He\u2019d shown me what it looked like to love people well. To take care of countless souls gathered together in the temple he helped to lead.<\/p>\n One day, I turned my camera on myself and began telling my own story. How I\u2019d grown up at the temple, always sitting with my family in Row H of the sanctuary, on the left-hand side. How I\u2019d gone through Hebrew school. Been a counselor at the temple sleepaway camp. Then gradually abandoned my faith.<\/p>\n \u201cI took this place for granted,\u201d I said. Now I couldn\u2019t imagine my life without it.<\/p>\n The renovation took nearly five years. The entire inside of the sanctuary was taken apart and rebuilt. The Hebrew school was overhauled. Work began on a new cultural center. The decrepit classrooms where I\u2019d learned Bible stories got sleek rows of computers and brightly colored desks and chairs.<\/p>\n A historical exhibit was installed outside the sanctuary, with photos of past members\u2014Louis B. Mayer, Jack Benny\u2014and even a counselor\u2019s red jacket from the camp. The project was a huge gamble. What if all those millions were spent and no one came?<\/p>\n They came. Today, attendance is up and High Holiday services are full. The early-childhood program is growing. There is a rooftop sports complex. Neighborhood people of all faiths and ethnicities come for help at the social-services center. Everyone is welcome.<\/p>\n I\u2019m one of those new members. Or maybe I should say I\u2019m a returning member. I pledge regularly and I\u2019m here for every High Holiday service. Since my film was completed and I\u2019ve begun showing it to audiences, the temple has become a second home to me, as I speak at screenings or give tours to people who\u2019ve seen it.<\/p>\n The film is called Restoring Tomorrow. <\/em>I\u2019m showing it at film festivals and theaters, and ultimately I plan to air it on PBS, Netflix and Amazon.<\/p>\n I screened it for an audience that included members of an African-American church here in L.A., and afterward church members came to me with tears in their eyes, saying that the movie made them even more determined to ensure the survival of their own house of worship.<\/p>\n The film ends with me sitting in my family\u2019s row in the sanctuary. I explain to the camera what the temple means to me now, how important it is that this place\u2014indeed, all such holy places\u2014is preserved and handed on to future generations.<\/p>\n The camera cranes up until it\u2019s almost at the ceiling, taking in the sanctuary, filling the viewer with the same sense of religious awe I get every time I come here.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s title, I think, says it all. The temple has been restored for tomorrow. And so have I.<\/p>\n Did you enjoy this story? Subscribe to <\/em>Guideposts<\/strong><\/a> magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n