Hi, everyone. 

Now in our fourth year, we have established "our voice," our unique identity and role as a central fixture in the Orange County Jewish community. With G-d's blessings, new people continue finding our congregation, becoming regulars at Shabbat and Sunday services.

Shabbat at YIOC has evolved into a robust experience, and we have created that island of Shabbat that leaves us feeling every weekend as though we are in the heart of the most robust Torah environment. Shul is warmer, though comfortably air-conditioned, as more people than ever before share in leading the services, singing, and participating.  No one eats Shabbat lunch alone, as the community Shabbat experience is as embracing as each Shul member wants it to be for her or him.

Shul life is deeply exciting, as we welcome into our congregational community new people, new families, one by one. It amazes us.  When we were founded, we were told that the "materialistic needs of Irvine residents" would guarantee that we never would last a year without a building, a formal edifice.  And yet, what we lack in "bricks and mortar," we seem instead to regale in spirit and meaning. Our numbers amply empower us to embrace community, and we offer every component that any world-class congregation would ask.

YIOC is comprised of really exciting people, idealistic, brimming with a love of Judaism and eagerness to grow in Torah, in davening knowledge, in Jewish identity.  People who attended other temples and shuls in Irvine and Orange County, but who never ever led services or studied pages of Talmud and volumes of rabbinic literature, now do so with gusto.  Each individual matters in our shul.  Man, woman, teen, child. No one gets lost or closed out of a clique.  There are no cliques at YIOC. Everyone who buys into our Mission Statement is embraced.   Sure we value membership applications and donations, but we equally -- perhaps more than equally -- value kindness, goodness of spirit, a willingness to attend services and classes and to grow.

We will not force you to grow. But the opportunities to grow are many, and you will be surrounded by people who are growing Jewishly.  Torah classes with classical commentaries, Talmud and Tosafot study,  weekly studies in Navi (Books of the Biblical Prophets), classes in reading Hebrew, navigating the Siddur Prayer Book, and even in leading services.

Importantly, we are a safe environment to learn and to grow. The mutuality of respect is enormous, in a way that one does not always experience in some other congregations in Irvine.  No one will criticize the way you lead services or a mistake you make. No question is too basic, whether in a clas or at our interactive sermon-Torah Study on Shabbat mornings.  No subject is off the table -- except for speaking unkindly about someone else, or engaging in shul politics. Not in our shul. Never again.

We have emerged uniquely as a “Boutique Shul,” capable of acting rapidly and meaningfully to shape and serve the unique spiritual needs and quests of each new individual or family who comes into our lives.  As a smaller, more intimate congregational community, we can more readily personalize the “fit” because of the way our congregation has coalesced as a loving, accepting, and  welcoming community of families and individuals.

When we began three and a half years ago,  we 60 families and households began our journey unsure of our destination.  We began with a smile and a prayer, enough  metal folding chairs that required us to clear out that inventory at four Target stores, and photocopies of the prayers and the weekly Torah reading.  We had a private Torah on loan, from week to week.  A community room that soon would be renovating could accommodate us for a few months, if we did not mind being adjacent to the exercise room treadmills, separated by a paper-thin wall.

We were not certain where we would daven, where we would land.  As with Parshat Mas’ei, we traveled.  Oh, boy, did we travel!  And then we finally found the Back Bay Conference Center, gorgeously refurbished and newly beautified atop Irvine Lanes. On the one hand, it was “the gorgeous conference center above the bowling alley” – and, yet, having been transformed into a beautiful center, it conveyed anything but a bowling alley – even though it proved right up our alley and afforded us a place to daven that is so quiet you can hear a pin drop. . . .

We had no Torah.  And then the Schlosberg Family brought a Torah into our world.  And thereafter the Sebag Family.  And a third wonderful and kind source provided us a third Torah on long-term loan for those special Three-Torah Shabbatot.  And my family brought a fourth Torah into the community, in memory of my Mom and Dad – my Mom having lived long enough to see and celebrate our shul’s successful emergence from the ashes of a previous shul that had been a G-d-awful disaster.

We had to buy Siddur and Chumash books and chairs and tallitot (“talleisim”) and all the things that a shul needs.  Soon we had everything – everything – but we also had an imposing $63,000 one-time shul-supplies start-up debt that we had to overcome.  And – maybe the most amazing part of our first two years – our "Little Shul That Could" raised the $63,000 in eight months, smack in the middle of the worst recession in a century, and retired that debt.  Pffft! Those who could donate, did.  Those who could not were never made to feel pressure, not at YIOC. There is no such pressure at our shul -- no building fund, no maintenance fund, just a safe spiritual place to daven, to learn Torah, and to acquire an appreciation of puns. With lots of contributions, including some particularly kind private donations, given by some of our community’s many kind-hearted and generous souls, our shul closed its second year debt-free.  And it's been smooth-sailing ever since.

So what has been and is our secret, as our initial congregational community of 60 households slowly has grown to more than 80 engaged and supportive households in a bit more than three years?

I think a major part of it has been that we have actualized our dream of a spiritual haven, free from the bane of "shul politics" and all the "political intrigue" and Clergy Killers who cause people to recoil from "organized religion." All the junk of self-important people and political intrigue and just-plain junk. We not only have committed publicly to end a tradition in Irvine Orthodoxy of mixing a House of G-d with a sociological turmoil center, but we have lived that commitment for real.

We comfortably share our members with the other shuls and temples: someone davens there at one service, at us on another few services, and alternates openly, understanding that Irvine slowly is becoming – normal.  We now are a Three-Shul Town. 

So, with the founding and growth of Young Israel of Orange County,  life has become healthier for us, all of us, in Jewish Irvine and Jewish O.C.  Even as we at YIOC have begun to grow in an interesting, even fascinating way.  Go figure – a Boutique Shul.

Have you ever gone to a doctor who has a “boutique” medical practice?  She has fewer patients, but gives more time and attention to each one?  Or to a “boutique” law firm?  They may not be worldwide famous, like the ones where I had practiced law earlier in my life, but you know you get the law partner’s personal attention and not relegated to some junior associate who is here today, gone tomorrow.  Well, that is what we have become: The Boutique Orthodox Shul of Orange County.

Even as the numbers of families and households in our congregational community compare favorably, after a bit more than three years, with the membership numbers that our sister Orthodox shuls of Irvine have aggregated respectively over each of their 20-plus years – may we all succeed and continue growing! – and even though we have no building,  enjoying only three years of what Corporate America calls “corporate goodwill,”  we somehow seem to have accumulated enormous oodles of another kind of good will – a will that is good.  Word spreads.  By mouth.  By phone. By texting.  By internet. Word spreads.

As we entered into our second year we were making minyan "more dependably" than before . . . on Friday nights and Shabbat day and Sundays. But -- oy! -- not always.  Yet, with time we have grown, and we now, thank G-d, are beyond "more dependably."  Equally important, from our very beginning we introduced to Irvine the unique notion that never existed before in Orange County -- but that slowly is taking hold: that an Orthodox congregation begins Shabbat when Shabbat begins -- and not an hour or even half an hour later.  We are and remain the only Irvine congregation that absolutely will not hold late Friday Night services that begin after Shabbat has started.  The absolute only.  There is no other Orthodox shul in Irvine that can say that, although one has begun inching, inching, inching our way.  The Jewish way.

We carefully have kept our commitment to all of our families, all of our members and supporters and friends: we may not have a structural edifice of our own or the biggest membership roster, but we have the greatest, warmest concentration of wonderful people anywhere. A spiritual sanctuary.

At YIOC newcomers become engaged. Our weekly Tuesday Night 90-minute Chumash/ Rashi/ Halakhah class has grown steadily . . . from four regulars to six to eight regulars to ten regulars . . . to the point that our class now often attracts nearly 20 people every Tuesday night for the most serious Torah learning in Irvine, including classical Torah texts -- in the text -- and far-ranging halakhic discussions and learning arising from those texts..  Imagine – fifteen to twenty people learning real Torah, with m’forshim commentaries and hashkafah perspective, every single week for more than ninety minutes each week – in Orange County!  Forget about “The Real Housewives of Orange County” -- we are “The Real Torah Students of Orange County.”  Likewise, our weekly Monday night Hebrew Reading and Siddur Navigation class is now into its Second Year, with real learning about davening.  People who have attended that class now ably lead services, something they never before dared to try when they attended other Irvine congregations.

Moreover, our weekly Gemara/Talmud and Rambam/ Shulchan Arukh class every Thursday night is the most intense serious textual high-value Torah learning in Irvine.  There is nothing like it -- and never has been -- both in its intensity for those seek deeper learning but also in its accessibility even for people with limited background. That group had begun with six people and now has grown to twelve regulars, followed by our Thursday night Maariv davening.

Similarly, we attract a great group every Shabbat afternoon to learn Navi together -- the Books of Shoftim, Shmuel I and II, and now Kings/M'lakhim.  

We also offer one-on-one Torah tutoring for individuals -- you request, and we accommodate.  And we now are teaching pre-Bar/Bat Mitzvah ages both Hebrew and our signature Chumash-Rashi Learning for Young People that we brought to Irvine in the face of a tragic paucity of honest Torah learning at the local community day school, whose name -- "Tarbut v'Torah" -- leaves one wondering "Where in the world is the Torah? Or the davening? Or the Judaic learning?"

Our davening is robust; you just feel it. We have been joined by people whose Jewish affiliation is accelerating – people on a journey to grow, finding our Boutique Shul a wonderful venue for themselves to explore Torah Judaism at a pace they enjoy, personalized for them, with a Rav and Rebbetzin who could not be more thrilled to be serving people whose involvement can be measured by their passion and their kindness.  

Through our unique pastoral care initiatives, YIOC has brought families together, parents and children who had not talked for years, siblings who were at internecine war. We have become an address for people who searched and explored one-after-another temple in Orange County but could not find quite-the-right fit.  One shul was too cold and noisy.  Another too cliquish.  Until they found us. We are “boutique” enough that we can personalize a “fit,” even as we are grounded in fundamental Orthodox halakhah and core Young Israel principles. And although we warmly accept donations, you do not have to be among the wealthy to be honored at YIOC.  Just among the kindest of spirit.  With G-d's bounty, the finances take care of themselves.

We find the most wonderful people -- because they find us, a shul with no building, no staff.  Yet, somehow, wonderful people -- like you -- keep finding us. We have reached and touched real Jews, talented and smart and fun and insightful, who have fallen between the cracks and below the radar of other temples of Orange County.  In many cases, they have gone to several such places first, before searching again, ultimately finding us at Young Israel.

We do not kid ourselves.  Our size is modest.  Yet we have become an incredibly important shul, a critical part of Irvine's and Orange County's religious Jewish landscape – not with a big structure, but fulfilling the spiritual aspirations and needs of a great many lives of really good people, people who work really hard for a living, people who care and have given all their young or full lives, but now come for a shul that can give them what they need for a shul ideally to offer them:  a spiritual home, a path to grow, a road back, a home and Jewish haven.  (And, yes, our numbers do include some of the most important Jewish community leaders and business figures in the region. OK, we admit it.)

With our shul having identified the people in our midst who are the kindest and most generous and capable donors, the kindest and most generous and capable daveners and minyan-goers, the kindest and most generous and capable volunteers, we count ourselves deeply blessed to have so many different heroes in our shul who each play their respective roles. Ellen and I look forward to another year of opening our Shabbat home for more Shabbat meals with more families and individuals. We look to opening our Friday evening home for Shabbat dinners in an even expanded way in the year to come, much as we plan expanding other aspects of  engaging our teens and younger kids in the coming year.

May we all remember Jerusalem and merit seeing the speedy rebuilding of Jerusalem, with the Temple restored on its proper site speedily in our days.  May we see the days of United Jerusalem’s consolation speedily in our days.

 -- Rabbi Dov Fischer

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