Congregation Beth Israel (Berkeley, California)

Directory entries from 1958 and 1960 list “Cong. Beth Israel” in Berkeley at “1630 Bancraft Way.”[1][2] The 1963 edition gives the address as 1630 Bancroft Way.[3] The available sources do not establish whether the congregation remains at that address.

In a 2013 memoir, the writer recalls Congregation Beth Israel’s fading orange-red brickwork, worn-wood floor, and Israeli and American flags flanking the aron kodesh. Part of the sanctuary had been partitioned to form a classroom.[4]

An early twentieth-century directory of Jewish organizations records Berkeley’s First Hebrew Congregation at 2130 Center Street and gives an organizational date of 1913. It names Hugo Peyser as president and J. Friedman as secretary and reports 30 members and $800 in income.[5]

The directory describes weekly services in Hebrew and English and a school with three classes, four teachers, 25 pupils, and two sessions each week. No verified source establishes whether First Hebrew Congregation later became Congregation Beth Israel or whether they were separate institutions.[5]

The 1963 directory marks Beth Israel’s entry with the letter “O.” Its abbreviation key defines “M-O” as “Modern Orthodox” but does not define the standalone “O,” so the edition does not by itself establish a Modern Orthodox classification.[3]

The same entry lists Rabbi Saul Berman as rabbi, David Waen as president, and Samuel S. Markowitz as vice-president and gives the telephone number as TH 3-5246.[3] The 1958 and 1960 entries provide no rabbi, officers, membership figure, school information, or organizational date.[1][2]

A 2013 memoirist recalls attending the congregation’s Hebrew school through most of elementary school and walking five blocks down Bancroft from Washington Elementary School.[4] Classes met on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 4:00 to 6:00. Before and between sessions, students played touch football in the street.[4]

Instruction included an Israeli teacher named Varda, who taught the Hebrew word for chalk, gir, including its back-of-the-throat trill, and explained that the word for chalkboard was also used for the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. Rabbi Leibowitz demonstrated how the strings and knots of the tzitzis on a tallis could be counted to 613, the traditional number of commandments in the Torah.[4] The memoirist recalls retaining relatively little Hebrew while remembering classmates Jake, Steve, and Stevie Klein, Rabbi Lifsics calling the children inside, and once climbing through the classroom window with a friend while another teacher faced the blackboard.[4]

A 2002 study lists an institution named “Congregation Beth Israel” among the sponsors and promoters of Jewish culture in the San Francisco Bay Area.[6] The table gives no city, address, or institutional history and separately lists Congregation Beth Israel-Judea. It therefore does not establish that the unnamed entry refers to the Berkeley congregation.[6]

In a January 23, 2022, Newsweek commentary reproduced by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Rabbi Yaakov Menken wrote that Zahra Billoo, identified as executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco office, named Congregation Beth Israel among “Zionist synagogues” and called “polite Zionists” “your enemies.” He also reported that she urged listeners to “fight back.”[7]

Menken characterized the remarks as hateful and antisemitic. The commentary reported that CAIR claimed Billoo had been “misquoted” and was the target of an “online smear campaign.”[7] These characterizations come from a politically contested commentary rather than a source documenting the congregation’s institutional history.