Shepherding Temple Is a Family Affair

VENTURA —  The oldest Jewish congregation in Ventura County, Temple Beth Torah, is a steady whir of activity: Rare is the morning, afternoon or night when a religious service or class, a special forum, outreach program or social event isn’t on the docket.

Overseeing this hub of activity and activism is a highly unusual team: the temple’s rabbi, Lisa Hochberg-Miller, and her husband, Rabbi Seth Hochberg-Miller, who is the temple’s educator.

Also rare is a temple youth event in which one of their three daughters--ages 8, 5 and 2--isn’t participating.

It’s a family affair and that is just the way the Hochberg-Millers like it.

“Our membership reflects the full range of society--tons of kids, older men and women, boomers, young marrieds and singles,” said Lisa Hochberg-Miller, sitting in her temple office on Foothill Road.

In fact, her favorite community outreach project at the moment is connecting with those who might not feel they have a place at the temple.

“For instance, we’re trying to make sure there’s a niche here for men, for the guys least likely to have time to go to synagogue,” she said.

While Lisa Hochberg-Miller oversees such outreach projects, her husband oversees the temple’s Torah school, with its 200 children, and coordinates educational programs for all ages, some of which he teaches.

He keeps particularly busy these days with a new phenomenon: creating classes for adult Jews who want to go back to religious school--to learn Hebrew, study the Torah and prepare for the bat or bar mitzvah ceremony, all of which they may have paid scant attention to when they were younger.

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In fact, his Lifelong Learning Course for adult mitzvah students, which begins a new session on Feb. 23, has had to add an extra session due to the high response.

The temple doesn’t only reach out to other Jews, however.

It is working with the Ventura-based nonprofit group Project Understanding and is on standby, along with other churches, to help house homeless people during cold weather.

And recently, the temple’s Women of Reform Judaism hosted its second annual All Faiths Women of Vision Conference, which explored issues of intolerance and violence among younger people in Ventura County.

“We had over 100 women of many faiths, including a dozen female clergy,” Lisa Hochberg-Miller said.

As a member of the clergy herself, Hochberg-Miller sees herself not as a trailblazer, but a beneficiary of earlier trailblazing female rabbis.

“Although I still may be many people’s first woman rabbi, I’ve faced very little discrimination because of it,” she said.

She has found that people often say they like the difference in a woman’s sensibility.

“People say they like the balance” between her and the temple’s male cantor, Michael Anatole, at services.

“And I think they benefit from a woman’s style,” she added.

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As in most of the world’s religions, Judaism contains more than one “stream of thought,” of which the Reform movement was the first to allow female rabbis.

“Reform has the sense of leaving behind aspects of Judaism that seem antiquated, while keeping traditions that reflect its beliefs,” she explained. “And it contains a commitment to social justice.”

She quoted a Hebrew saying, “Tikkun olam, which means repairing the world--a Jewish belief that part of why we’re in this world is to help make it a better place.”

The Reform movement in the United States is changing.

“We’re rewriting our Document of Faith,” she said. “Seth and I will lead a forum in March on the issues--such as talking about whether to keep kosher.”

The Conservative movement strives more to balance the traditional with some modern aspects. She added that it, too, allows female rabbis.

The Orthodox movement, however, does not recognize women rabbis.

“Orthodox is the most traditional--the most committed to fundamental Jewish practices,” Hochberg-Miller explained.