Beach Hillel Brings Jewish
Traditions Into 21st Century

By Steve Irsay
Staff Writer

In the Jewish tradition, the Sabbath is a weekly day of rest from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, during which time various types of “work” are forbidden.

For the strictest observers, that could mean not tying a shoelace or flipping a light switch. Others relax the rules and simply spend quality time with family.

For a group of about 100 college students at the Alpert Jewish Community Center on Willow Street earlier this month, the Sabbath, among other things, meant a break from blogging.

It was hardly a typical Sabbath restriction. Then again, it was hardly a typical Sabbath.

The observance came in the middle of Jewlicious @ The Beach, a conference that took place April 8 to 10 and was hosted by Beach Hillel, the local chapter of an international Jewish student group. The event featured everything from blogging and pool parties to a performance by Latino-Jewish rap act Hip Hop Hoodios.

This Saturday night marks the start of Passover, the weeklong holiday celebrating the Jews’ freedom from slavery in Egypt. On the second night, Beach Hillel is staging a staid event: a traditional Seder dinner at a Bixby Knolls home of Rachel Bookstein, the group’s director, and her husband, Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, its spiritual advisor.

While they pride themselves on their presence in the “blogosphere,” the Booksteins also are quick to open their home for weekly dinners. The mix of high-tech and homespun is a hallmark of their outreach style since taking over Beach Hillel in July 2004.

Their arrival has marked a revival for the fledgling group, said Beach Hillel board president emeritus Allen Alevy. Asked what the organization was before the Booksteins, Alevy replied “it wasn’t.”

Though in existence, the group was certainly in decline. Activities included only occasional holiday parties for 20 or so members.

Today, there are weekly events and nearly 200 active members.

Beach Hillel is a regional organization, based at California State University, Long Beach, but also serving students at Long Beach City College and schools in parts of Orange County. The Booksteins arrived with a pretty clear mission: convince skeptical students that a Jewish community group isn’t just something that grandma and grandpa belong to; it is something they can shape, Rachel Bookstein said.

“Whatever your passion is, there is a way you can add value to the Jewish community,” she said. “If young people opt in, it will be a much more exciting place. If they opt out, then it will be a dinosaur.”

Communicating the message posed another challenge. Beach Hillel covers schools known more for commuters than campus life. Its office is tucked away in a converted darkroom on the first floor of the CSULB student union. So, Beach Hillel has made its real home online.

Its site, Beachhillel.org, can attract more than 10,000 page views on a busy day. It is a colorful blog with event postings, news stories, theological discussions and a even a timely link to “Seda’ Club,” a flash cartoon featuring 50 Cent doing a send-up of his hit “In Da Club.”

“I don’t have rabbinic study sessions,” said Yonah Bookstein, referring to traditional lecturing on Jewish laws and customs. “My rabbinic study is the blogosphere and the Internet.”

He is active on the social networking site MySpace.com, as well as AOL Instant Messenger. But all the chatting and blogging are just extensions of low-tech outreach the Booksteins practiced for years.

Rachel, who grew up in Marin County, met Detroit native Yonah Bookstein when the two were graduate students at Oxford University in England in October 1995. They married eight months later.

After graduating, the couple spent two years working in Israel before moving to Warsaw, Poland, where they directed the local office of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to strengthen Jewish life in central and eastern Europe.

In September 2001, they moved to upstate New York, where Yonah Bookstein finished his rabbinical training and Rachel stayed at home with their three young children. They came to Long Beach last summer, passing up opportunities to live and work in areas with larger Jewish communities.

“I feel that my wife and I have some kind of mission in Southern California,” Yonah Bookstein said. “You have not had people reaching out to young adults. It has just not been a priority of the Jewish community.”

Dan Wasserman, a second year graduate student at CSULB and two-year member of Beach Hillel, said the Booksteins’ generosity and outreach efforts are already making a difference.

“They’ve just turned around all of Beach Hillel,” he said. “They are planting the seeds for a legacy for Jewish students for years to come.”

For more information on Beach Hillel, visit www.beachhillel.org or call 985-7068.

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