Blog
More than anything, we are a community. The families who have celebrated births, weddings and b'nei mitzvah through successive generations are the heart and soul of our congregation. We invite you to share your favorite memory here. Please email your blog post to mcurtis@wbtla.org. We reserve the right to edit blog entries for suitability.Dr. Edelman's Little Book of Gifts
Inside a four-inch-by-three-inch notebook, fitting cozily into the palm of a hand, is the story of our congregation and how our predecessors built our sanctuary. The notebook belonged to Dr. David Edelman whose name is discernible in fading gold leaf on its cover. As is still the case today, the notebook was a promotional gift from a pharmaceutical company and its front pages contain advertising for medications long ago superseded by newer formulations.
Apparently doctors in the 1920s had far better penmanship than conventional wisdom now suggests. In meticulous script, penciled in over the course of many long months and years, Dr. Edelman carefully recorded the names of all the members of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the amounts they gave to the community-wide effort to build our historic Sanctuary.
Dr. David Edelman served as the president of Congregation B'Nai Brith from 1910 to 1933 and was the son of Rabbi Abraham Wolf Edelman, the first rabbi in Los Angeles and at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. He was also the brother of A.M. Edelman, the Sanctuary's architect. While his brother's fame has endured, Dr. Edelman's years-long effort to raise the $1.5 million necessary to build the Sanctuary has mostly been forgotten.
According to Rabbi Magnin, who paid tribute to Edelman's herculean efforts when the Temple was dedicated in the summer of 1929: "Dr. D.W. Edelman has labored day and night with indefatigable energy and courage. Private interests, personal comforts and health became subsidiary and unimportant in his eyes, in the face of this colossal enterprise."
Even then, the Temple membership was fairly large, numbering approximately 2,000 families. Despite his busy medical practice, Dr. Edelman reached out to the vast majority of Temple members and it appears that most responded as generously as they could. From the Warner Brothers who gave $40,000 to scores of families who gave $5, all helped to build a new home for the congregation on Wilshire Boulevard.
The Warner Brothers' gift for the murals may have been 8,000 times as much as the smallest donation, but everyone helped and their gifts were all personally recorded by Dr. Edelman in his little notebook and then printed in the dedication program.
Today, as we move forward with the Building Lives Project, our intention is to reach every family in the same way they did in 1929. While our goal today is 100 times greater, we have strength in numbers and every dollar counts as much now as it did then.
Apparently doctors in the 1920s had far better penmanship than conventional wisdom now suggests. In meticulous script, penciled in over the course of many long months and years, Dr. Edelman carefully recorded the names of all the members of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the amounts they gave to the community-wide effort to build our historic Sanctuary.
Dr. David Edelman served as the president of Congregation B'Nai Brith from 1910 to 1933 and was the son of Rabbi Abraham Wolf Edelman, the first rabbi in Los Angeles and at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. He was also the brother of A.M. Edelman, the Sanctuary's architect. While his brother's fame has endured, Dr. Edelman's years-long effort to raise the $1.5 million necessary to build the Sanctuary has mostly been forgotten.
According to Rabbi Magnin, who paid tribute to Edelman's herculean efforts when the Temple was dedicated in the summer of 1929: "Dr. D.W. Edelman has labored day and night with indefatigable energy and courage. Private interests, personal comforts and health became subsidiary and unimportant in his eyes, in the face of this colossal enterprise."
Even then, the Temple membership was fairly large, numbering approximately 2,000 families. Despite his busy medical practice, Dr. Edelman reached out to the vast majority of Temple members and it appears that most responded as generously as they could. From the Warner Brothers who gave $40,000 to scores of families who gave $5, all helped to build a new home for the congregation on Wilshire Boulevard.
The Warner Brothers' gift for the murals may have been 8,000 times as much as the smallest donation, but everyone helped and their gifts were all personally recorded by Dr. Edelman in his little notebook and then printed in the dedication program.
Today, as we move forward with the Building Lives Project, our intention is to reach every family in the same way they did in 1929. While our goal today is 100 times greater, we have strength in numbers and every dollar counts as much now as it did then.
Posted on 2011-02-23 10:29:45
