BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — May is Jewish American Heritage Month, and in Bakersfield, that heritage is brightest at Temple Beth El, Bakersfield's only temple.
Temple Beth El in Bakersfield serves as a place of worship for the city's Jewish community, but it also serves as as place to celebrate and recognize the history of the Jewish community in Kern County.
Rabbi Jonathan Klein has been with the temple for 3 years.
"Since 2020, right as the pandemic was beginning, I became the Rabbi here, and my journey here, it has been very interesting to see a Jewish community that has been here for over 100 years," said Klein.
Temple Beth El opened in 1947 and recently celebrated its 75-year anniversary. The history of Jewish residents in Kern County is preserved in a book written by former Temple Beth El member Shirley Ann Newman.
The Jewish community in Bakersfield has been an active part of city life, as a small, remnant minority, but nevertheless a steady presence.
"So the guy who owns the Western Emporium? Emporium Western Store? The owner of that store is Jewish. He was tied to the other synagogue," said Rabbi Klein, looking through Newman's book.
The other synagogue Klein mentions was B'nai Jacob, which closed after more than 100 years in Bakersfield, leaving Temple Beth El as the city's only synagogue.
"One family in particular, the Rudnisk family, started by the patriarch Scar Rudnick, he and his 10 or so, maybe it was 11 or 12 children, came and settled here and built the institutions, along with, obviously, some other key families along the way," said Klein.
Temple Beth El is a Reformed synagogue, according to Klein.
"In the early 1800s in Europe, and later around the 1870s, emerged Reformed Judaism, which took the traditions and added the lens of modernity. 'Reformed' as in constantly changing, constantly growing, constantly integrating the realities of the world around us," explained Klein.
Following the tenets of Reformed Judaism made Temple Beth El and similar synagogues a refuge for anyone looking to be accepted.
Rabbi Klein says the Jewish population is looking to accept and understand all people and religions.
"Ideally, we would celebrate the diversity and understand it and comprehend it, and make an effort to go out of our ways to understand one another," said Klein. "We want to be in the mix, and this is one of the reasons I write in the paper, to just share a little bit of our worldview, which may be different than what people assume about us or about what they believe in for themselves."
Temple Beth El in Bakersfield holds services every Friday.
