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Friday March 9, 2007

After five years by the Bay, exiled no more

by dan pine

Five years ago this month, I moved to the Bay Area from my hometown of Los Angeles. I’m glad about it now, but I can’t say I never looked back. In fact, for a while, I rarely looked forward. When it comes to the great California pastime of comparing L.A. to S.F., I always came down on the side of La-La Land. The canyons, the beaches, the boob jobs: I loved it all.

Life didn’t get any better than a stroll down the Venice Boardwalk, or gorging on French dip sandwiches at Philippe’s (downtown, near Union Station) or a summertime perch atop Mulholland Drive, city lights below, a hot desert breeze bending the palm trees.

Even a walk past the strip malls in my neighborhood of Studio City in the San Fernando Valley grounded me with a sense of home. Of course, I use the term “walk” advisedly.

And then there’s Jewish L.A.: 600,000 strong, entire urban neighborhoods — like Fairfax or Pico-Robertson –– lined with kosher restaurants, synagogues, day schools. The Skirball Museum. The University of Judaism. L.A. just feels like a Jewish town.

Not so here. I remember wondering after first arriving, “Where are all the Jews?” I know now they are here in growing numbers, but it struck me then that the Bay Area Jewish community flies largely below the radar.

But even if San Francisco had been Tel Aviv-by-the-Bay, I would still have felt like an exile. And with good reason.

“The theme of exile permeates everything in Judaism,” says Jane Litman, rabbi-educator at Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El.

Rabbi Litman is a native Angeleno, too. She grew up on the west side, in the hills of Brentwood, what she calls a “wild wonderful Jewish environment with snakes and coyotes.”

Unlike me, Jane left L.A. as soon as possible. “There was less there for me,” she recalls. “I was moving on to politics, it was the early 70s and my heart was in Berkeley.” She traveled a circuitous route to the rabbinate, a road that took her from Cal, to Philadelphia (to attend the Reconstructionist seminary), back to L.A. and finally here.

My heart was definitely not in Berkeley. As an exile, I longed for L.A. my first few years here, and I constantly found fault with the Bay Area. The traffic on I-80. The insane lack of parking in the city. The rattle and roar of BART going by my house two or three thousand times a day. And the wind! The bone-chilling, never-ever-ending wind that sweeps northward along the Berkeley flats.

How I missed my endless summer in the South. How I missed cruising down Sunset Boulevard, the music up, the windows down.

But time is the great healer. My visits to L.A. grew less frequent. The glories of the Bay Area began to reveal themselves to me: The thrum of downtown San Francisco on a workday. The aroma wafting from a Peet’s store. The bluesman in the Montgomery BART station. The view from Indian Rock. I love them all now. I even like the wind.

As for my new Jewish world here, it is bigger and better than what I experienced in L.A. Thanks mostly to my work at j., I have met many amazing people and witnessed a miraculous dedication to strengthening the Jewish community here and around the world. I feel part of it.

Jane helped put my exile into perspective.

“Be kind to the stranger for you were a stranger in Egypt,” she throws back at me. “It’s all about empathy. When we wander, the shechina [the spirit of God] is with us. That feeling of not having a homeland is filled by God’s presence. God is everywhere, even in exile.”

After five years, I don’t feel fully at home in the Bay Area, but I don’t feel at home in L.A. either. Not anymore. For me, home is wherever Robyn is.

Then there are those bright, bright mornings commuting into the city, the moon setting over Mt. Tam, the Bay darkly aglitter. I look left and see the cheery hills of the Peninsula. I look right and see the Marin headlands shouldering the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s all so beautiful.

Yet still, still, I hear that quiet voice in the back of my head: “If I forget thee, O Studio City…”

Dan Pinedan@jweekly.com.

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