Welcome! Shalom!
Welcome to the friendly website of
Young Israel of Orange County
Contact Us
Our Shabbat Schedule of Services, Classes, and Shabbat Activities
And check out all our latest news, programs, social events, and services
Yes! We offer fun-based
personalized Hebrew and Jewish Studies tutorials and classes
for pre-teens!
And our rav, Rabbi Dov Fischer, personally learns Torah (one-on-one) with adults, teens, and students ages 10-17 in a wide range of Jewish subjects from Talmud to Chumash-and-Rashi to Basic Hebrew Reading and Language: You pick the subjects that you or your kids want to learn
Just
call or write
us for details ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ONGOING CLASSES AND PROGRAMS . . .
WHAT’S BOTHERING RASHI?…
Every
Tuesday Night,
from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.,
MON. NIGHT SIDDUR NAVIGATION: LEARN TO LEAD SERVICES
Every
Monday Night,
from 7:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m.,
MON. NIGHT: BASIC HEBREW READING FOR ADULT BEGINNERS
Every
Monday Night,
from 7:00 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.,
THURS. NIGHT TALMUD & TOSAFOT AND RAMBAM & SHULCHAN CLASS
Every Thursday Night, from 6:30 p.m. to 7:40 p.m. Rav Fischer teaches a fantastic Talmud Class with classical commentaries and Codes. There is nothing of this nature, nothing taught on this level anywhere else in all of Orange County, as we focus inside the text itself on Talmud (Mesekhet B’rakhot), Mishneh B'rurah (the authentic primary Torah text for Jewish living and life, rooted in the Shulchan Arukh) and Rambam’s Mishnah Torah. (Maariv follows.) Pre-Registration required. All classes are free.
FOR WOMEN ONLY
:"Jewish Cycling" -- Observances, Practices, and Customs of the Jewish Calendar Cycle Through Shabbat and Holidays and stuff
Every Sunday Morning, from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.,
SHABBAT TORAH CLASSES
Every Shabbat afternoon, before Mincha
- Seudah Shlishit - Maariv,
CONFIDENTIAL PASTORAL CARE
“SATURDAY NIGHT AT DA MOVIES --and Jewish-Themed TV Episodes” WITH OUR RAV & REBBETZIN
We
will meet to see either a great movie, or two Jewish-themed episodes
from American TV,
the last Sunday night of every-other month.
The
flick or TV shows are followed by a group discussion that
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Letter from Our Rabbi
Hi, everyone.
Now in our fourth year, we have established "our voice," our unique identity and role as a central fixture in the Orange County Jewish community. With G-d's blessings, new people continue finding our congregation, becoming regulars at Shabbat and Sunday services.
Shabbat at YIOC has evolved into a robust experience, and we have created that island of Shabbat that leaves us feeling every weekend as though we are in the heart of the most robust Torah environment. Shul is warmer, though comfortably air-conditioned, as more people than ever before share in leading the services, singing, and participating. No one eats Shabbat lunch alone, as the community Shabbat experience is as embracing as each Shul member wants it to be for her or him.
Shul life is deeply exciting, as we welcome into our congregational community new people, new families, one by one. It amazes us. When we were founded, we were told that the "materialistic needs of Irvine residents" would guarantee that we never would last a year without a building, a formal edifice. And yet, what we lack in "bricks and mortar," we seem instead to regale in spirit and meaning. Our numbers amply empower us to embrace community, and we offer every component that any world-class congregation would ask.
YIOC is comprised of really exciting people, idealistic, brimming with a love of Judaism and eagerness to grow in Torah, in davening knowledge, in Jewish identity. People who attended other temples and shuls in Irvine and Orange County, but who never ever led services or studied pages of Talmud and volumes of rabbinic literature, now do so with gusto. Each individual matters in our shul. Man, woman, teen, child. No one gets lost or closed out of a clique. There are no cliques at YIOC. Everyone who buys into our Mission Statement is embraced. Sure we value membership applications and donations, but we equally -- perhaps more than equally -- value kindness, goodness of spirit, a willingness to attend services and classes and to grow.
We will not force you to grow. But the opportunities to grow are many, and you will be surrounded by people who are growing Jewishly. Torah classes with classical commentaries, Talmud and Tosafot study, weekly studies in Navi (Books of the Biblical Prophets), classes in reading Hebrew, navigating the Siddur Prayer Book, and even in leading services.
Importantly, we are a safe environment to learn and to grow. The mutuality of respect is enormous, in a way that one does not always experience in some other congregations in Irvine. No one will criticize the way you lead services or a mistake you make. No one will make fun of your singing or tell you that you need to take professional chazan lessons. No question that you ask the Rav is too basic, whether in a class or at our interactive sermon-Torah Study on Shabbat mornings. No subject is off the table -- except for speaking unkindly about someone else, or engaging in shul politics. Not in our shul. Never again.
We have emerged uniquely as a “Boutique Shul,” capable of acting rapidly and meaningfully to shape and serve the unique spiritual needs and quests of each new individual or family who comes into our lives. As a smaller, more intimate congregational community, we can more readily personalize the “fit” because of the way our congregation has coalesced as a loving, accepting, and welcoming community of families and individuals.
When we began four years ago,
we 60 families and
households began our journey unsure of our destination.
We began with a smile and a prayer, enough metal folding chairs that
required us to clear out that inventory at four Target stores, and photocopies of the prayers and the
weekly Torah reading.
We were not certain where we would daven, where we would land. As with Parshat Mas’ei, we traveled. Oh, boy, did we travel! And then we finally found our home at the Back Bay Conference Center, gorgeously refurbished and newly beautified.
We had no Torah. And then the Schlosberg Family brought a Torah into our world. And thereafter the Sebag Family. And a third wonderful and kind source provided us a third Torah. And my family brought a fourth Torah into the community, in memory of my Mom and Dad – my Mom having lived long enough to see and celebrate our shul’s successful emergence from the ashes of a previous shul that had been a G-d-awful disaster.
So what has been and is our secret, as our initial
congregational community of 60 households slowly has grown to more than
80 engaged and supportive households in a bit more than four years?
I think a major part of it has been that we have actualized our dream of a spiritual haven, free from the bane of "shul politics" and all the "political intrigue" and Clergy Killers who cause people to recoil from "organized religion." All the junk of self-important people and political intrigue and just-plain junk. We not only have committed publicly to end a tradition in Irvine Orthodoxy of mixing a House of G-d with a sociological turmoil center, but we have lived that commitment for real.
So, with the
founding and growth of
Young Israel of Orange County, life has
become healthier for us, all of us, in Jewish Irvine and Jewish O.C.
Even as we at
YIOC
have begun to grow in an interesting, even fascinating way. Go figure – a
Boutique Shul.
Have you ever
gone to a doctor who has a “boutique” medical practice? She has
fewer patients, but gives more time and attention to each one? Or
to a “boutique” law firm? They may not be worldwide famous, like
the ones where I had practiced law earlier in my life, but you know you get the
law partner’s personal attention and not relegated to some junior associate who is here today,
gone tomorrow. Well, that is what we have become:
The
Boutique Orthodox Shul of
Even as the numbers of families and households in
our congregational community compare favorably, after a bit more than
four years,
with the membership numbers that our
sister Orthodox shuls of Irvine have aggregated respectively over each
of their 20-plus years
–
may we all succeed and continue growing!
– and even though we have no building, enjoying only three years of what
Corporate America calls “corporate goodwill,”
we somehow seem to have
accumulated enormous oodles of another kind of good will –
a will that is good.
Word spreads. By mouth. By phone. By texting. By
internet. Word spreads.
Equally important, from our very beginning we introduced to Irvine the unique notion that never existed before in Orange County -- but that slowly is taking hold: that an Orthodox congregation begins Shabbat
when Shabbat begins -- and not an hour or even half an hour later. We are and remain the only Irvine congregation that absolutely will not hold late Friday Night services that begin after Shabbat has started. The absolute only. There is no other Orthodox shul in Irvine history that can say that, although one has begun inching, inching, inching our way. The Jewish way.
At
YIOC
newcomers become engaged. Our weekly Tuesday Night 90-minute Chumash/ Rashi/ Halakhah class has grown
steadily . . . from four
regulars to six to eight regulars to ten regulars . . . to the point
that our class now often attracts nearly 20 people every
Tuesday night for the most serious Torah learning in Irvine, including
classical Torah texts -- inside the text -- and far-ranging halakhic
discussions and learning arising from those texts.. Imagine – fifteen
to twenty people learning real Torah, with
m’forshim commentaries
and hashkafah
perspective, every single week for more than ninety minutes each week –
in
Moreover, our weekly Gemara/Talmud and Rambam/ Shulchan Arukh class every Thursday night is the most intense serious textual high-value Torah learning in Irvine. There is nothing like it -- and never has been in Orange County -- both in its intensity for those seek deeper learning but also in its accessibility even for people with limited background. That group had begun with six people and now has grown to twelve regulars, followed by our Thursday night Maariv davening.
Similarly, we attract a great group every Shabbat afternoon to learn Navi together -- the Books of Shoftim, Shmuel I and II, and now Kings/M'lakhim.
We also offer one-on-one Torah tutoring for individuals -- you request, and we accommodate. And we now are teaching pre-Bar/Bat Mitzvah ages both Hebrew and our signature Chumash-Rashi Learning for Young People that we brought to Irvine in the face of a tragic paucity of honest Torah learning at the local community day school, whose name -- "Tarbut v'Torah" -- leaves one wondering "Where in the world is the Torah? Or the davening? Or the Judaic learning?"
Our davening is robust; you just feel it. We
have been joined by people whose Jewish affiliation is accelerating –
people on a journey to grow, finding our Boutique Shul a wonderful venue for
themselves to explore Torah Judaism at a pace they enjoy, personalized
for them, with a Rav and Rebbetzin who could not be more thrilled to be
serving people whose involvement can be measured by their passion and
their kindness.
Through our unique
pastoral care initiatives,
YIOC
has brought families together, parents and children who had not talked
for years, siblings who were at internecine war. We have become an
address for people who searched and explored one-after-another temple in
We do not kid ourselves.
Our size is modest. Yet we
have become an incredibly important shul, a critical part of Irvine's and
Orange County's religious Jewish landscape – not with a big structure,
but fulfilling the spiritual aspirations and needs of a great many lives of really good people,
highly degreed professionals and successful entrepreneurs, people who work
really hard for a living, people who care and have given all their young
or full lives, but now come for a shul that can give them what they need
for a shul ideally to offer them: a spiritual home, a path to grow, a road back, a home
and Jewish haven.
Ellen and I look forward to another year of opening our
Shabbat home for more Shabbat meals with more families and individuals.
We look to opening our
Friday evening home for Shabbat dinners in an even expanded way in the year
to come, much as we plan expanding other aspects of engaging our teens and
younger kids in the coming year.
May we all
remember
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Orange County Jewish Life -- the leading monthly publication serving the Orange County Jewish Community -- has twice featured our Shul .
Extraordinary Energy
by Florence Dann
(Read the Flash Edition) jump to pages 58-60
(Read the Article as .PDF) at pages 58-60
Seamless QUILT
by Florence Dann
(Read the Article as Internet Web Link)
~~~~~~~~~~~
From the Writings of Rabbi Dov Fischer:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dynamic, Wide-Ranging Youth Program with Teens Receiving Personal Attention from Our Rav and Rebbetzin
Fun and Friendly Dynamic Women's Group, with Expanded Series of Monthly Social, Learning, and Chesed (Acts of Kindness) Activities
Weekly Robust
Shabbat Services
with a Wonderful Youthful Feel – Attended by Congregants Ranging the
Generations including Teens and College Students, Young Singles and
Marrieds, Couples with and without Kids, and Everyone from Married and
Single "Baby Boomers" to Established and Energized Seniors – Sparked by
Robust Participatory Group- Singing and a Continuing Variety of
Wonderful Contemporary Melodies
Our
Sunday
Morning Minyan -- 9:00 a.m. in
Young Israel of Orange County . . .
. . . At a Glance . . .
Click here for exciting information re: our dynamic new "Jewish Focus" program for Teens in public or private high school, or who have left the "TVT" ("Tarbut v' Torah")
We are a full-service Shul, with a complete weekly schedule and full program of:
- Shabbat services and Torah classes to enrich your Shabbat experience
- Adult Jewish Study Classes all week . . . customized for you
- Sunday Morning 9:00 a.m. Minyan & Talmud Class
- Tuesday Morning 8:30 a.m. Minyan (TBA)
- Women's Group, with a line-up of social, educational, cultural, charitable, and personal chesed (kindness) programs -- and so much more !
- Great Pre-Teen Bar Mitzvah/ Bat Mitzvah Program- Teens educational and social programs
- Social activities and special holiday celebrations
- Chesed (Kindness) programs, including our community-focus full participation in "An Act of Kindness: Simchat Shabbat" project that delivers complete Shabbat Meals every week to households in need.-Rabbinic pastoral care and genuinely caring experienced personal attention from our nationally prominent Rav, and so much more.
Our Orthodox shul in Irvine, after only three years, includes more than 80 family units
.We offer the O.C.'s first-ever truly normative contemporary Orthodox experience in Observant Jewish values. (See our Mission Statement) And we begin Shabbat . . . when Shabbat begins!
For a cross selection of correspondence our Rav receives, please click here
Please click here for a broad selection of Rav Fischer's most widely circulated articles
Our rabbinical and lay leadership were among the ultimate keys to building the Irvine Eruv
Our Rav, Rabbi Dov Fischer, was the moving force who singularly propelled the Irvine community to build the Irvine Community Mikvah
We conduct the most far-reaching, dynamic and substantive Shul Teen Youth Program in Orange County -- with Jared Friedman, our Youth Director.
We offer the most varied, comprehensive schedule for you of intellectually fun and substantive Torah classes and alternative Judaic Torah learning opportunities tailored individually to your requests -- in all of Orange County.
We conduct the most widely respected and recognized Orthodox Jewish conversion program in Orange County
We conduct the most creative, fun, sociable, chesed-centered, and culturally stimulating Orthodox shul Women's Group activities in Orange County.
Click here to read more about Chazan Baruch Erblich, our renowned High Holidays cantor.
We offer a warm, intimate shul setting where the singing is warm and emotive, the bonds of friendship are real, the Shabbat sermon touches deeply and substantively on real meaningful issues in your contemporary life, and the elegantly appointed Shabbat congregational sit-down Kiddush-Lunch is a monthly highlight, even attracting visitors who do not attend each and every week!
___________________________
We Daven Every Shabbat Morning along Irvine's "Synagogue Row" at the Back Bay Confer. Center:
3415 Michelson Dr. Irvine 92612
The Back Bay Conference Ctr: Second Floor at "Irvine Lanes" - Irvine's "Michelson Synagogue Row"
Click here
for a list of
Friday Night times:
* Candle Lighting
* Friday Mincha
* Kabbalat Shabbat
for the year 2012
Click here
for a list of
Shabbat
Afternoon
times:
* Torah Classes
* Mincha services
* Seudah Sh'lishit
*
Maariv services
for the year 2012