Culture with a capital ‘C’

Alex Coolman

It doesn’t have any spotlights. It doesn’t have any palm trees. There

isn’t an awe-inspiring sculpture gracing its facade.

Judging by its appearance, the Jewish Community Center of Orange County

doesn’t seem like the kind of place that would be host to powerful

cultural events. The plain Costa Mesa building, with its anonymous stucco

exterior, looks like it was designed with board meetings and bake sales

in mind.

But Culture? With a capital ‘C’? Could such a beast be found behind those

walls?

Yes.

The JCC does Culture. And it does it with a vitality and an originality

that transcends the venue’s limitations of space and design.

Local residents just experienced the treat of the JCC’s Jewish book month

in November, a series of events that saw authors like Susan Dworkin and

best-selling short story writer Nathan Englander giving readings.

The center, a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of Orange

County, has also been holding an exhibit of the spiritually oriented

paintings of artist Deanna Alevy -- works that riff on the subject of

travel, examining both the literal and metaphorical sides of human

journeying.

In the months ahead, the center’s offerings are no less intriguing. The

JCC’s orchestra will perform Mendelssohn’s 4th Symphony in December, a

symposium on the archeology of the roots of Judaism is scheduled for

January and a “Millennium Retrospective” of visual art that the JCC has

displayed over the years opens today.

The key to the center’s diverse programming, said Selma Sladek, director

of adult services and special events, is a combination of the energy and

receptivity of the center staff and the open-mindedness of the JCC’s

members.

“Basically, we try to schedule a very broad variety of programs so that

we hit at least something that everybody will be interested in,” Sladek

said.

Sladek said the center is interested in pursuing adventurous programming,

but it does so always with a mind toward the community.

“They have to want it,” she said of the center’s audience. “It’s not

enough for a professional to want it and to will it into being.”

Mary Ann Malkoff, who has been acting as vice president of adult programs

and who will take over as the JCC’s president later this month, said the

center works hard to engage with community suggestions for cultural

events and strives to involve locals in the coordination of these

productions.

A proposal to have a swing dancing program, for example, struck Malkoff

as being a little odd. But the center’s philosophy on programming is

simple: listen to what people in the community are saying.

“We’re supposed to have our opinions,” Malkoff said of the boards that

decide on scheduling events. “But it’s almost as though the further up

you get in the committee structure, the quieter you become. Because if

people really want to do something, who are you to tell them no?”

Swing dancing, it turned out, was a big hit. And it’s just one of the

programs that have been developed because of the center’s response to

community interest. A Klezmer band was recently started at the center for

the same reason.

Malkoff attributed the cultural sophistication and enthusiasm of the

members of the Orange County JCC -- about 1,300 families and individuals

belong to the group -- to the relatively recent arrival in California of

much of Orange County’s Jewish community. Many of the families that

belong to the center came here from metropolitan areas with a strong

cultural focus.

“Everybody who comes from Boston or Chicago or Texas to California has an

idea of what the center could and should do,” Malkoff said. “And as those

people become more involved [with the center], they see how responsive we

are.”But in addition to being open to community suggestions, the people

behind the JCC’s cultural committees also tend to be passionate about the

arts.

The center’s Menorah Theatre, which is in its 10th season this year and

put on a production of Neil Simon’s comedy “Jake’s Women” in October, was

the brainchild of former center president Jon Garon. Garon decided to

start the theater in his spare time, Sladek said, simply because he

thought the community needed a theater to showcase works by Jewish

playwrights.

“This became his leisure time, I guess,” Sladek joked.

The JCC Orchestra evolved in 1993 in a similar manner, when JCC member

Sol Sloan put together a group of about 10 players to practice on

weekends.

Membership in the group, which is made up entirely of volunteers, has

tripled in the last six years and the orchestra now puts on two

performances a year.

“There’s so much activity over there, we can’t keep up with it,” Sloan

said. “It’s an extremely vibrant organization.”

Performances of this sort must rely on enthusiasm to compensate for the

fact that the center doesn’t have a particularly lavish space for

musicians or actors to appear. Many of the concerts take place in a

fairly spartan auditorium, which is about as well adapted for acoustics

as it is for potluck dinners.

Polly Sloan, a past chair of the cultural arts committee and the husband

of Sol Sloan, joked that the center could use a benefactor to give all

the culture a little room to spread out.

“We wish we had a sugar daddy who would buy us five acres,” she said.

But with events like the cabaret “SimchaFest” concert that was held in

March at the center -- in which the space was transformed into a dimly

lit jazz venue -- a little imagination frequently overcomes physical

constraints.

“You walked in ... and you just went ‘Where am I?”’ Malkoff recalled.

“What we manage to do in that building is just wonderful.”