guide to the jewplexed


Raising a Jewish Flag on Father's Day



Who stole my father's flagpole?

In 2002, he completed a project to erect a forty foot high flagpole dedicated to Jewish war veterans. Strategically positioned in front of the synagogue to which he belonged for over fifty years, Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim, California, the flagstaff and its accompanying plaque silently reminded the community of the national service of several of its members.

It wasn't his flagpole really, just his idea, and now it was gone.

Driving up to the suburban synagogue, just a few blocks from Disneyland, to attend yizkor services for both him and my mother on the last day of Passover, I immediately noticed it was missing.

My father, Murray Rodman, an engineer and WWII Navy veteran, had raised the funds for the flagpole and plaque from other Jewish veterans and congregants, and had overseen the engineering and permit process.

That morning, after the Torah reading, anxious to discover what had happened, I went outside and walked around to the front of synagogue. The spot where the flagpole and plaque had once stood, as well as the surrounding landscaping was completely bare.

Just the year before, the Conservative synagogue whose membership was aging had been sold to their longtime tenant, the Emanuel Romanian Church of God. As a condition of the sale, the synagogue was allowed rent-free use of most of the premises for six years. Already, changes were under way to both structure and signage. Were the disappeared flagpole and plaque part of those changes?

Right after services, even before the Kiddush, I started asking around: "What happened?"

No one was quite sure.

"One day it was just gone," said a longtime congregant.

"It must have been removed by the Church," said another.

Finally I was directed to speak with the manager of the Romanian Church, Theo Oros, who verified that the Church had taken down the pole and plaque as part of a re-landscaping plan.

"We put the pole alongside the building and someone stole them," he said.

"And what about the bronze plaque?" I asked. Oros wasn't sure as to its whereabouts; he said he would search for it.

Undoubtedly metal thieves had cut up the pole and hauled it off. Metal theft, due to the rising price for scrap metal, is a growing crime in Southern California as well as in the U.S.  Recently, the copper wiring had been yanked out of the light poles in my neighborhood, and in a nearby area, a much beloved historic statue had been sawed off and stolen right off its pedestal.

Time was cutting down history as well.

Nationally, as Jewish WW II Veterans, our fathers and grandfathers, and sometimes our mothers and grandmothers aged and died, the stories of their contributions and sacrifices were fading from memory. Did anyone care that a flagpole dedicated to them had been ripped off?

The plaque dedicated on July 4, 2002 had read: jewplexed flagstaff jewish plaque

"This flagstaff, erected by the Congregants of Temple Beth Emet in honor of our veterans and with pride and appreciation for the Freedom and Justice represented by our flag."

Now, not even ten years later, that monument of appreciation was gone.

Later, I contacted a good friend of my father's, Walter Notkin, who had worked with him on the flagpole project. He didn't know the flagpole was missing, and was agitated by the news. "Is it going to be replaced?" he asked. "The flag went up on that pole every day," said the naval architect who during WWII had worked on building the USS Iowa, as well as other US Navy ships.

According to the synagogue's secretary and bookkeeper, Carren Pulverman, who I spoke with recently, the flagpole had cost around $2300, and the plaque over $400. "Quite a few people contributed," she said.

"Had the plaque been found?" I asked a few days before Father's Day.

"They said they found it," she answered, but cautioned that no one had actually seen the plaque.

Then longtime temple administrator, Shirley Glowalla turned it up, having rescued it from the Temple parking lot. The metal thieves hadn't taken it after all.

I called Oros to see if there were any plans to replace the flagpole as well as to rededicate the plaque.

"We plan to have American, Israeli and Romanian, flagpoles," said Oros, who admitted to having no construction timetable. As for the plaque, he thought that the Church would make a "new one," though he also said he was open to discussing with his board the re-use of the original.

My engineer father, who liked to keep design simple and utilitarian, would have been amused by the planned multiplication of the flagpoles. As part of his Navy background, though, he was a stickler for finishing a job "right," and I think he would find the job half done, if the plaque honoring Jewish war veterans was missing in action.


Edmon J. Rodman has written about making his own matzah for JTA, Jewish love music for the Jerusalem Post, yiddisheh legerdemain for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, a Bernie Madoff Halloween mask for the Forward, and what really gets stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits for the Los Angeles Times. He has edited several Jewish population studies, and is one of the founders of the Movable Minyan, an over twenty-year-old chavura-size, independent congregation. He once designed a pop-up seder plate. In 2011 Rodman received a First Place Simon Rockower Award for "Excellence in Feature Writing" from the American Jewish Press Association."