Collection

Beth Chayim Chadashim Records

Span Dates: 1967-2013
Bulk Dates:
Volume: 36.9 Linear Feet

Description

The collection consists of administrative records, membership records, financial records, outreach and event records, religious service texts, publications, subject files, photographs, and other materials maintained and/or created by Beth Chayim Chadashim, 1948, 1967-2013. Records dated prior to the founding of the temple in 1972 consist exclusively of religious texts. The administrative records include meeting minutes, membership lists, records of the president, correspondence, and other operational records. The financial records include financial reports, ledgers, receipts, and budget reports. The outreach and event records comprise promotional material, advertisements, event programs, and informational pamphlets and booklets. Other records include periodicals, texts used or referenced for religious services, clippings, mass mailings, photographs, and assorted artifacts.

Hist/Bio Note

The world’s first synagogue for gay and lesbian Jews grew out of a weekly rap group meeting on April 4, 1972 at Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) in Los Angeles. The three men and one woman who attended that meeting were all Jewish. MCC founder Reverend Troy Perry encouraged them to start a congregation and offered free use of church facilities. About a dozen women and men came to an ad hoc meeting to found the Metropolitan Community Temple in May of that year. After services on January 26, 1973, the fledgling synagogue changed its name to Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), Hebrew for “House of New Life.” That same night, a fire destroyed the MCC church, and BCC temporarily moved into the Leo Baeck Temple in Bel Air. There in 1973, BCC received a Holocaust survivor Torah from the town of Chotebor, Czechoslovakia, on permanent loan from Westminster Synagogue in London. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union for Reform Judaism) accepted BCC into their union on June 9, 1974, the first gay and lesbian congregation accepted by a mainstream religious organization in the world. BCC also became a founding member of the World Congress of Gay and Lesbian Jewish Organizations and hosted international conferences in 1978 and 1982, along with several Western regional conferences. In 1977 BCC purchased its own building at 6000 West Pico Boulevard and in 1983 hired its first ordained rabbi and later its first invested cantor. At a time when most temples still used male pronouns for God, BCC created the first gender-neutral prayer book. BCC was also a pioneer in egalitarian worship services with lay service leaders and in the creation of life cycle rituals for lesbian and gay individuals and couples. In the 1980s, BCC helped found Nechama, a Jewish Response to AIDS, which was initially housed at BCC and later moved to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles (it later became the independent nonprofit group Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services). In 1987 BCC inaugurated its Persons with AIDS dinners, providing food and community support to individuals and their friends and families. In 1995 as members began to raise children in greater numbers, BCC began its first children’s program, Yeladim B’Lev (“Children in the Heart”). By 2007 BCC had established an active religious school program known as Ohr Chayim. Source: Beth Chayim Chadashim website ©2012 at http://www.bcc-la.org/history/.
https://www.bcc-la.org/history

Finding Aid

An online finding aid is available.
https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8zc83gj

Location

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives, USC Libraries, University of Southern California 909 West Adams Boulevard Los Angeles, California 90007
https://one.usc.edu

Tags

Activist (religious institutions) | California | Jewish (ethnic, Reform, Reconstructionist, Orthodox) | Los Angeles | MCC | AIDS | Jewish (Reform) | World Congress: Keshet Ga'avah (formerly International Conference of Gay and Lesbian Jews) | Beth Chayim Chadashim