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Youth groups from California churches have had a long tradition

Think Hawaii and images of romance, blue skies and glorious weather float by the conjured thoughts. Midway across the warm Pacific lies a chain of islands called Hawaii, 2,000 miles of ocean from our mainland with no continental coast between. These small bits of land appear offered to the sky by water and pressed to the earth by stars. Here civilizations of Occident and Orient merge under the tropical influence of the Polynesian culture.

In 1977, the South Valley was a much different place: a smaller, less diverse population meant fewer Jews living in Hollister, Gilroy and Morgan Hill. Stuart Blumberg, a Gilroy resident at the time, reflects back on "how alone South County Jews felt, transplanted from elsewhere and seeking spiritual support."

Upon my arrival at the Gilroy Dispatch eight months ago, there