hen Rabbi Moses Holcer - a man who, at 4-foot-9, has been a towering figure in the Cambridge Jewish community - turned 90 years old earlier this month, there wasn't enough room for all the people who wanted to help him celebrate.
''We had to cut off reservations for his party at 200,'' said Miriam Klapper, the executive director of Temple Beth Shalom (also called the Tremont Street Shul) in Cambridge, where Holcer has presided for the last 45 years. ''The outpouring of love for him has been simply unbelievable.''
Though Reb Mosche, as his congregation affectionately calls him, hardly thinks of himself as exceptional, even the existence of his temple community testifies to his achievement. What was once a moribund Jewish congregation that could barely pay the rabbi's salary has bloomed, under Reb Mosche's 41/2 decades of service, into a community of 190 families - many of them young - and is now the oldest surviving synagogue in Cambridge.
In addition, the Tremont Street Shul is one of the few traditional temples that not only observes Orthodox Jewish customs, but adapts them to the politics of the time.
''In the last half a century, Reb Mosche has peacefully navigated so many conflicts,'' said Cambridge businessman Edward Kahn, a temple member for 20 years. ''In Orthodox Judaism, women have traditionally not been allowed to read from the Torah [the Jewish scripture] or to sit with men during services. But now, Beth Shalom has a vital, egalitarian community where women are able to worship alongside men - a practice that is unusual in orthodox communities. It's the rabbi who made this a peaceful transition, bridging the old world and the new.''
''He always says to the congregation, `Come more often, bring more friends,''' said Rosa Drapkin of Brookline, one of Reb Mosche's three daughters. ''People still want to include him in everything from their weddings to their children's bar mitzvahs, to their everyday activities at the temple. It doesn't matter that he has trouble walking and his hearing isn't what it used to be. It doesn't even matter that he often lapses into Yiddish when he's talking. People go to visit him at his home to speak with him. They walk to his house and wheel him in his wheelchair to Sabbath services [in Orthodox Judaism, it is forbidden to drive on the Sabbath]. They even have brought a Torah and 10 men to read it with him when he was being treated at a Catholic hospital. The tenderness toward him, the respect for him in this community, is palpable.''
For a man whose broken English and thick Yiddish accent make his sentences, at times, almost impossible to understand, Reb Mosche's strong relationship with his congregation is a testimony to the warmth of his personality, said Rabbi Benzion Gold, director emeritus of Harvard Hillel, who has known him since the late 1950s. ''His messages are communicated not so much by preaching, but by being.''
At his 90th birthday celebration - a party planned for months by members of the temple and the rabbi's family - Reb Mosche's community had a chance to tell him just how much he has meant to them. Held on Dec. 7, the crowded party included four generations of his family, more than 100 members and friends of Temple Beth Shalom, and Mayor Michael A. Sullivan of Cambridge, who presented him with a City Council-approved proclamation marking his service and achievement.
''We really wanted him to know how much we value him,'' said Miriam Klapper, thumbing through pages of a celebration booklet. ''Everyone was given a chance to write down their thoughts and memories of the rabbi, and just like the party, we had more contributors than we ever expected.''
The booklet, compiled by temple board of trustees member Jack Trumpeter, includes memoirs from the community detailing the rabbi's acceptance of others and his ability to communicate. Gold tells of his first Simchas Torah celebration (a Jewish holiday marking the end of the annual reading of the five books of Moses) in 1958, and how at that point, Reb Mosche's tiny congregation consisted mostly of elders. Now the temple has become known for its lively annual celebrations, attracting young people from all over.
Edward Kahn describes how the rabbi once caught him playing basketball on the Sabbath - a questionable activity for a day of rest. Rather than the chiding Kahn had expected, the rabbi called out ''Nit getrofen'' (terrible shot), and smiled before wishing him a ''Good Shabbas [Sabbath]'' and continuing on his way.
Others remember how the rabbi taught them - and their children - how to blow the shofar (a ritual Hebrew instrument made of a ram's horn that is sounded at the Jewish high holy days), while several members recall the rabbi's egg salad recipe for the congregation's shabbat meals (''Boil de heggs. Cut opp de peel of de lemon. Yoost de peel, not de vhite'').
But as much as the booklet documents the community's esteem for the rabbi, it also details the pain of childhood in Poland and at a Russian concentration camp during the Holocaust.
Born Dec. 12, 1912, in Koretz, Poland, the rabbi had his religious training come to an abrupt halt when the Russians occupied Poland and arrested him for teaching religion. Sent to a gulag in Siberia where he was forced to help build Russian tanks, he was the only member of his family to survive World War II.
''I tried myself to be peaceful with everyone,'' he said. ''I survive because I listened to people, I caused no trouble, and I believe HaShem [a Hebrew name for God] will somehow help me. I also survive because I am a small man. While the strong ones dropped like flies from starvation, I ate my little bread like a piece of candy, always to taking the small pieces bit by bit. It is the only time I am lucky to be small, because I am not able to do well the hard labors of the camp.''
Yet his hardest ordeal, he said, came in his first years in America, working as a laborer in a building supply warehouse in Cleveland.
''My three daughters and my wife were my life, and with no English, I could not make much employment to support them. In the Russian camps, I suffered only as a single man alone. But here in America, the suffering was for my whole family and I could do little for them.''
Beliefs like these have earned the rabbi much respect. ''This is a man who, by all accounts, had every right to lose his faith long ago,'' said the rabbi's son-in-law, Mark Drapkin, an internist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. ''But instead, he's dedicated himself to his beliefs and has valued others more highly than he valued himself.''
''Perhaps this is another reason younger people have come to the temple,'' said Rosa Drapkin. ''As he got older, he became like a universal Zayde [Yiddish for `grandfather']. I think he represents a lot of what was lost in the Holocaust. The first generation that came to the United States was intent on assimilation, but it was their children and grandchildren who began to look for their roots. My father has nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren that are related to him through bloodlines, but he has a whole congregation of children, and children's children, who need him just as much as he needs them.''
