Originally appeared in the New York Times December 21, 2003

BY: Amy Wallace

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — It was dinnertime when the 80 or so invited guests began arriving. Handing off their Benzes and Boxsters to uniformed valets, many of Hollywood’s most important agents, producers and studio and network executives followed a brick path to Sandy Grushow’s front door. Mr. Grushow is the president of 20th Century Fox Television, and his clout was reflected in the 8,000-square-foot Tudor house he shares with his wife, Barbara, and their two children. A pianist played standards on a baby grand in the foyer. An army of waiters in taupe Nehru jackets offered hors d’oeuvres on glistening platters.

“Mini-Reuben sandwich? Knish?” a waiter asked the guest of honor, Rabbi Steven Z. Leder. Rabbi Leder opted for a corned beef and Swiss about the size of a postage stamp, then climbed a few steps up the Grushows’ elegant staircase and quieted the crowd. “I thought we might begin tonight by taking an opportunity to turn to your left or right, to meet your neighbor,” he said. “Then, I would appreciate it if you would just share your net worth with them.”

The room shook with nervous laughter. No one complied.

Rabbi Leder is the senior rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, arguably Los Angeles’s most prestigious synagogue. The evening was a chance for him to unveil his new book, “More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul,” for some of the wealthiest members of his congregation: those who make the deals, call the shots and create the programming that ends up on America’s movie and television screens. While he didn’t mean to offend, he knew that the book’s central premise — that raging materialism and the relentless pursuit of money lead to moral bankruptcy — might strike some in his audience like a stick in the eye.

“The thought has occurred to me: Am I biting the hand that feeds the temple?” he said a few weeks before the book party. Not that “More Money Than God” is particularly incendiary. Close readers will find a few juicy tales (without names) about some in his flock, like the young woman who inherited tens of millions of dollars from her grandfather but feels as if her husband is a mooch, or the Oscar-winning movie director who died alone, with nothing but a tattered snapshot of his parents to soothe him. Overall, however, the book’s messages are hardly fire and brimstone: don’t be a workaholic; give generously to charity; teach your children that materialism, like racism, is not okay.

Nevertheless, in Hollywood, where who’s up, who’s down and where one stands in the pecking order are constant obsessions, Mr. Leder’s chosen topic is a thorny one. Money here is much more than a passport to comfort. For people whose success depends on something as amorphous as being able to predict the national mood 18 months into the future, the size of one’s paycheck (or profit participation, or back-end) is a crucial signifier. Perhaps more than any place on earth, money here, like corner tables in hot restaurants or middle seats at movie premieres, is a way to assert your rank. And the fickle nature of the business can make even the very affluent feel insecure in a way that makes no amount of money ever seem enough.

“This is a town where the next big script could be written by the person who’s handing you the cup of coffee at Starbucks,” said Stuart Krasnow, a temple member and an executive producer of reality programming at NBC. “Things change so rapidly. Success can go away rapidly.”

Which makes the rabbi’s supporters a bit worried for him. By focusing on money, said Erwin Stoff, a partner in the management-production company 3 Arts Entertainment, whose clients include Keanu Reeves and Matthew Broderick, Rabbi Leder had entered “a risky area.”

Leonard Goldberg, the TV and movie producer (among his many credits: “Charlie’s Angels” — the series, the film and the sequel), agreed. “This book will force people to look at themselves, and there may be some who don’t appreciate that suggestion,” Mr. Goldberg said. “We’re not building bridges here, or saving lives. We’re just making movies. And when you’re making so much money for what secretly you think may be the very little that you do, it can be very unsettling. The only benchmark some people have is what their peers are making. As somebody once said: ‘It’s not about the money. It’s about how much.’ “

Not all of the 2,600 member families of Mr. Leder’s Reform congregation struggle with such issues. About 900 receive financial assistance toward the $1,600 annual dues to belong to the temple, which also runs a nursery and elementary school and a summer camp. But during the High Holy Days, this temple, where some of Hollywood’s founding fathers like Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner once worshiped, is still the place a lot of the town’s power players can be found. Other members include Les Moonves, the president of CBS; Richard Lovett, a partner at Creative Artists Agency; the top TV agents Bob Broder and Elliot Webb; and the actress Jami Gertz.

Rabbi Leder stresses that “More Money Than God” is not aimed solely at wealthy people, at Jews or at the entertainment industry. “It’s a book for people who equate their net worth with their self-worth,” he said. “In this culture, that means everyone.” Moreover, Rabbi Leder stops well short of condemning his congregants or anyone else for owning private jets or jewelry that retails for twice what many American families spend each year on food.

“There’s no vow of poverty in Judaism — thank God!” he likes to say, stressing that many of the wealthiest people he knows are also generous philanthropists. Still, he hopes his book will coax people into taking a harder look at the impact of overvaluing money for themselves and for their children. “Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “I like a nice party. I like a good glass of wine. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t enjoy themselves.”

He added, “But excess in absence of values is idolatry.”

The son of a Minneapolis scrap metal salesman, Rabbi Leder, 43, has spent his entire 17-year career at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. He and his wife and two children live on the West Side in a three-bedroom home that he admits he couldn’t have afforded without his family’s help. But though he drives a three-year-old Volvo and makes less in a year than some people he knows spent on their weddings, he doesn’t envy his congregants. “I am often the person of least means in the room,” he said, “but that’s a long way from poor.”

One afternoon as he sat in his sparsely decorated office, he noted that he sees his congregants at their most vulnerable. He motioned to his couch, where so many in the temple have sat and poured out their hearts, like the woman who was mad at her fiance because he wanted to take out a $250,000 life insurance policy on her (she thought she was worth more). “Their lives look like your life or mine — with a little less crowding,” he said. “They don’t have to bump up against so many people. Less dirty dishes, but plenty of dirty laundry.”

Within the temple, Rabbi Leder is known to be politic, but blunt. A few years ago, on Rosh Hashana, he delivered what some have come to know as the “Who Are We Kidding?” sermon, in which he challenged Jews to stop identifying themselves as victims. “You heard part of the congregation cheering and part of it jeering,” recalled David Dinerstein, a president of Paramount Classics, the independent distribution arm of Paramount Pictures. “He’s not afraid of controversy.”

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