The Steven and Didi Carr Reuben home is not only a visual delight, but a respite for the soul as well. With a personality larger than life, the effervescent Didi ushered me into their condominium which is just a short walk from the village. The rooms are alive with color, vibrancy and interesting angles. Didi simply says, ‘This whole house is my husband and me.’ One level into the living room, the deep green ceiling circled with small black-and-white tiles, the lavender walls, the blue fading to a white stucco around the fireplace, the printed red sofa delight your eyes. The room is full of curios from their world travels. ‘It’s really a visual travel journal of the last 20 years,’ Didi remarks. ‘The gifts of travel are that our eyes are opened to the world,’ says Steven, the rabbi at Kehillat Israel. ‘There’s a certain humility to it. It’s easy to think of our community as the center of the world. The humility comes from the recognition that we are all one’interconnected.’ He points out that they had traveled to the part of India that was hit last December by the tsunami. When he and Didi heard about it, there was a visceral sense of connection to place and the people. The Carr Reubens feel lucky to be in Pacific Palisades. When Steve joined K.I. 19 years ago, the synagogue leaders decided that they wanted their rabbi to live in the community. They loaned a down payment that the Carr Reubens used to buy a condo on Via de la Paz. They settled into the community, and Didi started a Jazz Night at Mort’s Oak Room the first Monday of every month. The informal setting gives her a chance to showcase her sultry voice and her expansive, fun personality. Her husband, who was principal percussionist with the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra for three years, plays in the band. Ten years ago, they moved to their current residence on Haverford. Didi worked with the architect and contractor to reshape the space. Originally it had a loft that was part of a ‘master suite.’ They closed off the loft to make a third-floor bedroom that includes a small office for Didi. The lower level of the ‘master suite’ became an expanded bathroom with a large walk-in closet and small exercise room. The bedroom is a deep salmon color, although as Steve jokingly points out, ‘Didi doesn’t even like fish.’ Didi explains, ‘That’s why I call the color a deep coral.’ The fireplace in the bedroom is tiled and inset with ‘coral’ grout. The sofa is purple, but the wood floor is a shade of green that surprisingly ties the whole scheme together. The floor also has a tint which gives it the feel of a clean smooth surface that blends into the surroundings. Didi confesses that when they were in the middle of the construction process, ‘The contractor, the architect and the painter didn’t like any of my choices. I had absolutely no support for the colors.’ Undaunted, she went ahead anyway. ‘I like to be controversial.’ Above the master bed, four small square spaces are constructed in the wall.When Didi asked the architect what was supposed to go in the spaces, the architect said, ‘You’ll figure out what goes up there.’ During the couple’s travels, they looked for various objects that might work, like masks or carvings, but neither of them could agree. Then, on a trip in New Zealand off the beaten path, they discovered an art gallery called ‘Bits of David’. They went inside and instantly both knew that it was bits of David (blue mini-sculptures of a noise, an ear, a mouth, and an eye) that had to go in the spaces. Asked how he feels about the color scheme, Steven replies sweetly, ‘I love it, because I love her.’ Didi adds, ‘I knew he loved me, but if I didn’t know before decorating, I knew it then.’ The rabbi’s job is a 24-hour-a-day job, seven days a week. His office is open from 9 to 5, and in the evenings he has meetings, teaches, counsels, and is on call for his congregants. He comments, ‘The synagogue is full of wonderful people. They are so good to us. It’s a privilege to be part of their lives.’ The Carr Reubens go away a month every year on a mini-sabbatical. ‘The congregation recognizes that when I’m here, I give myself 100 percent and that I need time off to think and recharge my batteries,’ Steve says. He and Didi travel extensively during that time and agree that one of their best choices was the William Ricketts sanctuary in Pmara Kutata, outside Melbourne, Australia. A white artist’s tribute to the plight of the aborigines, ‘it’s one of the most powerfully spiritual places in the world,’ says Didi. ‘The sculptures emerge out of the trees.’ Steven adds, ‘The sanctuary is so in touch with the essence of life. It reminds us that more unites us than divides us. As we’ve traveled, we realize kids’ smiles are the same everywhere, laughter is the same. Adults’ desire for their kids to be safe is the same everywhere in the world.’ When they’re in town, the Carr Reubens meet every night around 11 in their ‘chill room’ for a date. It’s a room with no telephone, no windows, a sofa and two chairs. Neutral with color accents, it’s an intimate and cozy place where both can unwind at the end of a day. Rabbi Reuben has written several books, including ‘Children of Character,’ and is currently completing ‘How to Answer Your Children’s Most Difficult Questions.’ Didi, in addition to her duties as the rabbi’s wife, has several other concurrent projects. She has put together ‘Didi’s Sleepaway Camp for the Terminally Vain,’ a 15-day trip to Costa Rica which can include plastic surgery or dentistry. Last year she recorded a CD entitled ‘My Romance,’ featuring her favorite love songs. Her husband adds, ‘I wanted to hear her voice when she wasn’t with me.’ Their daughter Gable is currently filming a movie ‘National Lampoon Presents Dorm Daze 2: Semester at Sea.’ Twenty-one years ago, the children from the preschool where Steven was a rabbi decorated the canopy under which the Carr Reubens were married with designs and the children’s names. A fabric artist filled in some of the cloth, making it three-dimensional. The canopy hangs in their hallway. In the center of the frame are the vows they recited that day: ‘This ring symbolizes the love of our home, the home of our love and the spiritual sanctuary they create together.’ Regretting that my time in Didi and Steven’s ‘spiritual sanctuary’ was ending, I kept up our conversation as we parted in the driveway. As a mother, I steered our conversation to children and spirituality. Didi urged her husband to tell me the story of a child in his Sunday School class. Steve asked the little girl what she was doing. She replied, ‘I’m drawing a picture of God.’ Steve told her, ‘No one knows what he looks like.’ The girl replied, ‘Of course not, because I haven’t finished my picture yet.’
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