Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

At 15, Stanton Zamek would have been shocked.

The grown-up Stanton Zamek, who joined San Francisco's Congregation Sherith Israel this month as assistant rabbi, cannot imagine what he would have said, years ago, if someone had told him about his eventual career path.

"I had no idea I'd be a rabbi," the 36-year-old Zamek remembers. A product of a Reform religious-school upbringing in Michigan, he remembers rabbis having an important place in his life — "but I didn't see myself in their place."

Nor did he experience a sudden spiritual revelation. Instead, he describes his gradual attraction to religious training as "an evolution."

While practicing law, he became more and more involved in his Chicago synagogue, first as a student in introduction to Judaism classes, and later as a member of the board of trustees. He met dynamic rabbis, and "the combination of those personalities and studying Jewish life as an adult switched me on," he says.

"I realized that most of the things I enjoyed doing were centered in the synagogue."

Zamek moved to San Francisco last month with his wife, Martha Bergadine, who is also ordained as a rabbi, and their 2-month-old daughter, Ayelet. Zamek and Bergadine, who both studied at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati as classmates, arrived at their decisions to become ordained "independently but nearly simultaneously," Zamek said.

It wasn't always easy, particularly when he was serving as a student rabbi in Colorado and she was student rabbi for a congregation in West Virginia. Now the family is looking forward to involvement in Sherith Israel, where Zamek will join Senior Rabbi Martin Weiner. He is enthusiastic about his new assignment and about his mentor. "I'm very fortunate in having Rabbi Weiner's guidance in shaping the beginning of my career," he says.

Although Zamek has just begun at Sherith Israel, he has already found the congregation "almost embarrassingly welcoming," and looks forward to all the different facets of his work — from lessons to sermons to Torah study.

"All modern Jews face the challenge: How do you live in a society made up of all kinds of people, and still make the rhythm of life a Jewish rhythm?" For Zamek, education is both an essential answer to that challenge and an unmitigated joy.

In formal as well as informal settings, a rabbi is primarily a teacher, he says.

And as someone who became more deeply involved in Judaism after college, Zamek is particularly interested in adult education. When he was still a student rabbi, he commuted every other weekend to serve a congregation in Pueblo, Colo., where he initiated a series of adult-education classes. "In principle, it's crucial that people study as adults," he says.

At Sherith Israel, he leads a Saturday-morning Torah-study session. He also works with b'nai mitzvah students, helping them investigate the meanings of their Torah portions, and he hopes to put together some more topical classes.

"Part of the reason I went into the rabbinate was to make the case that Judaism offers a beautiful way of life, and is a way of finding meaning in tradition," he says.

If Zamek wants his students to come away from classes with any assessment of him, it would be, he says, "`He taught me something I didn't know before, even if I didn't agree.'" This, Zamek says, would convince him he was doing his job.

As a rabbi, he is a teacher and a spiritual leader as well as a counselor. But also "I'm a cheerleader," he acknowledges, "an advocate for a Jewish way of life."