When Rabbi H. David Teitelbaum retired in July 1995 after 38 years leading Redwood City’s Congregation Beth Jacob, his well laid-out plans for retirement lasted all of a few weeks.
Faster than Teitelbaum could say “golf course” or “cruise to the Bahamas,” he had taken on the position of first part-time executive director of the Northern California Board of Rabbis.
Now Teitelbaum’s life is less tennis and reading than telephone tag and roundtables. “Like so many part-time jobs, it turns out to be more than part time,” he said.
More than a year after accepting the position at the S.F.-based board, Teitelbaum looks back on what it has meant for the organization to have its first paid director. In the past, it has had only an unpaid president at its helm, currently Rabbi Alan Lew, spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom.
In Teitelbaum’s eyes, the paid position — which is funded by the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s annual campaign, the federation’s endowment fund and Sinai Memorial Chapel — has meant expanded programming for the board.
Founded in the Gold Rush era, the board offers a forum for rabbis of all denominations to confer on issues of shared concern and to support each other through the stresses of the rabbinate.
Among the programs the board has held for its more than 100 members in the last year are a meeting devoted to the subject of prayer and presence, a seminar on pastoral care and counseling, and a workshop for rabbis writing High Holy Day sermons — a repeat of one of its traditionally best-attended events.
The rabbinical body is now funding a Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Malcolm Cohen, for the San Francisco area prison system.
In addition, the board has met with leaders of the federation to determine how the JCF and synagogues can work together more closely.
Along those lines, the board of rabbis is coordinating with the JCF an upcoming “Federation Shabbat” on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 8 and 9. Local rabbis are being asked to speak about the federation at Shabbat services on those days or to invite a federation leader to do so.
“It is our hope that as a result of this Shabbat, we will bring a heightened awareness to our congregants of the importance of federation in our community,” Teitelbaum said, “and that we’ll recruit volunteers for Super Sunday [a federation fund-raising event] on Nov. 24.”
The board also serves as a resource for everyone from tourists seeking information on local kosher restaurants to transients in need of shelter.
“I have found, to my surprise, a tremendous number of telephone calls that come into the board of rabbis on every imaginable subject,” Teitelbaum said. “We get calls, not only from the local area, but from all over the country.”
Teitelbaum tells of one call from a Conservative Jewish man in Cleveland who planned to get married in San Francisco. He was searching for just the right rabbi to marry him and his fiancée, a Jew-by-choice who had been raised a Buddhist. Teitelbaum immediately referred the caller to Lew, who was once a Buddhist.
It turned out to be a match made in heaven.
But the board also has a more visible presence, sending its president to represent it at a range of public events — from the inauguration of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown to memorial services for slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
“We are, in many ways, the rabbinic voice of the community,” Teitelbaum said.