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When people ask Ellen Rosen what the Jewish Bulletin's board does, she's more apt to tell them what it doesn't do.

"We are not an editorial board," stresses Rosen, who last week was elected president of the body. "We do not sit there giving an OK on what is going to be written. That's for the staff to figure out."

So what does the board do?

"We help determine policy," Rosen says. "We make sure the budget is sound."

A previous board vice president now beginning her sixth year of volunteer involvement with the paper, Rosen, 55, says she expects her new role means that she will be more accountable for the publication, which also has an online edition at http://www.jewish.com/jb

"I feel much more responsible for the Bulletin. The public buck stops with me," says Rosen, a Mill Valley resident. "If there are concerns, I expect to get community reaction."

She and husband Dr. Mel Rosen, a radiologist at UCSF /Mount Zion Hospital, are longtime members of San Francisco's Congregation Sherith Israel.

In Rosen's eyes, the Bay Area Jewish community is "one of the most diverse communities, Jewish and otherwise, in the country." The role of the Bulletin, Northern California's only Jewish weekly paper, she believes, is to reflect that diversity.

"We have a vast spectrum of Jews in the community — religiously, politically," says Rosen, who replaces former president Michael Rubenstein, a San Francisco attorney. "I think our paper should reflect what our community is like. We do our best."

Rosen's extensive experience includes a stint as assistant director of the Jewish Community Relations Council from 1980 to 1987, during which time she chaired the Soviet Jewry, Ethiopian Jewry and schools committees.

When first nominated for the Bulletin's board, Rosen decided to accept the position because "it was an agency I respected," she says. "It was part of my life. I was reading the Bulletin all the time.

The paper, she believes, "serves to inform, enlighten, entertain and educate the Bay Area Jewish community."

In addition to the Bulletin's board, Rosen juggles other community commitments as well. She serves as a trustee of the Tamalpais Union High School District and as a docent at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco.

Other board appointments made last week include Dr. Emanuel Friedman and Sam Lauter as vice presidents, Michael B. Fineman as secretary and Martin Gans as treasurer. Other board members in-clude Fred Blum, George Frankenstein, Morton Friedkin, Susan Golovin, Louis Haas, Ellen Kahn, Rabbi Alan Lew, William J. Lowenberg, Susan Mall, immediate past president Rubenstein, Richard Seiler, Jeffrey Shubert and Jerry Yanowitz.