Rosalie Carl Gitin considered her role as rebbetzin a full-time job. The wife of Joseph Gitin, rabbi emeritus of San Jose’s Temple Emanu-El, she died April 26 in San Francisco. Her age was unknown.
Gitin was born in Ukraine and immigrated to the United States as a child. When her family arrived at Ellis Island, the immigration official gave all seven children the same birthday, which is why her birth date is unknown. Her father had a pushcart in Niagara Falls, N.Y., where they settled.
Gitin graduated from college and obtained a teaching credential from SUNY Fredonia.
She met Joseph Gitin at a youth group function, and they married, but their daughter did not know the year.
“She was timeless,” said her daughter Judi Elman Harris of San Francisco, adding that her parents were “cagey about dates. I think they were in their 70th year of marriage. My mother felt that people could be ageist, and that a person is defined by who they are, not by how old they were.”
Calling her mother “the quintessential rebbetzin,” Harris said her mother followed her father to Butte, Mont. — where he was the only rabbi in the state — to Chapel Hill, N.C., to Berkeley, where he served as Hillel director from 1944 to 1948.
From there they moved to Stockton, and then Gitin served as rabbi of San Jose’s Temple Emanu-El, from 1950 to 1976. Rebbetzin Gitin taught public school, as well as religious school for 44 years. In a history of Jewish San Jose that appears on the congregation’s Web site, she is quoted as saying, “I would teach the children. God gave us a mind to think and a heart to love and He gave us this beautiful world, and it was up to us to make it stay beautiful.”
In 1976, the religious school at the synagogue was named after the couple.
Harris said her mother taught by example, that performing acts of kindness were just as important — if not more so — than giving money. Harris told how poor people often knocked on the door when she was growing up, and she and her brother knew they were to make them a sandwich. College students who did not have the money for tuition were invited to live with them.
Harris said that even though her mother was born in the Old Country, she was very much a modern woman, trying to find the balance not only between family and her career, but her husband’s career, too.
“She was a very caring mother, but she was torn between being with us and being with my dad and the congregation,” her daughter said, noting that she always accompanied her husband when he visited the sick, for example.
“She genuinely loved people, and that was her whole focus; fixing up people who were single, making sure people had food, that kind of thing,” said her daughter.
In addition to her daughter, Gitin is survived by her husband, Rabbi Joseph Gitin of San Francisco; son David Gitin of San Jose; three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. One of her grandchildren, Michael Elman, predeceased her.
Donations can be made to the Michael Elman Memorial Fund of Temple Emanu-El, 1010 University Ave., San Jose, CA 95126.