As soon as Bernice Wiener graduated from high school in 1949, she went straight to San Francisco’s Temple Beth Israel and confidently took a test for a secretarial job.
“One hour later, I meekly knocked on the executive director’s door and apologized for being unable to even decipher my shorthand notes, let alone type a line on the manual typewriter,” Wiener told a gathering of 400 well-wishers at her retirement celebration late last month.
“He looked at me and said, `Would you like to start work on Monday?'” Wiener told the crowd at Congregation Beth Israel-Judea.
“I responded, `As what?'”
And that, she explained, was the beginning of her life’s work. In her 50 years of service (with an eight-year hiatus in the 1950s to have two children), she was first a secretary and then, since 1980, the synagogue’s executive director.
In a special Friday-night service dedicated to Wiener, Rabbi Herbert Morris, who has worked with her since the 1960s, said, “You have taken care of all of us. You have taken care of our youth and seen them grow to have children of their own.”
In an interview, Morris said of Wiener, “What a remarkable mind. She had it all and devoted her life to the synagogue, and it was beautiful. I’m going to miss her.”
Wiener noted that Beth Israel is where she and her husband married and where her children were named.
The synagogue’s past president, Libby Gross, said that Wiener proved an invaluable mentor when Gross first joined the board in 1980.
“Your patience and caring saw me through those times and beyond,” she told Wiener at the event. Gross later added, “She’s been just like a well of knowledge over the years. She’s the history” of the synagogue.
During that history, Wiener has seen the merger of Conservative Beth Israel with the Reform Judea in 1969, and the relocation of the synagogue to its present address at 625 Brotherhood Way, as well as the building of the Rabbi Elliot Burstein Activity Building to house the synagogue’s education program.
Yet in her view, buildings are not of prime importance.
“A synagogue is people and continues to be,” she said.
Perhaps the most striking change Wiener has seen since the 1950s has been women’s role in the congregation.
The synagogue was the West Coast’s first to elect a female president, Edith Hylton, in the early 1970s. Forty years ago there were only two women on Beth Israel’s board, while today’s 17-member board includes eight women.
To celebrate Wiener’s long, event-filled career at Beth Israel-Judea, past president Hylton composed a song, which everyone at the retirement party sang to the tune of “Clementine.”
In praise of Wiener’s organizing genius, the crowd raised their voices in unison: “Plan a wedding or a party,/A bar mitzvah or a lunch./It’s Bernice who is the smarty/With advice, not just a hunch.”
When it came to planning this party, however, it was the congregation’s turn to take the lead. According to Gross, the Oneg Shabbat food “looked professionally catered but was not,” with more than 50 congregants bringing “some of the most gorgeous stuff.”
But before the festivities were over, the congregation gave Wiener a standing ovation, as well as gifts including $3,600 (double chai) to spend on a vacation with her husband.
Looking back on her years at the synagogue, Wiener cannot say how many hours of overtime she accrued. She never kept track.
“It’s a very multifaceted job — not a 9-to-5 job.”
In her last week of work, she couldn’t quite believe she was really leaving. “My desk looks like I’m going to be here another 10 years,” she said.
And while the synagogue has yet to find her replacement, she echoes Ecclesiastes in saying, “It’s time for Bernice to move on.”
She looks forward to enjoying retirement with her husband, her two grown children; Lora Jachimowicz and Gregory Wiener, and six grandchildren.
Still, she says of leaving her job after all these years, “It’s a very emotional parting. It’s been a lovely relationship.”
The final stanza of Hylton’s song dedicated to Wiener gives a sense of the warmth of this relationship: “You’re mishpoche — you belong here!/Your life with us will never cease./In our hearts you’ll always be near./Good luck — shalom — to our Bernice!”