Ever since I moved to the Bay Area a couple of years ago, friends and acquaintances have tried to get me to join their synagogues. I know good ones near my home in Albany. Congregation Beth El in Berkeley is terrific, and Beth Hillel in Richmond, though small, has a lot of heart. Rabbi Judah Dardik of Beth Jacob has invited me to daven at his shul.
Tempting offers all, but so far, I’ve declined them. My reasons are complicated, but any reticence to join is most easily traced to my experience on a temple board long ago and far away.
I am not a “joiner” by nature. So when my congregation president back in L.A. invited me to join the board, I experienced level four shpilkes.
I can barely run my own life. How could I possibly weigh in on the temple’s?
Not to worry, my booster told me. You’ll be great.
Now, a board of trustees is like high school: You got your cool kids, your dumb kids, your go-along-get-along kids (me) and your bossy kids who run the show.
I quickly figured out that the macher-ocracy usually got its way. I also learned that the rabbi, whom I revered, was the de facto king of the congregation. The rest of us were expected to be his rubber-stamp squad.
But I settled into the job and managed to get things done, including setting up a homeless shelter and organizing a fund-raiser (“Moscow Nights,” a fabulous dinner and show prepared by Russian immigrants). Mostly I liked the camaraderie. Thirty people dedicated to the temple, sharing expertise, laughs and a like-minded Jewish spirit (not to mention unlimited muffins from Costco).
All the warm fuzzies vanished when the congregation faced a crisis: The rabbi’s contract was due to expire and he wanted a raise. A big fat raise we couldn’t afford. When the board didn’t agree to it right away, he decided to play hardball and threatened to quit.
What had appeared to be a unified board then split into two factions. One faction felt the rabbi was too important to lose over a salary squabble; a smaller faction, taking its fiduciary responsibility seriously, argued that his price was too high and that the congregation should cut him loose.
I fell in with the former camp. Swayed by the rabbi’s charisma, I couldn’t imagine temple life without him. The power of his personality had merged with my sense of Judaism itself. I firmly believed we had to keep him, whatever the price.
At a climactic meeting, after some on the board balked once again, the rabbi announced his resignation and walked out. We sat stunned for a moment, panicked, then ran after him — literally down the hallway — granting him everything he wanted even though it drove the temple into a sea of red ink. He scored a compensation package that totaled more than $200,000 a year, and included such perks as the congregation paying his income taxes.
Soon after, most of the hardliners on the board quit the temple in disgust. Today, a decade later, the rabbi is still there. God knows what he rakes in now.
Looking back, I wish I’d had the chutzpah to side with the hardliners. As much as the rabbi seemed to be the center of the temple universe, congregants are the true center. We would have survived his departure just fine, and the synagogue would have been in much better fiscal health. I know that now. But I had sided with the sycophants.
Mostly I learned just how hard it is to buck the majority and take an unpopular stand.
Running a synagogue is a balancing act. It’s not really a business venture, yet business principles apply. A board of trustees is just that: a group entrusted to act in the best interests of the congregation. That’s not always so simple.
My old rabbi wasn’t a villain. He was a gifted spiritual leader acting in what he thought were his own best interests. But something is wrong with a system that recruits amateurs to make decisions for an enterprise they’re not trained to understand. It’s like having the hens guard the hen house.
We Jews like to do things in a crowd — pray, mourn, celebrate, study. Somehow, Judaism goes down better that way. I miss many things about congregational life. But I definitely do not miss the board games.
Dan Pine lives and kvetches in Albany. He can be reached at [email protected].