Rabbi Jacob Traub arrived in San Francisco via Connecticut, Brooklyn and Duluth, Minn., in late 1966. The counterculture was blossoming, and not a day went by without Traub receiving a phone call from some frantic parent on the East Coast seeking help in finding his or her child.
“Every Sunday I used to walk down Haight Street with my wife, wearing a yarmulke, and kids would come out of the woodwork,” he said. “A lot of them were day school kids from the East Coast, and I’d tell them to call their mother.”
The spiritual leader of San Francisco’s Adath Israel recalled his early days on the job as he winds down his tenure. Traub officially retired last July, though he is still leading Shabbat and holiday services. He will continue in this capacity until his successor is found.
But as Traub steps down from his pulpit, he is not alone. Nine of the area’s senior rabbis have announced their retirement within the coming three years.
This could be the greatest change of rabbinical leadership the Bay Area has ever seen.
In what can be seen as a sign of their generation, all nine are men. Three are Reform, five Conservative and one Orthodox, so chances are good that their successors may change the status quo. There are only two women currently holding senior rabbi positions in the Bay Area, and the pending departures open the door for potentially a few more to join them.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one or more of the congregations chooses a woman, and that would be a great achievement of our age, that we’re gender-blind,” said Sheldon Lewis, current president of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California.
It wasn’t always that way.
When Rabbi Gordon Freeman began at Walnut Creek’s Conservative B’nai Shalom, the congregation was not yet egalitarian. But the young rabbi began to push for it after the Conservative movement voted to include women in a minyan — and after the birth of his third daughter.
“People accused me of having an agenda, and I said, ‘You’re right.'”
It took more than a year of discussions, but those pushing for equality prevailed.
The first female to be called to the Torah at the Walnut Creek synagogue was the oldest woman in the congregation. When the rabbi told the 89-year-old that she’d better learn the blessings, “She turned to me and said, ‘Why should I know them any better than the men?'”
Freeman and colleagues Lewis of Congregation Kol Emeth in Palo Alto and Gerald Raiskin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame have announced they will retire in 2006.
Lewis described the transition into egalitarianism at Kol Emeth as rather difficult; many community members quit the synagogue in favor of an Orthodox one. Lewis admitted he wasn’t quite ready for the Conservative movement’s 1973 decision allowing women to count in a minyan.
“By the late ’70s we had taken steps, but there was so much disagreement,” he said. “I don’t think I handled it very well. But now, of course, I think it was one of the best things that ever happened to us.
“The pillars of the congregation could no longer be in our congregation, and to this day are leaders in Orthodox congregations, and there were some for whom the changes weren’t made fast enough.”
By the time Sarah Graff was hired as assistant rabbi in 2001, “it was so natural, a no-brainer,” he said.
Rabbi Alan Lew of San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom also courted his share of controversy, though it had nothing to do with feminism. It had everything to do with politics.
In 2002, Lew delivered a Rosh Hashanah sermon that got some congregants so angry they walked out. Later, an even smaller group tried to have him fired. What bothered them so? Lew’s politicizing from the bimah: railing against the Patriot Act, the state’s recall election, the treatment of Arabs and Muslims in the United States post 9/11. Also, he dared to question Israel’s wisdom in building its security barrier.
“I was well-supported by the board and officers, and the vast majority of the congregation, but some people got so angry and very aggressive about it,” he said. “It got very uncomfortable for a while. But now it’s completely over.”
Lew said something similar happened when he first raised the issue of being more inclusive of gays and lesbians. While some people screamed and stomped out of the room, the synagogue went on to have a gay president, one of the first openly gay presidents of a Conservative synagogue in the country.
Things eventually settled down in all fronts. A search is already under way to replace Lew, who will step down in July of this year.
Rabbi Ted Alexander of San Francisco’s Congregation B’nai Emnuah also plans to step down before the end of this year. Rabbis Stuart Kelman of Berkeley’s Netivot Shalom and Ferenc Raj of Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El will retire in 2007. And Rabbi Steven Chester of Oakland’s Temple Sinai will retire in 2008.
With so many of the old guard hanging up their robes at once, Lewis said, “I think it will be good for the community. It will inject new energy.”
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