As a 15-year-old, Dean Kertesz had a little chat with Rabbi Bernie Robinson of Richmond’s Temple Beth Hillel. “I remember him saying I should think about the rabbinate,” recalls Kertesz.
He did think about it. For the next 36 years.
Kertesz has come full circle and is the newly appointed head rabbi at the very same Temple Beth Hillel. Or he will be, once ordained next spring. Kertesz is close to completing his studies at the Academy of Jewish Religion (he’s been commuting to Los Angeles for a few years).
Meanwhile, Kertesz is already on duty conducting his first High Holy Days services at the synagogue. It’s an opportunity he calls “a real Shehechiyanu moment. Exciting is not the right word. It’s simultaneously thrilling and humbling.”
Given that rabbis often cast their nets far and wide to find a pulpit position, Kertesz’s posting at his childhood synagogue might be considered a minor miracle. For him, it’s fitting.
“This is a sweet, wonderful bunch of people,” he says of the congregants. “They care deeply about their Jewish lives. It’s not a place where people mail it in. You can’t ask for more than that as a rabbi.”
Tucked just off I-80 in Richmond, Temple Beth Hillel is a close-knit congregation of 85 families. The synagogue offers everything from adult education and Shabbat morning Torah study, to Hebrew school and b’nai mitzvah programs, as well as twice-monthly Friday night services.
Kertesz hopes to expand the synagogue, both in terms of membership and programming. But he knows it has to happen in an organic fashion, in keeping with Beth Hillel’s tradition.
“This was a classic suburban Reform synagogue,” he says. “It’s still this way. I call it a handmade synagogue.”
Attending services at Temple Beth Hillel constitute some of Kertesz’s earliest Jewish memories. His Slovakian father and German mother had ridden out World War II in Britain, moving to the East Bay in the late 1940s.
“I loved going to services as a kid,” Kertesz recalls. “I loved the way the Hebrew sounded. I felt some kind of physical connection with God, a divine spark, when I was in services.”
Despite that early encouragement from Rabbi Robinson (now emeritus), Kertesz chose not to pursue the rabbinate early on. He attended Kennedy High School in Richmond and Reed College in Portland, graduating with a degree in American history.
But he never lost his interest in Judaism and Jewish life. Kertesz served for several years as associate director of the Young Adult Division of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco. He also lived in Israel, not once but twice, the second time in the early ’90s, during which he worked for the Bezalel art academy. While there, his desire to pursue Jewish learning grew.
Having attended classes at Graduate Theological Union and occasionally assisting Rabbi Stuart Kelman at Berkeley’s Congregation Netivot Shalom, Kertesz could feel the old calling, well, calling him once again.
Finally, after reading the memoirs of former Congregation Beth Sholom Rabbi Alan Lew, something clicked within him. “I didn’t want to die wishing I had gone to rabbinical school,” he recalls. “I was 45, and I said ‘I’ve got to do it.'”
With the support of his wife of 22 years, Carla, and their children, Simone and Ari, Kertesz enrolled in rabbinical school. He’s in his fifth and final year.
Though he serves a small congregation, Kertesz hopes Temple Beth Hillel will benefit from the burgeoning of Jewish life going on all across the East Bay. At the same time, he wants to make sure his new congregation retains all the qualities that made it special when he was growing up.
Says Kertesz: “If somebody wants a congregation where people know and care about each other, where people are really interested in strengthening their Jewish lives, this is a place to check out.”