He started out as a salesperson, selling computer and data processing equipment to businesses.
Inspired by Jewish teachers and by the sense of community he experienced as a member of a synagogue, George Gittleman began the path that led to his ordination as a rabbi.
Tonight Gittleman will be installed as the first full-time rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Santa Rosa.
“I always felt I wanted a life’s work and not just a job” said Gittleman, 34, who ended an eight-year sales career in sales to enter the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. “I wanted to feel like I was part of the solution, part of tikkun olam [the repair of the world].”
Shomrei Torah, a Reform synagogue, is Gittleman’s first full-time pulpit. The rabbi, who started his post on July 1, said his career change was inspired by “great teachers.” These included Rabbis David Hartman of Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute, who speaks about Judaism as “a living covenant,” and Ted Alexander of San Francisco’s Congregation B’nai Emunah, where Gittleman attended an Introduction to Judaism class and became a congregant.
B’nai Emunah, he said, “embraced me like I was part of their family and taught me what it was like to live in a community.”
Seeking to further that sense of community, Gittleman said he wanted to be the rabbi of a small congregation where he could get to know the members personally. Shomrei Torah claims 190 members.
Born in Chicago and raised in Louisville, Ky., Gittleman moved to the Bay Area after graduating from the University of Vermont.
Like his congregants, he has had “experience as a secular Jew trying to make it in the world” and has searched for what it means to be a Jew in contemporary society. He and the congregation are “searching and working it out together,” he said.
Sam Kirschman, Shomrei Torah’s president, said Gittleman impressed the rabbinical review committee with his “compassion for people and his enthusiasm for working with the congregation. We felt very comfortable with him.”
The synagogue started out in 1974 with student rabbis and lay leaders, and added part-time rabbis in 1989.
“We decided the growth of the temple was such that we needed a full-time rabbi,” Kirschman said.
Noting that growth is a key issue, Gittleman said membership at Shomrei Torah has grown by 20 percent during the last three months alone.
Shomrei Torah shares a building with Christ Methodist Church, and holds Hebrew and religious classes jointly with Conservative Congregation Beth Ami, also in Santa Rosa. Some parents would like Shomrei Torah to have its own school to give children a stronger connection to the synagogue.
“Growth would help us be able to be more self-sufficient,” said Gittleman.
While he would like to see a greater number of Sonoma County’s Jews affiliate with synagogues, his “overriding concern is that we maintain…a caring community” as the congregation grows.
Shomrei Torah, which means “Guardians of the Torah,” is the keeper of a Torah from Strakonice, a Czech town whose Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Gittleman said he wants to make sure the name “is real for us” by emphasizing education for both children and adults.
The new rabbi and his wife, Laura, are the parents of 7-month-old twins, Levy and Sophia.