By Gary Rotto
SAN DIEGO–I’ve been on a self imposed sabbatical. I needed to take a break from writing for a couple of years. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, Rather, I just didn’t have the time to either write regularly or to create columns worthy of our readership.
Most of us hit a time management wall: we mean to do well, but over commit and something suffers. That something can be family, work, community efforts or even one’s health. I had to let a few community efforts go mainly because I had taken on the role of President of Congregation Dor Hadash.
Dor Hadash is a small Reconstructionist congregation. We like to think of ourselves as the Cheers of San Diego Jewish congregations. You remember that long running television show about the little pub in Boston. It’s the place where everyone knows your name. The problem is that a congregation of about a hundred families has a rabbi, education director and an administrator – but not an executive director. So the president becomes the CEO of the congregation. That means besides chairing the board of trustees, recruiting volunteers and keeping up with the simchas and sadness in our members’ families, I also was responsible for reviewing and editing contracts, overseeing and supervising the staff professionals and acting as the lead for external relations. Just being the president can be a full time job but I already had a full time job. And elderly parents to look after and a daughter to help through the teenage years.
So my writing was put on the shelf for a while.
We accomplished quite a bit during my presidency: moving our school and office to the campus of the San Diego Jewish Academy, holding services at Congregation Beth El, increasing our interaction and sponsorships of community wide Jewish events, and creating a strategic plan. My father, who served as president many years ago, lived to see me installed as president and our planned move was one idea that he really wanted to see occur.
My two years as president concluded a few months ago. So I began to think about writing again. I’ve had a few ideas for columns in my head, but had not made the time to put my fingers on the keyboard and write the column. A couple of weeks ago, Don Harrison spoke at our Congregation on Friday night. As he opened his talk, Don noted the many people he knew around the room. “And we have practically seen Gary’s daughter Kelila grow up in the pages or our publication.” He was correct. Kelila’s birth was covered by Don as her mom went into labor at an American Jewish Committee fundraising dinner many years ago. And Kelila has been in several of my columns. But I feel that I have shorted our readers from my observations of her time in high school.
This column will kick off my reinvigorated writing. As before, I’ll talk about Jewish life and the life of a single parent. But my columns will also reflect local politics and provide a local take on national politics. One other idea that I have had is to profile some of the young Jewish staffers working for our elected officials and some of their staff who may not be Jewish, but are responsible for relations with the Jewish community . They are often times the ones who really make things happen in a governmental office
As you can tell, I have a few ideas and, as before, a few opinions. It’s time to share many of those thoughts as I have done before.
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Rotto is a former San Diego regional director of the American Jewish Committee. Your signed comment (first and last name) may be posted in the space provided below or sent to gary.rotto@sdjewishworld.com