For the last time this journey, my alarm went off at 5:40 am. The last Wednesday night of the month is Temple Etz Chaim's Board of Directors meeting. I have managed to keep up with it, even if it makes my Thursday a bit of a drag. The past two meetings, I've gone back to bed afterward. This time, I made myself a homemade almond milk Frappuccino and decided to get a jump on the day. Besides, I still have all those Starbucks Nespresso capsules to use….
This meeting did two big things: 1. Pass the budget for the next fiscal year beginning July 1 and 2. Approve the slate of directors for the coming two-year term cycle. I am now officially slated to be the next President of TEC. Technically, both items must be ratified at the annual Congregational Meeting on June 12th – but it's pretty much a done deal.
I wrestled with moving forward with this because my life feels so uncertain. I don't want to make a commitment I can't or won't keep. I also don't want to pass up doing something meaningful with no concrete reason to do so. I have an unusually strong and easy relationship with Shari, our current Temple President – we have functioned very much as a team and I've been so fortunate as to how much she has included me in everything. We've become friends. She knows why I'm here and has been so supportive. Most Immediate Past Presidents aren't terribly active – usually recovering from two - and once in awhile four – intense years. I asked her if we could figure out a way to still be a team because I would need it. And to figure out a way to bring in Felisha, our incoming Executive Vice President, who shouldn't be left out. Shari was nothing by warm and supportive – and happy to stay a team. Honestly, even without everything going on – I just like the way we work together and tackle issues.
Shari doesn't have a full-time paid job – so she has been able to give a lot of her time. I'm already at a disadvantage there. Moreover, I don't know if and when a temple president has had kids as young as mine. So I have more on my plate than the average. Felicia's no different with a professional career, one teenage daughter nearing the end of high school, but also a younger daughter in Sennen's class. They've been together since preschool – not that they have a tremendous affinity for one another, but like most of the kids who have known each other since two years-old, they seem to have a tacit acceptance and comfort with each other.
In fact, one of my favorite things about seeing my kids move through the temple preschool into the religious school is seeing the relationships with their original cohort of kids. I didn't have any friendships that went from preschool through elementary – but there are actually a large number of them in Sennen and Ailyn's religious school classes – especially Sennen's. My friend Gideon's older daughter, Eliana, is the only kid I've ever seen who can boss Sennen around. She's assertive and because they have known each other so long, she has this almost sibling-like relationship with him. She can get in his face, be very direct if not forceful, and amazingly, he shudders a little and mostly does what she says. That doesn't mean he doesn't come to her sometimes wanting his way or to direct the game they're playing. However, Eliana makes it quite clear it's up to her to decide whether or not to accede to his wishes and if she wills it otherwise, well, that's probably how it will go.
Both Sennen and Eliana are temple celebrities of sorts. Gideon is the Executive Director and his daughters tend to be around and playing around campus quite a lot. Sennen used to dress almost exclusively in suits and ties which drew a lot of notice from congregants – and then his dad is part of the temple leadership. I bring my kids to services when I go – which is not terribly common anymore – and Sennen manages to mingle in between desserts during Oneg Shabbat. Gideon's kids and mine generally get free-run of the synagogue and know every nook and hiding spot in the building. I never worry about their safety when we're there – so I let me kids have at it so long as they aren't disruptive. By and large, congregants like seeing kids running around - especially the older ones who remember how many kids there used to be at services during our Rabbi Emeritus' day. He was all about kids at temple and had no issues with children being children. To him, running around shul is part of how a Jewish child becomes a Jewish adult.
For my own conundrum, I eventually decided that I don't know what I'm going home to – and even if Emily and I divorce, I don't know what our timeline or path will look like. I decided to move forward with becoming President and figure that working together with my team, I'll be okay. If I really can't do it or my life changes too much – there's a reason Vice Presidents exist. Derailing the succession plan and forgoing something meaningful I've been planning with no concrete information didn't make sense to me.
A former beloved boss of mine was once asked by a job candidate how the candidate could trust the job would be stable and last. If this person left her job for the new role (we were recruiting her pretty heavily), how would she know it wouldn't backfire?
"Look, all I can tell you is I show up everyday and each day I just keep coming back and it seems to keep going…." Lisa responded fairly and honestly.
We never really know anyway – I can just move forward in good faith and do my best job.
Shari went into her presidential term with COVID still raging and running our lives – and the temple's financial future very much up for question. Thanks to PPP loans, TEC is in better shape than before – especially because we were not only able to keep the preschool open, but it grew tremendously, vastly increasing our revenues. Unlike most synagogues in Southern California, our membership also increased over the past two years – even when we weren't having in-person events and services. We are now near the close of a Capital Campaign. which looks like it will raise more than the original $2 million goal.
That success means that much of my term will have a completely disrupted synagogue building undergoing renovation and that we need to spend this High Holidays praying the work will be done by the next High Holidays. Hosting events will be more challenging and there will undoubtedly be many complaints including families unhappy with the sanctuary not being available for their children's B'nai Mitzvot. Still, it seems like the right set of problems to inherit.
For me personally, the involvement in our synagogue comes with community – which is always a good thing, but perhaps more so right now. I enjoy the people I know and work with at shul. There's something nice about being part of the leadership of an organization dedicated to caring and doing the right thing staffed with people who really live that out. In this coming Board term, I'm pleased to see a number of positions are turning over to my generation. We'll have new faces and viewpoints. Some of them are friends – one is a friend from high school who will now be in charge of Building and Grounds. There's something comforting in it.
Also, the more I thought about it, the more I felt my involvement in Temple Etz Chaim is important not just for me, but for my children. What does it say if in my moment of crisis, I suddenly devalue my community and religion? What am I teaching my children then? They are very sweetly proud their dad is the EVP of the synagogue and will be president. They feel more connected to their Jewish community because of it. Moreover, if Emily is the one willing to pull them from religious school in favor of a baseball game – and I oppose it – what grounds do I have to stand on if I pull myself from temple? It's always possible that could happen for a number of divorce-related reasons. But it doesn't have to today.
In the end, there's always the person we are today and the person we aspire to be. If I was given a blank slate free of the circumstances of my life and got to draw or describe my aspirational self it would involve being a good man – which to me means someone who is there for others, someone who like my Grandpa helps hold up the sky. Recently, that's felt very hard to be – especially when retreating to recalibrate and reimagine. Then I remember, the great ones aren't perfect and struggle along with the rest of us. Great people need to think and reorient from time to time. Great people need to adjust to change and new realities. Churchill may have helped save the free world, but he had a list of mistakes a mile long and a list of enemies even longer.
About a year before my Grandpa died – and it was obvious that the end was closer than further out – I told him how much I admired him and the way he lived his life. He told me how much I didn't know about the mistakes he made and what an imperfect person he was. That didn't make him any less my hero – or take away any of the great things he did for people and examples he set. Even in that moment, he did me the favor of teaching me that being a good man doesn't mean being a perfect one.
I like to think this sojourn is a moment to come back home stronger, more capable and continue along the path to being a good man. I hope I remain centered and clear enough to make good choices in turbulent times and challenging moments. I also hope to remain clear and open enough to always be happy for people – and to show up for them when they need me – in good and bad times. It's easy to neglect the importance of showing up to celebrate.
At the beginning of my time here on Patmos, I struggled with the idea I might be a hypocrite if I get divorced. I wondered if my parents were right in their advice or what my Grandpa might say if he were alive. What would my barometers of morality and being a good man say – and were they right?
I'm starting to realize, perhaps it's better to shift from considering what my Grandpa might think to gauging myself by wondering what my children might see in my actions – what they take from me. Am I living a life I want them to see and learn from? If I can be a role model of worth to them, then I suspect and hope that can make me a good father, a good Temple President, a good husband or ex-husband, a good friend, a good son, a good brother and a good man – knowing it will forever be a journey, a path, a work in progress.
