By Diane Bernbaum
In 1984 I represented East Bay religious school directors on the Board of the Jewish Education Council (soon to be renamed the Agency for Jewish Education and now merged with Jewish Learning Works) and became a member of the Search Committee tasked with hiring our first full-time director. Among the resumes that came in was that of Rabbi Stuart Kelman, already nationally known as a founder of CAJE, Director of Camp Ramah in Ojai, Pacific Southwest Director of USY and a Professor of Education at HUC. I couldn’t believe that someone with a national reputation would want to come to our little East Bay backwater and I was over the moon when he accepted the job. Little did I realize at the time how his arrival would throw my quiet work life into a tailspin.
He arrived in Berkeley with an 11th grade daughter, an 8th grade son and 5th grade twins, enrolled his two oldest at Midrasha, the school I directed, and soon discovered the sleepy state of Jewish teen education in the East Bay. He realized he would need to do something fast. Stuart quickly became an idea-generating machine. The first sea change he undertook was to develop a system of teen retreats, , founded the Oakland and Contra Costa midrashot, revitalized the midrasha in Fremont, created an Israel teen trip and soon together he, I and a host of talented, inspired and charismatic colleagues created Jewish teen education in the East Bay that was the envy of the rest of the country Our population swelled from a handful of indifferent students to hundreds of engaged and very happy teens.
Stuart was amazing at professionalizing all of us: school directors and teachers alike. He created retreats for both principals and for teachers. Our Educators’ Council grappled with ethics, insurance, hiring practices, teacher training and many thorny issues. He brought in guest speakers from related parts of the Jewish community to our monthly meetings where he would also distribute the mounds of professional materials that had come into his office, telling of conferences, recent research, job postings and new educational materials. Until then, I never realized that world existed.
Stuart became our role model. He had directors to his house to sit in his family sukkah and soon my colleagues and I started inviting our own teachers to our sukkot. He started meetings with a d’var Torah and soon my colleagues and I all started meetings at our schools and synagogues with divrei Torah. It was the trickle-down model of leadership.
The Chinese philosopher Lao-Tze described Stuart’s teaching style centuries ago when he said:
“A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him…. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say: We did this ourselves.”
Forget about Pirke Avot. They were wrong. I haven’t learned the most from my students. I learned the most from Rabbi Stuart Kelman z”l.
Diane Bernbaum began teaching religious school in the Bay Area in 1976 at Congregation Beth El. From 1981 to until the time of her retirement in 2014 she was the Director of Midrasha in Berkeley. In her decades long career, Diane has mentored and supported thousands of teens and young adults as they navigate their relationship with Judaism, Jewish learning, and Jewish living.