Southern California Boy

July 20, 2007-5th Av, 5767

To my new Southern California friends,

At this writing I am starting my first week at Beth Shalom. Thank you for the many warm invitations, calls, and notes from people. I am adjusting rapidly. It is hard to get used to the sunny days following one after another. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest for several years, I had come to expect gray and overcast skies most of the time. I went to Walgreens and bought a lot of suntan lotion.

I have noticed a number of things about my move back to S. California. There are a lot of cars here. Cars and anything related to cars are everywhere. The freeway is full of them and so are the parking lots.

I have also noticed that the barbecue sections in the hardware stores are huge with dozens of different types of cookers. There are even Shabbat barbecues that stop cooking before Shabbat and turn into heating trays. I figure that if you have sunny days all the time, then there is a lot more time to barbecue. That is the most plausible explanation or S. California must have more manly men than the Pacific Northwest. In any case, I am trying to not covet my neighbor’s barbecue which is an explicit prohibition in the Torah.

I have also noticed that there are four public radio stations that I can pick up on my car radio. In Seattle we only had two. How to choose? I also realize that there are a lot more baseball teams in the area. I only had an American League team up in Seattle and they had to have a special roof to prevent the rain from falling on the players and the fans. .

I had the opportunity to meet Maury Wills, the Dodger great during my visit in June. I told him I was a Giant fan and almost ended the conversation right there and then. But he is a generous and understanding man. He signed a baseball for my father and called Sandy Koufax to tell him that he was schmoozing with a rabbi. We only got his answering machine. Too bad.

Before coming to Long Beach I was in Israel for 10 days. My trip helped me to acclimate to the weather here in Long Beach. I am much better adjusted than having come directly from Seattle. In Israel I graduated as a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute where I have been on a fellowship for four years. The fellowship involved two visits to Jerusalem each year and a weekly commitment to study with the Hartman scholars. This was a fantastic experience for me. I hope to share with you in the coming months and years some of the great learning I did in this program.

The other purpose of my visit was to celebrate my parent’s 55th wedding anniversary with my brothers and my Israeli family. We had a very lovely family reunion and managed to bring under one roof a very diverse family. One part of the family is very ultra-orthodox. Another brother of mine is gay and his partner is a Reform Cantor. My other brother married a convert and has two children who are not recognized by the ultra Orthodox part of the family. And I am a Conservative rabbi. We cover all the bases of Jewish life. But we all had a good time honoring my parents for their successful union. I call them the parents of the Jewish people.

August is a slow month for everybody but Rabbis. We start working on our High Holiday sermons and the fall schedule. I will continue getting to know the community better and setting a direction for our community. I encourage you to get in touch with me as I get to know the members of the congregation. You can reach me at my email at rabbi@tbslb.org. Enjoy the rest of the summer.

Shalom, Rabbi Dov Gartenberg