By Donald H. Harrison

San Diego, CA (special) -- When Rabbi Aaron Gold "retired" from Tifereth Israel in 1992, he didn't exactly protest kicking and screaming, but he didn't leave enthusiastically either. After 18 years, he understood the congregation's need for "new blood," and was such a gentleman about it that his successor, Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal, says he always will remember "how extremely supportive and helpful he was, how he made sure that I could be the rabbi of the synagogue."

The problem for Gold, at 72, was that he had wanted to remain active. This was not only a matter of ego. After the collapse of Pioneer Mortgage, in which he and other members of the Jewish community had been bilked into putting investment dollars, Gold believed he needed to continue to work to assure his and Jeanne's long-term financial future.

Thus, when various rabbis in San Diego took summer vacations in 1992, Gold accepted with alacrity invitations to fill in as a guest rabbi. Then when Congregation Beth Emet in Anaheim needed someone to officiate at High Holiday services, the Conservative congregation naturally turned to Gold, with whom it had an affinity. Jeanne's parents, Jules and Esther Weissbuch, were congregants there. Furthermore, the Golds had been married there.

After the High Holiday services, the congregation gave Gold a three-month contract while it went through the formal search process for a new rabbi. The contract was extended two more times, for a total of nine months, before his successor was found. Why didn't he become the permanent rabbi at Beth Emet? Rabbis who officiate on a temporary basis for High Holiday services are excluded under the Rabbinical Association's rules from consideration for a permanent rabbi's slot. The rule is intended to preclude any rabbi from having an unfair advantage over another.

There was little time to fret. While Gold was at Beth Emet, two congregations back in San Diego County reluctantly were concluding that their proposed merger was impractical. At first glance, Ner Tamid Synagogue in Rancho Bernardo and Temple Judea in Vista looked like a good match, especially with Ner Tamid's Rabbi Samuel Kligfeld about ready to retire. But where would the merged synagogue be located? What site would be most convenient for people who lived in communities throughout the north County? On such questions, merger talks foundered.

Rancho Bernardo

One day on the Golds' answering machine at the apartment which they kept in Orange County, there was a message from Mort Isaacson, the president of Ner Tamid Synagogue. Isaacson explained that the congregation was planning to remain an independent entity. Was Rabbi Gold interested in being considered as the next rabbi, on a part-time basis?

Indeed, Gold was interested. He would eventually serve that congregation for six years through 1999.

Vailia Dennis researched Gold's record, then for a celebration to welcome him, she rewrote the lyrics to several well-known songs to give the congregants at Ner Tamid the flavor of the man who would serve in their pulpit. One of these songs was set to the melody of My Favorite Things:

Religious school children with bright shiny faces
Reading in Hebrew in all the right places
Learning and playing, the joy that they bring
This is just part of his favorite things

Working with people of all different races
Seeing that tolerance grows in their faces
Watching the pleasure that brotherhood brings
This is part of his favorite things

When he shows love...when he plans growth...
When he teaches too
It's easy to see that his favorite things will
help make our dreams come true.

Growth was indeed be a theme of his tenure at Ner Tamid. The congregation moved in 1997 from rented quarters at 16981 Via Tazon to roomier leased space at 1677-West Bernardo Drive, its current location. The rabbi led songs as the Torah-carrying procession walked the several blocks between the two locations through a light industrial neighborhood. When the joyous marchers arrived, three youngsters sounded blasts of their shofars in welcome.

Once again, the rabbi assumed not only his pulpit duties, but those of a cantor as well. He taught bar/ bat mitzvah classes both for children and for adults, developed adult education classes and again instituted "Rap with the Rabbi" sessions. He also helped the congregation-as he had nearly every previous congregation--with its fundraising activities.

As a pastor, Gold was especially appreciated. Mort Isaacson recalls that when his wife, Estelle, had to undergo mastectomy surgery in 1995, the rabbi "arrived at the hospital before my wife and myself, and he never left the hospital until my wife had gone through recovery and was awake in her room. He was there 8-9 hours, and we shall never forget that."

Dolly Posner recalls the special friendship between her late husband, Morton, and Rabbi Gold. Because Posner was a heart transplant patient, he and the rabbi had hoped that on the 13th anniversary of receiving a new heart, Posner would again become a bar mitzvah. However, Posner died last year after only 11 years with a new heart. 

A well-known civic activist in Escondido, and writer of letters to various editors, Posner over the years had cultivated a long, distinguished moustache. 

"One time he had to have surgery on the new heart, and he was still in the ICU," Dolly recalled. "Rabbi came and put on the mask. Morty was lying on the bed, tubes down his throat Rabbi said 'hi,' and Morty blinked his eyes; I told Morty 'don't get excited, don't get upset. They had to shave off your moustache.' He jumped up. 'What!' If looks could kill.... Rabbi kept saying, 'It will grow back, Mort; it will grow back!' We always laughed about that." 

One of Gold's Passover sermons seemed to encapsulate the philosophy that guided much of his teaching. It seems a certain Chassidic rebbe began a Passover seder without filling the cup of Elijah with wine. His followers began to wonder why he had not filled the wine cup, which they fervently hoped Elijah himself would drink from, and thus herald the coming of the Messiah. 

At the time in the seder when the door was to be opened symbolically to welcome Elijah, the rebbe called upon each of his followers to themselves fill the cup with a few drops from their own wine cups. "Each of us must do our individual part to fill Elijah's cup," the rebbe explained. "Israel can only be redeemed through our own efforts. So help Elijah!" 

The Chassidim immediately poured wine from their own cups into Elijah's, so that it was overflowing.

When Rabbi Gold delivered a sermon, he made a powerful impression. But with advancing age came a measure of forgetfulness. Occasionally, he would lose his place in a sermon, or be unable to remember a word or phrase. This occasionally had happened to him while he was Tifereth Israel Synagogue. However, at Ner Tamid such incidents became more frequent. However much Ner Tamid's congregants loved Gold, perhaps the time was at hand for the "retired" rabbi to really retire.

After six years as Ner Tamid's spiritual leader, Gold was replaced by his friend and Conservative rabbinical colleague, Arnold Kopikis, who previously had led Ohr Shalom Synagogue.

Chula Vista 

Nevertheless, Gold's rabbinic career wasn't over just yet. The leaders of Temple Beth Sholom in Chula Vista asked if he would serve as their part time rabbi. Once gain, he consented with eagerness.

Kurt Sax, a former president and long-term congregant, said the 10 months Rabbi Gold spent with the congregation before becoming ill was too short. "He was a fine man; I enjoyed him," said Sax. "He gave good sermons and had a nice voice."

Dr. Robert Baker, who served as a co-president of the congregation during Gold's tenure, said the rabbi provided the congregation with some special moments before he had to leave to undergo surgery for lung cancer.

"One thing he always liked to do, when he did kiddush, he would always have squirreled away some candies and he always made sure he gave them out to the young people -- and the old people too," Baker recalled.

The last time that Gold officiated on a pulpit was in May of 2000.

Baker remembered the rabbi's delivery of the priestly benediction at the end of Shabbat services as particularly inspiring. "It made you realize you were in the presence of something sacred," he said.

On April 1, Gold was saluted by Israel Bonds for his contributions to Israel. Among the acts of devotion to Israel cited in a presentation were Gold's rallying of the Ministerial Association in Las Vegas behind Israel during the Six Day War, the numerous trips he led to Israel, and two scholarship funds which he had created to encourage travel to Israel. One scholarship, at the University of Judaism, was designed to help rabbinical students during their required one year of study in Israel. The other, at Tifereth Israel Synagogue, provides seed money for youthful members of the congregation to visit Israel on a program of their choosing. Contributions may be made to the Rabbi Aaron S. Gold Israel Scholarship in care of Tifereth Israel.

Concerned that making a long response might be too taxing for her husband, who had been coughing frequently, Jeanne Gold read the speech he had composed as he stood at her side.

Describing some of their many visits to Israel, Jeanne read: "One year we were there for Purim and it was so heartwarming to see the streets filled with children who were dressed for Purim. That was really exciting; it's not just a short time at a party; it's all day long .... Those same children unfortunately also know bomb shelters and gas masks. How can we separate ourselves from their joys and their peril? We are one people."

Her eyes brimmed, and she turned to her husband: "You write nice words," she said.

She finished reading, the crowd rose to its feet, but then, unexpectedly, Gold decided to speak after all, not about Israel, but about Jeanne, his Jeanne:

"I did not go looking for her, but I found her, and she found me," he said. "Between the two of us, it has been a wonderful life, a joy of participation in synagogue, and of all the beautiful things with which life can surround us."