|
|
November 27, 1998/ 8 Kislev 5759, Vol. 51, No. 10
K.C. connections
Career, life paths cross for former Phoenicians
DANE D'ANTUONO
Staff Writer
Nearly 10 years ago, Rabbi Gerald Kane packed up his belongings, left the cactus-lined Valley and headed for the plains of the Midwest to pursue his career. Now, his heartstrings are calling him home, at least back to the Southwest - Las Cruces, N.M., to be exact.
After nine-and-a-half years, the director of education at Temple B'nai Jehudah in Kansas City, Mo., is leaving his post to follow his heart. The strings pulling are his six grandchildren in Phoenix.
"Last year, I counted the number of days I spent with my grandchildren, and I couldn't fill up the fingers on both hands," Kane says. "And that tells me something. It's devastating to be so geographically far away."
Kane has accepted a position as senior rabbi of Temple Beth El in Las Cruces, which of course is a much shorter distance from Phoenix than Kansas City. However, while Kane and his wife, Cyrille, find their way back to the Southwest, and to his own pulpit, Kane is being replaced in Kansas City by two women from Phoenix, both of whom moved to the Midwest city within the past year.
Rabbi Kane was a very busy fellow when he worked at the 1,900 family-member congregation in Kansas City. Besides being the religious school director, he helped start an ongoing series of Jewish Renewal-style worship services and taught the adult b'nai mitzvah program.
The temple wound up hiring two former Phoenicians to fill Kane's shoes - one, a teacher for the adult program; and the other, an administrator to run the religious school.
One of the two women hired by Temple B'nai Jehudah is a former student of Kane's - Kathy Goldstein. She began serving as the interim religious school director at Temple B'nai Jehudah earlier this month.
"When I served at Temple Beth Israel (in Phoenix), Kathy's mom served on my faculty, and I taught Kathy," Kane recalls.
Goldstein, 25, says she never dreamed that one day she would live in Kansas City, let alone step into the shoes of the kindly teacher she knew so many years ago.
"I never thought I would move out of Arizona," Goldstein says.
Goldstein says she's trying to emulate Kane's casual, warm style. She still recalls clearly how Kane rushed to pick her and her brother up to bring them home, after they were in a traffic accident with their father.
"I don't know of too many teachers that would go out of their way to make sure we were okay, the police were called and my dad was all right," Goldstein says, adding that these kinds of actions were not out of the ordinary for Kane.
She remembers her schooling with him fondly. He was one of several teachers who tutored her to prepare for her bat mitzvah. Unlike other teachers, who may have worn stern grimaces while sitting across the desk from their students demanding nothing short of perfection, Kane taught one-on-one in a non-threatening way, she says.
"He sat next to me in a chair, and went over the material a little at a time," Goldstein says. "We took one prayer at a time."
Rabbi Judith Beiner also hails from Phoenix and also grew up as a member of Temple Beth Israel. Beiner took over teaching the adult b'nai mitzvah program in Kansas City in late October.
"I knew Rabbi Kane from my childhood, too," Beiner says, adding with a laugh, "However, I have no intentions of going to Las Cruces."
She thinks it's a strange coincidence that they all ended up in the same place.
Goldstein, however, attributes the Phoenix-Kansas City connection to the "Jewish geography game."
"Wherever you go, somebody is going to know somebody you knew," Goldstein says.
Oddly enough, when Rabbi Kane reaches his new congregation in New Mexico, he will be greeted by yet another former Arizonan, Connie Adelman.
"When you are Jewish, the world is small," says Adelman, the music teacher at Temple Beth El in Las Cruces.
Like the others, Adelman once lived in Phoenix. Her mother-in-law, Hannah Adelman, preceded and succeeded Kane as education director at Temple Beth Israel.
"I've lived all over the world, and everywhere I've gone, it is the same," Adelman says. "Somehow we are all connected."
|
