Rabbi Grossman will give the Derasha on Shabbat morning as my wife and I are in Atlanta to celebrate the birth of a grandchild. The following is what I would have said on Shabbat morning.
Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Nissan, Parashat HaChodesh
Parashat HaChodesh begins with the Mitzva of proclaiming the new month and puts a focus on time itself. In Hebrew, the word “Zman” denotes a forward-thinking mindset. The word “Hazmana” in the Talmud means to designate something for its future use. (A “Hazmana” in modern Hebrew means an invitation to a future event, a call to prepare for something that is coming up.)
One of the secrets to Stan Sussman’s winning mindset is that he is such a forward thinker. He rarely looks back, not because there aren’t good memories but because he is relentlessly looking forward. But just for a few minutes, let’s sneak a look back.
On Monday evening May 10th, 1999, I was coming out of Mincha/Maariv at around 8:25 pm when I heard a car honking at me. The driver was Stan Sussman. He stuck his head out of the window and told me to jump in his car. He had been listening at home to the broadcast of the City Council meeting that night and noticed that they were ready to speak about the Eruv proposal well before we had been told it would come up. [The City Attorney came over later to apologize to us: “In the nine years I’ve been here, they’ve never reached that point on the agenda before 9 pm,” he said.]
Because nobody was there yet to represent the Eruv, the Council put off the discussion. Stan was only planning to watch the meeting on TV, but he realized that we might lose an opportunity. Thus his mad dash to Shul to whisk us away. In the car, he told me that Mayor Gary Fazzino introduced the Eruv proposal as the “most fascinating item” to come up in his time on the Council. Fazzino, a seasoned government liaison at Hewlett Packard, had been on the council since he was 24 years old, so that was something.
When we arrived, I made a short statement and answered questions. There was some discussion and then the council voted 8-0 to refer the idea to the Policy and Services Committee for discussion before the end of the year. The result was expected -- every council member had been briefed by us before the meeting and, though some had hesitations, nobody opposed the idea. It was a very promising start to what would quickly become a bruising -- and losing -- battle over the next 15 months. The next day, the proposed Palo Alto Eruv was all over the local news, and by the end of the week, it was featured nationally on NPR.
If the story of the Palo Alto Eruv is ever written up, that’s how it could start. It’s a dramatic juncture in the story, and it’s accurate. But it would also be fitting because even though he was not slated to be the focus that night, Stan Sussman still ended up crucially involved. That goes for almost everything he did for the last 56 years on behalf of the traditional Jewish community in the South Bay. He likes to emphasize that it’s always a team effort. Maybe so. But he was always crucially involved.
In 2004, Stan received the Harvey Koch Leadership Award from the Jewish Federation. I want to share two items from that episode: 1) Some of what I wrote in nominating him for the award, and 2) some of what I said as part of the Dvar Torah the night he received the award at Beth Am in Los Altos Hills.
His nomination was a no-brainer of course, as his resume was stellar. He had been instrumental among the founders of both the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School and the Palo Alto Orthodox Minyan, and had led the efforts that brought about (in chronological order) the Eruv effort, a house for the Minyan’s rabbinical family, and the Minyan’s purchase of a building after decades of wandering. Many of these projects had faced stiff headwinds. Day school education was considered un-American by many in the Jewish community but SPHDS was among the factors in its acceptance as normal over time. The Eruv, at that point, was still in limbo. It was Stan’s acceptance of the search for a rabbi in the mid-90s that had brought a full-time rabbi to the Minyan after almost 20 years of hesitation about the idea.
As I put it in the nomination form:
Stan has many qualities that make him a natural leader. His organizational ability is legendary and his leadership of a meeting—keeping everyone focused and on point—has been a model for many succeeding presidents.
Also, rather than pursuing the honor of leadership, Stan understands it as an obligation. This can be seen in the myriad times he took the helm because his skills were in demand. When SPHDS experienced some rough political times in the mid-nineties, it became imperative to restore peace and stability. Stan was willing to step in again—though his daughters had graduated long before—to serve on the board and to lend his steadying presence to the leadership there. He also served on the search committee that ultimately found a permanent headmaster who could take care to keep the peace at the school. He also returned to take over the Shul board in 2002 when a small crisis of leadership developed. (That move ultimately put him in a pivotal position when the chance to buy a building appeared in late 2003.)
When he received the award, it was a day or two after Yom Kippur. In the Dvar Torah that night at Beth Am, I spoke about the origin of Kol Nidre in the Marrano experience -- under the Visigoths, not the Spaniards -- and I spoke about the tendency of Jews in the Bay Area to act like Marranos, hiding their Jewishness. Descartes had said, “Cogito, ergo sum” -- I think, therefore I am. A witty Jewish philosopher once said of Jews on US campuses that they had another approach -- “Incognito, ergo sum” -- by hiding my Jewishness, I therefore am. The descendents of Marrano families, I also pointed out, often seek out housing with a basement because that’s where they have lit their candles on Friday nights for generations. I continued:
Into that milieu, where some would rather go as incognito Jews, Stan Sussman came and said, “I am Jewish, and therefore I am. And the same will go for our kids.” So he made a day school and he created a community around a Shul so that so many would be able to openly pursue their Jewishness. Now the day school model, thankfully, has taken hold throughout the community but one can imagine how difficult it was in the beginning…
[And now] Stan Sussman has eliminated a last remnant of Marrano status by taking his Shul community members out of their basement home and bringing them into the light of day. We just celebrated Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, and we are preparing for Sukkot, in the light of day, completing another step out into the bright light for the Jews in Silicon Valley.
Three years before Stan won the Harvey Koch award, Bette Sussman received it for her many efforts on behalf of Jewish organizations. In nominating Stan, I had even mentioned Bette as an example of his influence. It was at Stan’s home that Bette’s family used to spend Pesach Seder, and so much of her zest for Jewish life had been nurtured at the Sussman’s home. So I mentioned her to demonstrate that he was a major influence on the influencers.
Now Stan and Bette --- looking ahead -- are taking their combined love of the Jewish community to the land of Israel. They deserve to bask in the glow of the greatest effort to build Jewish community of our time. We wish them all manner of Nachas, and look forward to seeing them there.
Congregation Emek Beracha 4102 El Camino Real Palo Alto, CA 94306
