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By ANDREA JACOBS, Intermountain Jewish News (Colorado)
Published October 22, 2010
Sue Parker Gerson gestures toward “the cave” — her office — and suggests moving to a more inviting setting at a nearby conference table at CAJE.
But the second this interview concludes, this hospitable area will disappear under books, binders and nametags in preparation for the first day of school at the Florence Melton
Adult Mini-School.
“Yes, school starts tomorrow,” says Parker Gerson, supervisor of the Colorado branch of the international program and regional director of the North American office.
Like principals and teachers everywhere, that monumental “first day” gripped her in a state of anticipatory excitement and the awareness of time’s acceleration — especially this year.
“It’s been crazy,” she tells the INTERMOUNTAIN JEWISHNEWS. “Officially, on paper, I put in 50 hours a week directing Melton: 30 hours for the local school, and 20 working for the North American office.”
But for Parker Gerson, the wife of Rodef Shalom’s Rabbi Bernard Gerson and rebbbetzin of the Conservative congregation, the weight of responsibility already divides her hours like an ever-shrinking pie.
But where others might spin out of control, she relied on the perfect spiritual antidote to chaos — the serenity of her autumnal sukkah.
“The way the holidays fell this year, preparing for school was nuttier and calmer at the same time,” Parker Gerson explains.
“The chagim fell in the middle of the week. I knew six months ago there was no way we could start classes until October.
“On the one hand, I had these compressed work weeks that were two-and-a-half days long where I had 50 hours of stuff to do for Melton.
On the other hand, I spent a lot of time in my sukkah, and it was excellent. Sukkot is my favorite holiday.”
Parker Gerson, who in no way considers herself a very important person, eagerly defends that position without a trace of false modesty.
“I was thinking about that this morning, and I thought, ‘Anybody else could be sitting in front of you right now,’” she says. “There are so many people who are doing such amazing things in this community that I feel a little strange being singled out.
“But if I can make people think more about Jewish education, I’m OK with it.”
Melton is a cherished priority for Parker Gerson, who started teaching at the mini-school in 1999, accepted the local directorship in 2001 and became regional director two years ago.
Graduates of the intensive educational program speak about their Melton experiences in tones bordering on elation.
“It’s a drug,” she says. “I think that receiving a Jewish education as an adult makes people feel competent in a way that they didn’t feel before.”
Parker Gerson says that while synagogues and other educational institutions might provide “one topic for five weeks,” Melton offers a two-year and post-graduate program that enables students to study “60 weeks and get it all. It’s so comprehensive.”
Despite her obvious favoritism, she inserts a sincere qualification.
“I’m trying to be careful because I don’t want our school to sound superior to others,” says Parker Gerson, adding that Denver lacks the cutthroat educational competitiveness that she sometimes observes in other areas of the region.
“What I tell people is that if you’re studying Torah someplace else, that’s excellent. I’m happy when you study Torah with me, but if you’re studying anywhere, that’s good.
“To me, the people who are most connected to Melton are the ones who not only take advantage of the mini-school but also take classes at their synagogue or through The Jewish Experience or attend Limmud seminars. They do everything.
“Every Jewish opportunity is a portal, and once you go through that portal, all of a sudden you’re in a palace where you have all these rooms and resources.”
Although Parker Gerson says that Melton’s pluralistic orientation has not influenced her personal practice, which remains Conservative, she’s now considerably more openminded to all forms of Judaism.
“Not being bound by only one religious perspective is one of Melton’s goals. It’s not even a goal, it’s one of the tenets.
“If a student can substantiate his or her viewpoint from the text, that view is as valid as Rashi’s,” she says. “Students are part of the conversation.”
Jewish education always sang in Sue Parker’s Conservative (“that’s Conservative with a capital C”) blood.
Born in New Jersey, she received a BA in history and Judaic studies from Binghamton University in upstate NY and an MA in Jewish history from JTS.
While she studied almost around the clock, she accepted low-salaried part-time jobs in a synagogue Hebrew school instructing third-graders and mainstream Hebrew at college for both mainstream and special needs students.
She also was a Bar and Bat Mitzvah tutor, a voluntary position she happily continues at Rodef Shalom “because the kids are so incredible.”
It was during her first year at JTS, held in Israel, that she met the man she lovingly calls Bernie.
“That’s the only year since high school that I was only studying and not teaching,” she qualifies.
The blessing of spare time coincided with meeting her bashert.
Prodded to explain how she knew it was love, Parker Gerson emits a series of surprised wows — two, to be exact.
“This is going to sound overthought,” she says after a reflective moment, “but I think it was because I knew I was set. I was done.
I didn’t have to worry about who I was going to be with anymore. I was relieved.
“Bernie and I were 23. We started dating two months after we met and became engaged four months after that — which is the bravest thing I’ve ever done because I said yes before my mother ever met Bernie.”
Spontaneous, prolonged laughter follows the admission. Parker Gerson’s father and Rabbi Gerson’s parents all flew to Israel to give their blessings to the young couple.
“My mom did not like traveling,” she explains, “but our rabbi was leading a synagogue mission to Israel. So she gave him her proxy. He had to tell her whether he approved when he got home.
“And what’s funny is that the rabbi approved so much that Bernie was his rabbinic intern for a year in school.”
The couple, who married in 1988 and moved to Denver in 1993, when Rabbi Gerson was hired as spiritual leader of Rodef Shalom, have two children. Elliot, 18, is attending Lev Hatorah Yeshiva in Israel for a year, and Jennie, 16, is a junior at the Denver Jewish Day School.
The roles defining Parker Gerson — wife, mother, rebbetzin, Melton director, educator— evoke images of colorful scarves effortlessly emerging from a magician’s top hat.
But establishing priorities, not magic, is what integrates the multiple segments of her life into an enviable whole.
It’s a lesson she learned when her children were much younger “and we had all these commitments and felt we had to say ‘yes’ to everything,” Parker Gerson elucidates.
“There was this week that we had a babysitter one night, and a babysitter the next. The third night came, and one of my kids said with this hang dog expression, ‘Mommy, who’s babysitting for us tonight?’”
The pang still resonates.
“That was a ‘duh’ moment. I canceled my plans — and it was easy to make that decision. There was nothing more important than being at home.”
The Gersons quickly established a new family rule: No babysitters more than two nights in a row.
“There is a point where you know in the moment that this is the most important thing you should be doing,” Parker Gerson says. “You can’t worry about anything else. You carve out the limits.”
She has never forgotten something Rabbi Wayne Dosick said when he spoke at Rodef several years ago: “Marriage is never 50-50. It’s 80-20 one week and 20-80 the next.
“Take this first week of Melton classes,” she says. “I’m going to be spending more than 50% on this because that’s what it takes to make it successful.”
During infrequent lulls in her schedule, Parker Gerson consciously creates opportunities to watch Jennie’s games or, like this past summer, visit the Parade of Homes with her daughter.
“It was the funnest thing ever,” she says, her features lighting up like a Chanukah menorah in full bloom. “We mapped out a course. We saw all these dream homes. We sat on the porch of a dream home and had a girl chat.
“I’m also very lucky that I have a the support of a husband who has even more of a time crunch with all the things he does,” Parker Gerson adds, “like leading a congregation, teaching at DJDS, sitting on xyz boards. He understands.”
The IJN asks Parker Gerson, who possesses an insightful mind that inspires long after the textbooks shut and classrooms empty, whether she feels G-d has guided her steps in life.
A smile precedes her response.
“There’s the kishke answer and the intellectual answer,” she says with unabashed honesty. “So I’ll do them in reverse order.
“The intellectual answer is that G-d gives human beings free will. There’s always an interplay between what happens because people make it happen, and what happens because G-d decided it’s going to happen.
“The kishke answer” — her smile widens — “is, ‘of course.’ ”
In true Melton style, she utilizes the text of her own life to support her theory.
“Thirty years ago,” Parker Gerson says, “I thought I was going to be a lawyer. And five years after that I thought I was going to be a professor. Decisions led to more decisions.
“Bernie and I were just 23 when we got married, but I already knew that I wanted a career that I could do part time because I wanted a family.”
Two years ago, she went full time plus at Melton.
“The fact that this opportunity came exactly when my son got his driver’s license...”
And the connection between a driver’s license and divine intervention is...?
“When you are absolved of the responsibility of a carpool, your life changes,” she says matter-of-factly.
“As regional director, I have to travel a lot. That would have been impossible before.
“So how could that be a coincidence?
“If I had been presented with this opportunity a year earlier, I would have had to decline. There was no way to manage all that and not neglect someone. Now it’s much
easier.
“So in terms of everything falling into place when it did, I absolutely believe that G-d had something to do with it.”
The textbooks shut, the classroom empties.
But the lesson of Sue Parker Gerson lingers.
The student finds herself craving more.
This is Jewish education at its best — and verification that a very important person has just left the room.
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