By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — Tribute was paid to the life of Roberta Dosick on Friday, Dec. 30, by three of this area’s most senior rabbis, including her son, Rabbi Wayne Dosick, leader of the Elijah Minyan of Carlsbad, California.
Funeral services for the 89-year-old Roberta Dosick were co-conducted at Tifereth Israel Synagogue by host Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal and by Rabbi Martin S. Lawson of Temple Emanu-El. Roberta Dosick had been a member of both those congregations, which were located close to her home in the San Carlos neighborhood of San Diego, and also was a member of the congregations that her son had led over the years: Congregation Beth El, Congregation Beth Am and the Elijah Minyan.
Born in 1922, she lived through a Chanukah celebration on Tuesday evening, Dec. 27, at which her great-granddaughter Jennifer had shown her how to use an iPod. An hour after the get-together concluded, Roberta was stricken, prompting her rabbi son to comment that even in dying, his mother had done it her way.
Rabbis Rosenthal and Lawson led mourners in the traditional prayers including the 23rd Psalm, Eshet Chayil (A Woman of Valor), El Moleh Rachamim, and the recitation of kaddish, and Rabbi Dosick gave the eulogy, often quoting his sister Karen Grinfeld, who sat with other family members in the first row near the simple pine casket in which their mother’s body reposed.
Born Roberta Estelle Frank, their mother was “small of physical stature” but a “giant player on the stage of life,” Rabbi Dosick said. One of her favorite meditations from the old Silverman prayer book requests that God “make me worthy to do Thy will with a perfect heart” and that “I may be worthy to do good deeds in Thy sight.”
It was a meditation that complemented a textbook that had impressed itself on her from Elementary School titled What Is The Right Thing To Do? Rabbi Dosick said. “A militant rationalist,” his mother was a child of the Depression, who was careful what she spent, and was a devotee of the public library system. She wholehearted agreed with commentator/ comedian Sam Levenson who opined that for immigrants libraries were the “passport to American society.”
Yet, Roberta Dosick was not an immigrant. The Frank family was long rooted in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was reared. Her great-grandparents were buried in the Jewish cemetery there. The family were long time members of Congregation B’nai El, a classic Reform congregation at which the rabbi was called “Doctor” and America was considered to be the “new Jerusalem.” Zionism in that congregation was considered unnecessary.
For more than 50 years, she was married to Hyman Dosick, who asked a friend to introduce him to the shortest girl he knew, so whoever she was, she would be of similar height. They moved to Chicago, where he operated a supermarket and where Roberta was introduced to Hyman’s Orthodox shul, where Yiddish primarily was spoken by the congregants. She became a supporter of Israel.
Had she been born later, she might have become a rabbi herself, but in roles traditionally carved out for women in the 1940s through the 1960s, she found her place as a supporter of libraries, synagogues, and schools (she was PTA president at the elementary and high schools that Rabbi Dosick attended.) She loved books, and for 36 years, 10 months a year, organized for the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women book presentations which gave particular emphasis to authors and themes that were Jewish. The Yiddish actress Molly Picon and author Isaac Bashevis Singer were particular favorites.
Another of her affiliations was the local Women’s Auxiliary of the Jewish War Veterans. Though she was not a veteran herself, she appreciated the important contribution veterans had made to the United Statees.
Roberta Dosick had some favorite phrases like “life is a bowl of cherries” and “goody, goody gumdrops,” and was in her own way a feminist. After moving to San Diego, she joined Congregation Beth Tefilah, and persuaded the late Rabbi Samuel Penner, who leaned toward traditionalism, to let her have an aliyah — the first woman in that Conservative congregation to be called to the Torah. Her logic was impeccable, Rabbi Dosick told the mourners. Here she had been coming to services regularly all her life, knew Torah, and yet she was being denied an honor extended to young boys as they became b’nai mitzvah.
As knowledgeable as she was though, she never claimed special merit. When people would ask her and Hyman questions about Judaism because their son was a rabbi, she replied; “We paid for his education, we didn’t get it.”
Roberta Dosick was famed among the friends of Wayne’s and Karen’s as the mother who made wonderful chocolate cake, resulting in the Dosick home being a hangout for their friends. She never drove a car, instead taking buses to transport her children to synagogue, libraries, and museums. When life dealt little blows to the family, she sympathized with her children, then urged them to dust themselves off and get on with life.
The theatre was a passion for her that was almost as great as books. Roberta Dosick was a devotee of the Old Globe, the San Diego Rep, the La Jolla Playhouse, North Coast Rep. and the Cygnet Theatre. Invariably, said the rabbi, when asked what she wanted to do for her birthday, she’d reply, “Go to a play.” At home, her television viewing centered on KPBS and UCSD’s educational channel.
“She grew in experience and wisdom until the end of her life,” Rabbi Dosick said. Following the service, her casket was wheeled to a waiting hearse for burial services at the Home of Peace Cemetery.
*
Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com