In each issue of the newsletter, we will publish several memorials from our Book of Memories in a column called “Of Blessed Memory.” Rabbi Kelman conceived of the Netivot Shalom Members Memorial Book in 2017 as a way to honor the memory of our deceased congregants. Diane Bernbaum writes the stories and Lee Bearson designs the pages. The book is accessible on our website under the Lifecycle tab and the actual book, now in 2 volumes, is on an adjustable shelf made by John Curl in the anteroom to the main sanctuary.
May their memories continue to bless our congregation.
Seymour Kessler
Shalom ben Meir Ze’ev v’Golda Malka
September 3, 1928 / 18 Elul 5688 -January 7, 2019 / 2 Shvat 5779
Seymour was born in Queens to immigrant parents from Eastern Europe. He was raised in the Bronx and attended the Bronx High School of Science. Seymour joined the Bnei Akiva Zionist youth movement and spent a year in a hakhshara learning agriculture. It was as a young Zionist that he met his wife Hilda, his Yael. They day after their engagement, the army sent Seymour overseas to Germany for two years. While there he blew shofar on Rosh HaShana for a community of Holocaust survivors unable to do so themselves. Hilda and Seymour married upon his return to the States in 1953. Their two children, Chanan and Zev, were born while Seymour went to school, graduating for City College and then getting his PhD in behavioral genetics from Columbia University.
In 1965, Seymour accepted a Post-Doc at Stanford University and then worked at the VA Hospital with Vietnam Vets with PTSD. He then went on to earn his second PhD from the Wright Institute in Psychology. Seymour was appointed to lead the newly created genetic counseling program at U.C. Berkeley. He authored the field’s foundational textbook and trained the first generation of genetic counselors, teaching that genetic counselors needed to appreciate the psychological dimension of their work and should aim to empower people to make their own informed choices.
With Hilda, Seymour co-founded Bridges to Israel—Berkeley, traveling to Israel to meet policy experts and inviting them to speak in Berkeley and helping to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to assist victims of terror. Among Seymour’s many diverse passions were listening to classical music, collecting art, studying Torah, traveling and writing a weekly newsletter about Israel.
Seymour is survived by his sons Chanan and Zev, five grandchildren and one great-grand-child.
Toby Gidal
Toba Faiga bat Yehezkel Hacohen v’Leah
July 5, 1937 / 26 Tamuz 5697 – March 17, 2024 / 7 Adar II 5784
Toby Aronstein was born in Washington D.C. where her physician father and homemaker mother were descendants of immigrants from Latvia and Ukraine. She received both her BA in Philosophy and her MA in Mathematics at the University of Michigan. Toby moved to Berkeley in 1961 to begin her career in applied mathematics, working as a computer programmer at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. It was in the particle physics group she met George Gidal whom she married in 1962. Shortly after they were married, they lived and worked in Italy for a year, and a few years later in Israel. Together Toby and George raised their two sons, Eric and Marc.
Toby earned an MBA from UC Berkeley in financial accounting. She went on to work in the treasury department at Bank of America where she came up with a mathematical equation for calculating interest rates, as a budget planner at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and in retirement as a private bookkeeper, especially for non-profit clients. Toby’s sense of social justice led her to work in math education in the Oakland Schools with Project Seed, providing STEM learning for high school students, especially girls, from diverse communities. Toby loved poetry, writing, reading, classical music, hiking, camping, skiing, backpacking, rock climbing and Shakespeare. Toby was always curious and spiritually hungry, spending time at Spirit Rock and Tassajara, writing and practicing meditation.
Toby and George were founders of Netivot Shalom, hosting the weekday minyan in the living room of their home, and the Yom Kippur break-the-fast. Toby was the first treasurer of the Board, serving in that position more than once. She was later Membership Chair, a founder of the Rosh Chodesh group and in the early days of the shul would stop daily at the downtown post office to retrieve the synagogue’s mail. Even when she was confined to a wheelchair, Toby attended weekly Shabbat services.
Toby is survived by her son Eric, his wife, Jackie, and their children Carlotta, Sylvia, and Genevieve, and her son Marc and his wife Jessica, and their children Noa and Max.