One
of my teachers from rabbinical school died this past June. Rabbi
Bernard Zlotowitz was an admired and beloved and figure at the
Academy for Jewish Religion when I was a student there. But I am
also tempted to call him an iconic figure and in doing so, I am aware
that I am treading on what is, in Judaism, forbidden ground. I want
to spend a few minutes tonight talking to you about this special man
from whom I was privileged to learn and whose death taught me yet one
more important lesson about how we live.
If
I am tempted to call Rabbi Zlotowitz admired, beloved and iconic, let
me begin by distinguishing among those qualities. Rabbi Zlotowitz
was admired for the depth and breadth of his academic achievement and
his experience as a rabbi. I am almost tempted to call him rabbis,
because he actually held ordination both as an Orthodox and as a
Reform rabbi. The Orthodox ordination reflected his family heritage;
indeed his brother is one of the world's leading publishers of
Orthodox books. But the Reform ordination reflected his true
disposition – someone who combined a deep, abiding faith in God
with a love of critical scholarship. He earned a Master's degree
from Columbia University, and a doctorate from Hebrew Union College.
He had broad experience both as pulpit rabbi and hospital chaplain
and as a leader in the Reform Movement. Each of his many students
cherished the stories he would tell us and the wisdom he would share
with us from so broad and varied a career.
But
if Rabbi Zlotowitz was admired for his achievement, he was beloved
for his kindness, his humility and his simple faith. Two stories
will illustrate this point. I was taking his class in biblical
historiography my first winter at AJR. For some time, an ice storm
was crusting over everything with an increasingly thick and slick
coating. The administration decided to cancel afternoon classes
right in the middle of Rabbi Zlotowitz's class. The students were
terribly nervous about how we would get home, and for many of us that
worry took in our 80-year-old teacher who walked slowly and with a
cane. “Do not worry,” he reassured us in that beautiful,
aristocratic voice of his. “God takes care of those who are
engaged in His holy work.” It was such a simple and sincere
confession of faith from a man whom I had already grown to respect
for his knowledge and wisdom that it gave me pause. From his example
I drew the lesson that one of the most important things a rabbi does
is model faith and give his congregants permission to believe.
The
other story touches – however lightly – on all of you. It was a
little more than a year ago and I had gone to visit Rabbi Zlotowitz
for a project I was working on for my school. By this time he had
grown very old indeed. I arrived at his apartment around eleven in
the morning, but he was still in bed. His wife of more than sixty
years roused him and he greeted me in his bathrobe. He wasn't
wearing his glasses and he had a dazed and perplexed look on his
face. I wondered how awake and aware he was. But he asked me about
my rabbinate and I told him that I had a congregation in Wallingford
Connecticut that was very small but which I loved very much. Without
a moment of hesitation he responded zeh ha-katan, gadol y'heyeh.
Would that I, almost forty years his junior and supposedly in full
possession of my faculties were ever that sharp, for it took me
several moments to place his words. They were from the ceremony of
brit milah – of ritual circumcision: this one is small,
but some day he will be great. May that blessing come true
speedily and in our days.
But
if Rabbi Zlotowitz was admired for his many achievements and beloved
for his kindness and humility, there was also much in him that made
him iconic. Rabbinical students of all people are very susceptible
to idolatry. They are surrounded by great minds and great hearts to
which they seek attachment. If you close your eyes and try to
conjure up the picture of a beloved teacher, the image you will form
will bear a striking resemblance to Rabbi Zlotowitz during my student
days. He was a small man who often wore a light colored suit with a
tastefully contrasting sweater-vest, a neatly starched shirt and a
perfectly knotted bow tie. Clean shaven among so many bearded
teachers and students, bare headed among all those kippah covered
crowns, Rabbi Zlotowitz stood out as model of the Reform rabbi of an
older generation. And then there was the voice – slow,
aristocratic - “Mr. Alpert,” he would greet me, “how are
things in Connec -ti- cut?” Now couple that bearing with his
extraordinary resume and his extraordinary kindness, and you have a
figure that I think can honestly be called iconic.
For
most of us, greatness seems to pass our way only rarely: the star
athlete, the adored celebrity, the rising politician, the noted
author, perhaps they brush into our lives once in a blue moon. My
wife once was in the same swimming pool with the actress Julianne
Moore. My father, as a boy, once sold a newspaper to Thomas Dewey
who famously lost the presidency to Harry Truman. And I once played
a round of golf with the Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte. When such
moments come, we try, hopefully discretely, to find some kind of
connection between ourselves and that greatness. So it was with
Rabbi Zlotowitz. So many of my fellow students crowded around him
admiringly. So many sought and indeed achieved close relationships
with him for the joy of being in his presence and the pride of
telling others that they were his student. They would speak of
their relationship with him as a point of distinction and merit in
their own lives and careers.
I
have to admit that I felt a certain envy toward these students and
their special relationships with this great man. But I felt like I
had arrived too late at the party. Rabbi Zlotowitz was well
surrounded by disciples by the time I took my first class with him.
There was no room for another. And while I did share a pride in
being taught by him and having him know my name, I never confused
that acquaintanceship with true intimacy.
There
was, however, one student with whom Rabbi Zlotowitz shared a special
closeness. Peg Kershenbaum was a few years ahead of me in school.
In fact, Peg was the first AJR student I would meet. I met her in
the cafeteria just before I climbed the stairs for my admissions
interview. She told me she was there over the summer because she was
working on a project with one of her teachers. In time I learned
more details about that project.
What
she was working on was a dictionary that she was writing with Rabbi
Zlotowitz. It was to be a dictionary of the Septuagint which is the
Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures. The name Septuagint –
which means 70 – comes from the legend that seventy rabbis worked
independently on a translation of the Torah from Hebrew to Greek and
miraculously each came up with an identical work, word-for-word. The
dictionary was to be in English, Hebrew and Greek. It was a mammoth
undertaking, one on which Peg and Rabbi Zlotowitz labored throughout
her rabbinic studies and beyond. During that visit I paid to Rabbi
Zlotowitz a year or so ago, I learned that he and Peg were still
working on it – now more than a decade on.
About
a month after Rabbi Zlotowitz died, Peg and I were chatting about
this-and-that when she commented, quite matter-of-factly, that she
had no idea what she was going to do with the dictionary. She didn't
have the heart to throw it out, she said, but as it ran to thousands
of pages, it was taking up quite a bit of space in her house. I was
dumbfounded. I had been hearing about this dictionary for so long,
it had achieved epic standing in my imagination and here she was
thinking of actually throwing it away? How could she?
She
explained that all those thousands of pages were hand written, and
that she had neither the time nor the inclination to type up and
organize and edit them into a workable form. To the suggestion that
someone else finish the work she thought it both highly unlikely and
unmanageable; the insights contained in it could only be gleaned by
someone whose approach and understanding encompassed that of Rabbi
Zlotowitz and there was no one to do that. Besides, who would want
such a dictionary anyway. She spoke all this as if she were telling
me about today's weather – casually, easily, without a hint of
regret or wistfulness.
“But the work!,” I went on, still incredulous. “What did you do it all for?” I asked.
“I
did it,” she said, in that same, even, matter-of-fact tone, “to
keep him alive. It gave him something to occupy his mind, something
to live for.”
Think
about that for a moment. All those years. All those hours. All
those thousands upon thousands of pages of work done for no other
reason then love.
Peg
was so calm as she explained it all, I felt I needed to hide my own
emotions. But I was floored. For so long I had thought what a great
and wonderful man Rabbi Zlotowitz was and how privileged were all
those who were close to him. Never once did it occur to me that this
classmate of mine was such a great and wonderful soul in her own
right and how privileged I was to be close to her.
It
is easy, I believe, to seek greatness off in the distance; to believe
that wealth or fame or some unique skill conveys others to some realm
that we can only touch with our admiration. This, of course, is
idolatry, and it is a grave sin. It is a grave sin because it
confounds our ability to distinguish between excellence and
transcendence – between that which may be the finest within the
human realm, but which never does, and never can, cross the threshold
of the divine. And it is a grave sin because it blinds us to the
greatness and the goodness that is lived by those who surround us,
and which is always within our grasp if we dare allow our love and
our commitment and our courage to move us that far.
From
having spent five hours with him, I can tell you that off of the
pitching mound, Andy Pettitte struck me as a humble, unassuming and
pretty ordinary guy, dealing with the same struggles that all of us
face – how to best care for our loved ones, how to honor the
blessings that sustain us. Under what is still a tall and hard body,
there may well be a great soul; and if so, it is the same kind of
greatness that inhabits the souls of so many in this room tonight. I
look around and I am in awe of so many of you for your kindness, for
your wisdom, for your willingness to sacrifice for others with no
expectation of reward or even acknowledgment. I feel in my heart
the words of our father Jacob – mah norah ha-makom ha-zeh –
how awesome is this place – achein yesh Adonai ba-makom ha-zeh
v'anochi lo yadati – surely God is in this place and I did not
know.
Rabbi
Zlotowitz used to tell jokes during class. Here is one of my
favorites. A fund raiser for the local Jewish Federation comes to
the wealthy business owner, Mr. Goldstein, seeking a donation.
Goldstein is incensed. “What on earth made you think I was
Jewish!” he thunders at the fund raiser. “I am an Episcopalian,”
he says. “I come from a long line of Episcopalians! My father is
an Episcopalian! My grandfather, alav ha-shalom was
Episcopalian . . .”
For
Rabbi Bernard Zlotowitz, alav ha-shalom, I hope my words
tonight do honor to the great blessing it was to be your student.
For my friend, Rabbi Peg Kershenbaum, how exalted is our Lord that He
would send one great soul to love and sustain and care for another.
For the great and good souls who sustain me here in this
congregation, know that you are all in my prayers for a g'mar
khatimah tovah – a sealing for goodness in this new year, for
my sake as well as yours. And for the rest of us, may the cleansing
we seek on this most holy of days open our eyes to the goodness, the
greatness, the blessing that is right there before us.
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