Nothing Gold Can Stay

Rabbi Gerald Wolpe died this week at age 81.  In the Jewish Daily Forward, Stephen Fried, adjunct professor at
Columbia
University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and the author of “The New Rabbi,” has this appreciation:

American Jews lost one of our greatest sermonizers, one of our most fascinating and challenging pulpit leaders, and a renaissance rabbi whose dramatic life yielded several distinct acts, each with its own powerful teaching moments.

In my hometown of
Harrisburg
,
Pa., they still talk about the inspirational speech he gave during the Six Day War from the back of a flatbed truck in the Jewish community center’s parking lot . . . .  But his career was really made at
Har
Zion
Temple in
Philadelphia, once the mothership of the Conservative movement in
America, which he led through its controversial process of reinvention in the early 1970s. With the power of his voice, and his canny sense of what he called “the retail business of religion,” he showed once urban Har Zion . . . how to create a new synagogue and a new sensibility in the suburbs. . . .

But then . . . Wolpe’s formidable wife, Elaine, the first woman ever called to the bimah at Har Zion, suffered a stroke that nearly killed her. And in nursing her back to health, Wolpe became a different rabbi, his voice suddenly devoted to exploring more personal themes of caregiving, community and faith in the face of family adversity. The personal saga of “Rabbi and Elaine,” as they were called, became an ongoing sermon that touched not only Jews in
Philadelphia, but people of all faiths around the world . . . .

And his sermons were also informed by the intellectual and emotional exploits of his four sons, who grew up to be, in chronological order, a medical researcher, a bioethicist and two rabbis. . . .

I just got back from Wolpe’s funeral at Har Zion, where all four of his sons spoke eloquently about their father and his many intellectual, emotional and spiritual gifts. There was a lot of humor. (His eldest son recalled asking as a child what his dad’s sermon topic would be. “Judaism,” he was told. But what about Judaism, he asked. “I’m for it,” the young rabbi answered, with a cherubic grin.) There were a lot of tears — a lot of tears. . . .

We can only record a small but memorable instance of his gracious humor, on the occasion of his first visit to
Sinai
Temple in
Los Angeles, after his son David became its senior rabbi and began to draw a thousand people to services each Shabbat morning with his own remarkable sermons.  Gerald Wolpe confided to the Sinai congregation that he had been nervous about agreeing to speak at his son’s shul — afraid he might not measure up — but that he had overcome his fears when he said to himself:  “What’s the worst they can say?  His son is better?”

Bryan Schwartzman’s article in The Jewish Exponent is here; the Jewish Journal obituary is here; the JTA obituary is here – all of them worth reading in their entirety.  Donations may be made to
Har
Zion
Temple,
1500 Hagys Ford Rd.,
Penn Valley,
Pa.
19072, and to
Sinai
Temple,
10400 Wilshire Blvd.,
Los Angeles,
CA
90024.  His memory is a blessing.