What is your Hebrew name? Yosef ben Shmuel

I believe I was named for my maternal great grandfather who I never met.

What is your father’s full name? Sydney Huber

Where was he born? St. Louis, MIssouri

What was your mother’s maiden name? Newman, Marian Newman

Where was she born? St. Louis, Missouri

Grandparents on my maternal side were Russia, Odessa area. My paternal side, my grandmother was from Budapest which was in those days in the Austro-Hungarian, well

Austro-Hungarian Empire is the way they listed it. My grandfather was born in a town, Harry Huber was born in a town (we found this out) it is now Rumania but in those days was just listed on the papers when he came to America as Austro-Hungarian Empire.

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I believe 1904, I think, to the best of memory.

They were married in 1947. They were married in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 23^rd.

Yes, I don’t know if this is apocryphal, but according to family legend, my grandfather came, arrived on the boat on they said July 4^th and he was convinced there was a war going on because of the fireworks and rockets. They were all very, very upset until they calmed them down and explained to them it was not a war and you can safely get off the boat. That is funny. It’s a favorite story.

When I was growing up? Yes. Well my parents had moved to their first home. They lived in an apartment. I’m the youngest of two brothers. When I was born, I was born on 8552 Everett Avenue in a St. Louis suburb which was different. The Jewish community was beginning to move to the suburbs.

The suburb, Richmond Heights, Missouri, it’s in St. Louis County. We moved to another home when I was older but I was born there.

My father, both my parents are living. My father claims to be retired but it doesn’t mean much. 2

He’s always been self employed, Huber Realty, which involved every aspect, goodness gracious, 50 years, 60 years of the real estate business; buying and selling homes, he was a builder, commercial real estate in St. Louis especially what you’d think of as strip malls that sort of thing, and an investor. Today he manages his investments. He’s 84 but I think he still goes into an office a couple of hours a day. I guess you call that semi-retired. He still has a partner. Nobody has taken over. It still exists. My mother, I should mention this, was a very successful real estate agent. When my mother was 55 she was stricken with a very, very serious auto-immune, neurological, not psychiatric, but a neurological disorder which has basically made her severely disabled for the past 26 years. My father has always taken care of her. She’s able to walk and things like that. It’s a long story. Before that she was a remarkably successful real estate agent. When I was in college she decided to get her license and quote "go to work." She became very successful at that for a period of time but then she got ill. Too bad.

I know you lost your brother recently. Yes my brother passed away. You had one older brother? An older brother, Bruce, who passed away June 30, 2006.

We were in the Clayton, Missouri School District, a very wonderful school district up till fourth grade, McMorrow Elementary School. Then we moved to Creve Coeur, Missouri, which is a suburb that a lot of Jewish families moved to. My parents built a home and moved to the suburbs in the early 1960’s, actually 1961. They still live in that house and that’s where I went to school. They were new schools. I went to Spoede Elementary School, continued on through religious schools graduating from Portland Watkins High School in 1970.

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History and English, nothing’s changed really.

I was on the basketball team. Were you, wow. I played left guard and I loved basketball. I played that through my junior year of high school. That was a big extra,

sports. I was very active in my temple youth group.

That was the next question I was going to ask you. Your Jewish activities were your temple youth group? Temple youth group, I was extremely active, very active. That was a big part of my life, friendships, activities, just about every weekend. Did you go to a camp? I wasn’t a camp goer, interestingly. That’s something that a lot of people did, I must say.. I went on retreats and conventions and things like that but during the summers I basically worked. My children did, but I just wasn’t a camp kid myself.

Well I’ll tell you an interesting …, you will crack up at this. It was a good job. I worked in a cemetery. I got a good tan, worked outside. I did that, drove a forklift, that was a good paying job, grocery store checkout, did all that sort of thing, kid jobs.

Where did you attend college? The University of Michigan. Graduate School? I graduated in three years from Michigan in an accelerated program as an undergrad. I was able to do that because of some credits I got in high school. I graduated a year early but then I went directly to Rabbinic School. It was a five-year program and I was ordained in 1978. You went, I assume to HUC in Cincinnati? Yes. Everybody spends their first year in Jerusalem.

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There was never a question in my mind that I wanted to be at the Cincinnati school. I would not have done well, I would have done well but I would have been uncomfortable in either LA or New York, very much so. That was what I did.

Bachelor of Arts, I graduated Summa Cum Laude. I was in the Honors College there. In those days, well it was rather unique among undergraduate programs, I really majored in Biblical Studies. It was under the department of Ancient Near Eastern Languages and Literature but some of the greatest scholars of biblical scholarship worked at the University of Michigan. That’s one of the reasons I went there, Biblical Hebrew, Acadian and the ancient languages of the Ancient Near East, Biblical Archaeology, Biblical History. I also had a major in Philosophy but my true department, what I really went there for, was Biblical Hebrew.

You know, it’s interesting, by the time I left, those were the years in the early 70’s when many (of course now they have a whole program and department, things like that) but you could major, you could have a religion major but it was across the departmental major. I remember by the time I left they had brought in a professor of Jewish History, and so forth and so on but they always had Hebrew and they always had Biblical History and they always had in the History Department many Jewish History courses and I took a lot of that. I don’t think technically, (I may be wrong about this) when I was an undergraduate they didn’t have a Center for Jewish Studies per se. That probably came about, as it did most places, Ohio State and everywhere, by the mid 70’s. One of my favorite professors was Judah Reinhart. He’s now the President of Brandeis. We’re dear friends.

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I was a very close student to him. He started out at Michigan in the History Department teaching Jewish History courses. You know my son teaches at Brandeis. He should tell you Judah Reinhart you are his Rabbi. I was his student. You were Jeff’s Rabbi.

I got a Masters in Hebrew Letters and Literature which is the Masters Degree that you earn and then Rabbinic Ordination which requires the writing of a thesis, which I did.

What drew you to Jewish Studies? Jewish Studies or wanting to be a Rabbi? Both.

Well first of all, in terms of, as an undergraduate you mean? Yes. As an undergraduate, in high school I wanted to be a Rabbi since I was probably about 16 years old. I was different, I know, I found this out. I don’t remember anybody in my Rabbinic School class, most of them decided I think I’ll be a Rabbi in college or something like that. I never really have thought about ever being anything else. There was just a kind of a click there for me. It felt really good. I was very interested in the academic. During high school I was influenced and communicated with, in St. Louis there’s Washington University, they always had a Professor of Jewish Philosophy there who kind of took me under his wing when I was in high school. I didn’t want to go to Washington University because I wanted to leave St. Louis for my undergraduate degree. It’s a wonderful school and I did get in but I didn’t want to go there so I chose to go to Ann Arbor. Steven Scwarzschild, may he rest in peace, passed away in the late 80’s actually 1989, was a German Jewish refugee who was a brilliant philosopher and I studied with him as a high school student.

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I was very interested in Jewish philosophy, in biblical studies, especially biblical Hebrew which is very different from modern Hebrew. I studied modern Hebrew.

Did you actually take course work that you got credit for as a high school student?

Yes because in those days it was through AP (Advanced Program) exams so I entered Michigan as almost a sophomore. So you did that through the AP. I went to Michigan three years because of that. I was just very interested in it. It was very appealing to me. This was the place where I could do that as an undergraduate.

I got married in 1977 and I’ve been married to the same person since.

How old was I? I guess I was 25.

Marsha, her maiden name was Schoenberg from Cleveland, actually University Heights, Ohio, Cleveland area.

Marsha and I met, Marsha is about four years younger than I am and she was at that time an undergraduate voice major at the Cincinnati Conservatory at the University of Cincinnati, their wonderful music school. She left that world of opera for the world of business, but this isn’t about her. Actually we met, interestingly, I went to hear a lecture from one of my professors at HUC who was speaking at the local University of Cincinnati Hillel Foundation and we met there which has made me always like Hillel. I’m not the first person who said they met their wife at Hillel. Right.

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Marsha is now a bank executive at J. P. Morgan Chase and has been frankly at the same bank or its predecessor bank which was Bank One for all these years. Before that she worked for City Corp. in St. Louis.

My son, Aaron Huber, is 26 and my daughter, Lisa, is 21.

Lisa is a senior and she currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan attending the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She is not in Liberal Arts School and she will graduate this Spring. Aaron is married and has two children and lives in Coral Springs, Florida.

My granddaughter is 2 ½, her legal name is Sarah Adele Huber but she’s called Adele. Everyone calls her Adele, that’s what her parents call her. My grandson’s name is Mordecai Huber. He’s how old? Mordecai is 1 ½.

When did you come to Beth Tikvah? 1983.

How many years have you been here? I’m finishing my 25^th year.

Well I had been a Rabbi for five years. When I think about my career it’s been pretty much how I wanted it to go. I wanted on Ordination to work at a very large temple and have the experience of what is I’ve always thought of as the equivalent of a residency as a Rabbi. In other words you’re Ordained and you have the experience of a bi-weekly congregation but you really don’t know what it means to be a pulpit Rabbi or a congregational Rabbi and I truly was very blessed.

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I thought I would spend only two or three years in St. Louis, not at my home congregation which is United Hebrew but at Temple Israel because of the Senior Rabbi. The Senior Rabbi, may he rest in peace he just passed away in the last couple of years ago, was Alvan Rubin. Alvan Rubin was known as a wonderful Senior Rabbi, actually no ego, divided in letting his assistants (there were three Rabbis at this temple, it was very large, so I worked with two other colleagues). You get a broad range of experience, you work in different areas whether it’s with seniors or kids, Religious school or Hebrew School, Adult Education and all the life cycle rituals and so forth and so on, and in the community, I was able to do all those things. It turned out that the long-time Associate Rabbi who stayed on as an Associate Rabbi for many, many years, 10 years which is very long for an Associate Rabbi, left after I had been there two years so they promoted me to Associate Rabbi. I stayed another three years there which worked out for our family because Marsha was working at City Corp. but also had our first baby and was completing her MBA. She finished up her undergraduate. She shifted over to business and then got her Masters and her MBA from the University of Missouri. It was a great program. City Corp. basically helped her out when she worked there and was able to return there. We had our first child. It just was great. Anyway at the end of five years, Aaron was two, Marsha had her MBA and I was ready to move on. The maximum I ever thought of staying before I had my quote "own pulpit" was five years. It was fine. The Associateship was a very different kind of job than the Assistantship. When I was looking for congregations I specifically limited myself to congregations that were maybe, I was looking at a range of maybe 250 to 300 families, something in that ballpark, because it would be a large enough congregation to have frankly sustainability to be able to do things.

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On the other hand I did not want to serve, I never wanted to serve a congregation, I never wanted to have a congregation that’s a real mega congregation. I know what that kind of rabbinate is like. It’s a different sort of rabbinate and those who want it, that’s wonderful. I knew it wasn’t for me and I was looking, you’re always looking for a good fit. Rabbis and congregations are always a fit thing. I did look at many congregations and several congregations throughout several months and I just felt a very good, I felt a good feeling about Beth Tikvah and I think Beth Tikvah felt good about me and it’s just been a nice click.

Well, it was actually smaller. I came here I had no idea about Beth Tikvah, what it was. Who knew? Nobody knew, that’s the reality. I didn’t come here with an expectation or even care about that. It didn’t matter. It really wasn’t in my ballpark. I knew Beth Tikvah would never be a mega congregation, that’s for sure. I didn’t want a congregation, frankly, that would be in the realm of 800, 900, 1000, basically what I was thinking was 1,000 plus because that’s just a different type of rabbinate. By the way it’s not a matter of work, it’s certainly not that. It is a matter of hours you put in. It’s a matter of what you do during those hours. Anyway that’s a conversation that rabbis always have among themselves. I’ve looked at many, several congregations and this was a very good fit for my family compared to some other places I had looked at, very attractive places. By the way when any Rabbi goes to a congregation it’s always just for a couple of years. You know the congregation is checking you out and you’re checking the congregation out. During those first couple of years that’s what happens. You say okay I’ll sign up for a few more and see how it feels. Then I will tell you something.

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Once you’ve been in a place maybe five to seven years, then you want to think about making longer range commitments. That’s basically I think what happened here, in fact what did happen.

Sure, everything changes in life. On the other hand in many ways this is a very similar congregation to the one I came to and I’m glad of that. There are some fundamentals, I’m talking about the big things. I mean for example the basic philosophy of the congregation, its attitude about Jewish life, its inclusiveness. There have always been certain markers of this congregation. Obviously as a Reform Congregation and by the way the fact that it’s still in the Reform Movement, this congregation has never been a capital R Reform temple but then again I’m not a capital R Reform Rabbi. What do you mean by that? By capital R I mean, by the way it’s very important for this congregation to be a Reform temple because there are certain things that flow from that core philosophy. On the other hand the kind of trauma that other congregations face, for example new traditions coming in, Beth Tikvah really didn’t experience that.

For example, wearing the Kippah, wearing the Talit, I can tell you that at the temple I served in St Louis, Temple Israel, it was heart renderingly painful for them, when Bar Mitzvahs wanted to wear a yarmulke on the pulpit. You’re making a face Rose but I want to tell you it’s absolutely true and there are congregations that go through this. There are people at Temple Israel here in town who don’t like what’s happening. Because it’s not classical Reform? Because it’s not classical Reform. Temple Israel is very much a classical Reform temple. Rabbis wear robes, organs.

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I was raised in a Reform temple. It wasn’t a classical Reform temple in town but it was a standard Reform temple. That was very difficult, very painful for those folks. Beth Tikvah never had that. Beth Tikvah was always the community congregation for the North Side. The community congregation meant that people who came were from 31 flavors of backgrounds. By that I mean kind of secularist, uncomfortable with any religious expression, (there were a bunch of people here like that) people from Reform backgrounds, people raised in Orthodox homes. It was very interesting to me. I found that nice. The other people who don’t want that and are very put off by it. I frankly found that to be nice. Beth Tikvah really hasn’t changed in that regard. It still has everybody from a bazillion different flavors and we all know that. We’ve worked out what I consider to be a community ritual that most of the people seem to be okay with. That’s what you have to do. You don’t let two people determine what everybody else is going to do. Like any congregation we wrestle with these things. Another little thing that we’ll have to deal with, the Reform Movement has a new prayerbook. It still hasn’t been printed. We’re still waiting on it. We’ll see If it fits us, if it does fine, if it doesn’t, we’re not going to feel that we have to have it to be a Reform temple. We might go with some other variety, you know, we’ll see. In terms of that sort of feeling that hasn’t changed. I would say that this congregation has less of a crisis with embracing many, many inter-marrieds than many other congregations do. Many, many converts, this congregation has much less of a trauma with that. It’s always been deeply focused philosophically about things like Social Action, community involvement and by that I mean not just the Jewish community but also In Social Action involving all sorts of good causes in our community. Those sorts of things really haven’t changed.

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In terms of changes, I would say that Beth Tikvah is like any other congregation in America because it reflects the changes that all Reform congregations and frankly all Jewish communities experience, a huge increase in the number of inter-marrieds. There isn’t a Jewish community on the planet that doesn’t inevitably reflect a whole different attitude towards inter-marriage which in my rabbinic career has gone from the more people you know who are intermarried and the more relatives you have who are intermarried, etc., etc., the more of a comfort level it becomes, the less of a scandal it becomes. So this is a huge movement among American Jews. Of course our congregation reflects that. The number of converts in leadership positions is a huge change in American Judaism. It’s very nice. You look at our Board now, I haven’t exactly counted, but there’s a whole slew of people who’ve converted to Judaism on our Board. I think that’s great. I know that people know this temple in town is a place where converts to Judaism feel very welcome, where if you are an interfaith family you’re going to feel very, very comfortable at Beth Tikvah. I know people know that because they call me and tell me that because that’s why they want to talk to me and come in here. Is that a change, sure. That’s a change that, if anybody is honest with you, that every congregation in America, I mean Orthodox, Conservative and Reform has to deal with. You have to deal with it because the rate of intermarriage is so astronomically high.

I do everything a Rabbi does. Every Rabbi has things they like to focus on because they enjoying doing them and they feel they are good at it. Isn’t that what we all do in our lives? Yes. Sure, I try to meet all the needs of my congregants, the vast panoply of things that a Rabbi does.

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I’ve always had a very special interest in Adult and Jewish Education. I love being active in the Religious School. I think that as Rabbi’s go I’m always there in a class. I talked to the fourth graders yesterday and I talked to the, literally the moms and the babies. I taught a Confirmation Class last week. I love being involved in education, probably a lot more. That’s always been something by the way that Beth Tikvah has I think emphasized. The Rabbi should not be apart from the school. I’m very involved in it at all sorts of levels. Our fourth graders had a lovely…, they conducted the Service on Friday night. Because of our demographics I do a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. I do as many Bar/Bat Mitzvahs as colleagues in 1000 plus congregations do because of our demographics. I do far less funerals. I do funerals. I should say this about Beth Tikvah. Beth Tikvah is not a home grown congregation. What I mean by that to contrast it with a lot of congregations that I don’t have to mention because we know them, where just about everybody in the congregation was born in Columbus. Their grandparents belonged to the congregation and their parents and these are generational. By the way that’s less and less true of even those congregations, but Beth Tikvah even more so. This congregation, there are people who, believe it or not, were born and raised in Columbus and we do have some multi-generational families now, but pretty few. Most people in this temple were born and raised elsewhere and have come to Columbus and by the way reflect the city of Columbus in the Metro area that everybody has seen here in the last couple of decades. Of course it’s going to reflect that. I love teaching adult Jewish education. I have always had at least two or three courses that I taught in the course of a year plus the adult education group that I’m involved with just as a participant. That’s on Sunday evenings. Adult Jewish education is, I would say education is, a real big thing for me in addition to all the other things Rabbis do. 14

One of my hopes is to make Jewish education a life long type of thing. By that I mean institutionalize that as opposed to seeing education as a pediatric thing. I mean it’s wonderful, it’s good and it’s important. If there is one thing that I want to particularly push for in the coming years it’s going to be pushing for adult education for parents and trying to reach them and incorporating them so that when their children are in religious school they are also taking classes and learning with their kids, learning in some sort of parallel system.. That would be a great hope for me. Another thing that I want to try to push for (I see the potential here within the congregation) is seeing Beth Tikvah more involved in the greater Jewish community. This has always been an interesting thing for the congregation. Involvement, because of our geography, there are people connected to, there is this consciousness (and by the way it’s still just very much here) between us and them, between the Jews on this side of town and the quote on quote "traditional Jewish community." By traditional I don’t mean the "frum," pious or Orthodox Jewish community, just where Jews are traditionally settled and patterns of geography in Bexley and the corridors out to Reynoldsburg and North East to New Albany, etc. I think that we can do more and I want to try to do more and combine it with adult Jewish education. Let me give you an example. I’m going to propose that I will teach classes that will be publicized throughout the Jewish community. I am going to do that next month for unaffiliated Jews. I’m teaching a class called `Tastes of Judaism’ If you’re a temple member you’re not allowed to take it. It’s going to be free. We’re going to advertise it in the Dispatch and it’s for just people who are unaffiliated to get a taste of Judaism. Sounds like a great idea. We’ll see how this goes.

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There are lots of unaffiliated Jews out there, we all know that. So I’m going to try to do some more things that way to get the congregation more hooked up in positive ways with bigger things going on in our metro area. I’m going to try to break down the barriers and I think I can have a role there. One of the things I’m doing I should tell you in addition to `A Taste of Judaism’ is I’ve curried some new bonds with the, it’s called something different now but everybody knows it as the Jewish Community Relations Council, JCRC, which deals with issues of anti-semitism and also I should mention another thing, interfaith work which I’m going to begin here with the Moslems. This was a call by Eric Yoffie at the latest Biennial of Reform Congregations. You may have read about it. We have a group that we feel we can deal with. It’s hard to find a good partner for dialogue with the Moslem community. It can be a safety feel here, that we’re not dealing with people who don’t believe in Israel’s right to exist, etc. You have to be able to sit down where at least there’s a commonality of support and then try to build on that. There is this group that Rabbi Yoffie has been dealing with and they’re going to be meeting here in Columbus and so I’ve inaugurated plans for the JCRC to try to reach out to them and I’ll be part of that just as I was for the past couple of years reaching out to the Presbyterian Church. That resulted by the way in the rescinding, at least toning down very much, of a boycott, if you will, of Israel. We were successful there.

Yes, indeed. We would probably begin frankly by reaching out to particular members of the congregation. I wouldn’t want people there who, there’s a privacy thing that is good to build some trust and then you open up down the road for some more public sorts of things.

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I want to start this in the Fall because they’re going to have a big convention here and I want the Jewish community to be involved. I’m very interested. It’s exciting. I think there’s a few things we can do.

Yes, over the years, there have been different things. I’ve always been very happy that we have Ohio State here. It’s such a huge part of life in Columbus. I’ve always been very supportive of Hillel. From time to time, depending on who their staff is, they will be supportive of Reform Jewish students. In the times when I don’t feel, (and there have been, you know it’s been 25 years) there have been staff members, different execs, when I don’t feel that the Reform Jewish students are being cared for I take a bigger role and I’ve had a bigger role. Now I think they’re pretty good but I keep my eye on it. If things aren’t being taken care of and that frankly depends on who the religious leadership is of Hillel, I don’t want Reform students to feel like second class citizens of Hillel. That’s a big thing with me. I was able to take a year off of HUC because of some credit they gave me for my undergraduate years and I went and I didn’t want to graduate early from Rabbinic School. I was the Hillel Director of Washington University, it would have been my third year at HUC. I could have done course work at HUC by mail in those days. I was able to be the Associate Director of the Hillel Foundation and it was a real struggle because our Reform kids felt like second class citizens. It’s an old story. I worked with the Reform temples and got them prayerbooks and so forth and built up a little community there. It’s much better now because the National Reform Movement has taken an issue and an interest in it, a group called Kesher. I always keep my eye out on that.

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It’s always been an interest of mine. I’ve been the President of the Columbus Board of Rabbis, active in that organization over the years, Hillel, the Jewish Federation and so forth but Hillel has always had a kind of special place in my heart.

My wife and I love to travel. We’re going to Europe this Summer. I’ve led trips to Israel, but that’s pretty standard rabbinic fare. We like to relax. We’re two hard working people. Now we love to visit our grandchildren. I’m one of the few people that goes to Florida to visit their grandchildren. Most people go to visit their grandparents, a reverse commute. If I have a passion and an interest it’s American History, especially 19^th century American History and the Civil War era. I’m a real nut and I schlep my wife around to the battlefields. She doesn’t want to go but I go to them and I read voraciously in American History, especially 19^th century American History and also 18^th century. I enjoy traveling. I love choral singing and I love music. Marsha is trained pretty much in opera. She sings in the temple choir, Sheronim. She also sings in Vaudevilites which is a big show here in town and she’s sung in the Columbus Symphony Chorus. We enjoy choral music which I don’t have a lot of time for because most of my evenings are taken up but I do enjoy singing and I do enjoy music and piano and choral music.

I have been very happy in my rabbinate. Rabbis get together and they talk, you know, over a glass of wine at rabbinic conventions. You hear a lot of war stories. I have a very fulfilling rabbinate. It’s always nice when I think you have a good shiddach, a good match, and it really is like that.

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You’ll find out, rabbis will know after a very short period of time (at least I feel this way) whether this is going to work or you’re going to be constantly in crisis mode. Of course congregations go through periods of stress and strain and growth. There are the good years and there are the lean years, and there are the surplus years and there’s the deficit years and all that sort of a thing, but its been a fundamentally good match.

What this congregation, here’s the secret, what you want to do as a rabbi has to be what the congregation wants the Rabbi to do. I know that sounds simplistic but all too often that kind of conversation either doesn’t take place or doesn’t take place honestly.

I’ll give you a couple of examples. There are rabbis in which the Rabbi wants to be the

(I’ll use an expression that my grandfather may he rest in peace would use) he would call a "public man," which is an old fashioned kind of expression for a kind of Rabbi who has breakfast with the Mayor or the Rabbi who sits on the Board of United Way or the rabbi who’s kind of the representative of the Jews to the, you know sits on the Board of the Opera or something like that, the Jew out there in the general community, sits on powerful Boards, even Jewish Boards like the Jewish Foundation or the Jewish Federation and is fundamentally a big time fund raiser, all that sort of political power, sort of economic clout sort of guy. By the way there are rabbis who really enjoy doing that. It’s beyond my ken to understand why. If I really enjoyed doing that I would do what my wife does. I understand the corporate world. She works for a fortune 50, fortune 10 actually, corporation. I know what it means to work in a corporation. That’s fine. My daughter is now going to work in that world. They’re great at it, they love it. It is what it is. It’s not me, not why I became a Rabbi.

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There are people who want to do that and there are congregants who are upset because they’re not pastoral which is a huge part of my rabbinate, taking care of people during their tough times, funerals, marriage difficulties, kids that are driving them crazy, you know any of the stresses and strains of life and counseling, which I do a slew of them. If a rabbi wants that the congregation is going to be really hurt that our Rabbi is not there for us when we’re sick and grieving and upset or whatever. On the other hand there are congregations that want their Rabbi to be the sort of person where the Rabbi is more into teaching biblical history. There’s nothing wrong with any of these models of a rabbi and most of them are never these extremes. Every job has its, I mean I sit on community Boards. It’s a matter of degree, it’s a matter of stress, it’s a matter of where you put the emphasis. As long as there’s a mutuality of expectation, then as long as people are competent, you’re going to have satisfaction. That’s been the case here for me and the congregation. When it doesn’t occur people feel hurt. Rabbis feel hurt, congregations feel hurt and you have a kind of a breakdown and people go their separate ways and that’s okay. What’s sad is when people stay in those situations for years, whether it’s the congregation or the Rabbi, and everybody’s miserable and then people flee. Then there are congregations that are known, (I will tell you this and I don’t mind recording this for history because everybody knows it) that are known and get reputations as being terrible places to be a Rabbi because they chew you up and spit you out. They’re called sharks and everybody knows this. It’s no different than in the corporate world that you know X corporation or Y corporation is just a terrible place to be employed because they treat people like dirt. So why would you want to go there and those people will find a hard time hiring a Rabbi.

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The other nice thing I want to say is how meaningful it is to be able to be a Rabbi at a congregation for the length of time that I’ve served this temple. I marry people I consecrate, are Bar and Bat Mitzvahed. I know everybody. I know grandpa and the kids and the parents and I also know what’s going on in the family and we know each other. There’s a real comfortable feeling. That’s something you just can’t buy or replicate and you only get with time so that’s a blessing too. There are good sides to all this. That’s about it.

I just wanted to add that one of the things that I feel that I was a big pusher or mover for was a position that now exists in our community and that is a Chaplaincy position that is currently run out of Wexner Heritage but it’s under Zusman Hospice and so forth. I pushed years ago for this. The way the Columbus Board of Rabbis had dealt with this, you know all the Rabbis here get calls, we’re getting calls, we still get them by the way, at least it’s a little less. We’re getting constant calls, Rabbi can you come to X nursing home we have a Jewish patient here. I’m not talking about Wexner, it’s a Jewish institution. You name it. There are a hundred of these institutions and they have one, maybe two Jews. Can you come and do something for holidays, can you come and do something for Passover, can you lead a Shabbat? Jails, can you come and visit our one or two or three inmates? It was really catch as catch can.

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One of the things I did, by the way I still do this, is that for years, it was always my specialty and my emphasis, I didn’t mention this, I forgot totally about it. For years I was the Rabbi who always went to Harding Hospital which is now part of the OSU system here in Worthington. It’s one of really the most famous psychiatric hospitals here in America. It had patients, not so much from Columbus, it did of course, but I mean the Jews I visited there were from Cleveland or they were from, really they were from all over the country. They would come here for specialty treatment and very serious psychiatric disorders. I always made it a specialty of mine. I did it at the State Hospital downtown. In St. Louis I did it at the St. Louis, Missouri State Hospital on Arsonal Steet which was, God help us, the worst place on the face of the planet, terrible conditions. I conducted weekly Sabbath services. These were people who were spending their lives in deep psychosis and they were heavily, heavily medicated. We’re talking about serious side effects like Tardive Dyskinesia. I learned all the language. With massive doses of Haldol for severe either Turrets Syndrome or Schizophrenia, people.spent their lives in institutions. Of course we have them here in Columbus and if they’re Jews I would visit and conduct Sabbath services. It was quite a trip to conduct Sabbath services for people who were suffering from severe delusions, but I learned how to do it and I was their Rabbi and I did it over at Harding. I pushed and pushed and pushed our Federation should fund a Chaplaincy position. The Jewish community should pay for a Rabbi to go visit Jews. Congregational Rabbis take care of their own congregants. They don’t have the time. Even if they have the inclination, they don’t have the time to visit hospitals, to visit prisons. I have visited and I do visit, I do have a congregant in prison and he’ll be there for another 10 years plus.

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