Interview with David Stavsky of Congregation Beth Jacob on this 1^st day of May, 1993 for the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.

Sally Ann Jeffrey: Good afternoon, Rabbi, it’s nice to see you.

Stavsky: Good afternoon, Shirley Ann. It’s my pleasure to spend a few moments with you and talk a little bit about myself and my relationship to Columbus, Ohio. I was born in New York City in 1930 and was educated in the day school known as the Yeshiva of the lower east side of New York, Rabbi Jacob Joseph’s School. I graduated from the elementary school in 1943, which was at the height of the war and then went on to the high school of Yeshiva University, the high school division and graduated from the high school and then went on to graduate from Yeshiva University with a BA in Psychology in 1952, simultaneously continuing all of these years in my Judaic studies. Subsequently I was ordained at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Seminary, which is the rabbinical seminary of the Yeshiva University. In February of 1955, having had the special privilege of studying with three of the most eminent prominent rabbis of that generation, including Rabbi Joseph V. Soloveichik, who passed away just two weeks ago. The other great rabbis at the time were Rabbi Moshe Schatskis and Rabbi Doctor Dalton, who is the president of Yeshiva University. At any rate, after graduating from Yeshiva, I went on my first overseas trip to Israel and that was in 1952. I always had a special love and feeling for Israel, which was obviously reinforced with that trip.

I was introduced to the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand by seeing things which were on display in Israel, remnants, artifacts and other materials depicting the Holocaust and the Holocaust, therefore, became a very important part of my own life and my own research and studies. Subsequently, after I was ordained I enlisted in the United States Army and served as a chaplain at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver, Colorado and, while there, I met my wife, Ruth, who was a Denverite. She came from a very orthodox home in Denver, Colorado and after a short courtship we were married. I was discharged in June of 1957, the second year of my stay, and I was elected as the rabbi of the Beth Jacob Congregation in August of 1957.

If I could go back for just a moment to my Army days - they were very interesting and exciting days with numerous experiences that every Jewish chaplain has. It may be worthwhile for this particular record, to read that the President of the United States at the time was President Eisenhower who suffered that famous coronary while he was in Denver and I was the Jewish chaplain at the hospital at the time. So I was the first chaplain to conduct a religious service in behalf of the President when he was first admitted into the Fitzsimmons Army Hospital; and that service, which was the day before Yom Kippur, by coincidence, received national attention by the Associated Press that a Jewish chaplain was conducting services on behalf of the President This seemed to be significant.

Subsequently, I presented the president with a mazuzza while he was recuperating at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital and of course, both he and Mame, his wife, communicated with me, expressing their thanks for both the services as well as for the mazuzza.

At any rate, I came to Columbus, Ohio and Beth Jacob Synagogue. Beth Jacob at the time was a very, very small congregation. One of the reasons I was elected was because I was one of the few candidates who spoke a fluent Yiddish and, even though being American born, Yiddish was like a native tongue to me and I spoke in Yiddish and that was very important to the board of trustees at the time because the people in the synagogue, mainly were elderly people and here I was 27 years old speaking to people who were in their late 60s and early 70s, retirees, and I saw that the synagogue did not have a physical separation between men and women. Nevertheless, I took the pulpit.

I really did not have any intention of staying on. I was a newlywed and I had already an infant son, Joel, and thought that I would take this pulpit for maybe a year or so. I didn’t realize, of course, that 36 years later, I would still be in Columbus under other kinds of conditions and, hopefully, that the years were of achievement and accomplishment. I realized that, speaking Yiddish every Saturday would not be the goal for any rabbi if he is to develop the synagogue or the congregation. Therefore, I asked permission from the board of trustees that I would be speaking in Yiddish maybe only once a month in order to perhaps involve a younger group into the Synagogue by preaching in English, which of course was exactly what we were able to do. And subsequently the synagogue started to grow but we realized that we were in the "neighborhood."

At that time our synagogue was on Bulen Avenue in Driving Park but most of the members were living over in Bexley. At one time Driving Park was the Jewish neighborhood and we had to make plans for leaving the neighborhood, even though we were only there four or five years. It’s kind of a traumatic experience for these people to know that they would have to start making plans for a new synagogue. And we were fortunate enough to have a man by the name of Julius Cohen who at that time was a young energetic builder in the community, a builder of homes, and he became involved in the synagogue and, under his leadership and the leadership of other people, Dr. Charles Young, and some of the others, Al Szames, the Goldmeier family, the Weinstocks, we made plans to move and to build on College Avenue.

My conditions for being a participant in that effort was that it would be strictly an orthodox synagogue with physical separation of men and women and there would be no microphone in the synagogue on the Sabbath as well as on the Festivals, in accordance with Jewish halachic rulings. After three years, we built this very beautiful edifice on College Avenue and people came from all over to visit our synagogue for its artistic beauty. It is considered one of the most beautiful of synagogues. In fact, Abba Eban, in his book, The History of My People, has a picture of our synagogue, and he calls it the Beth Jacob Temple of Columbus, Ohio, and the synagogue has grown.

We have made numerous contributions and achievements. We started the first orthodox youth group in the area called National Conference of Synagogue Youth, which is the first orthodox youth movement for this area, which was referred to as the central east area. I recall the very first regional convention when we had as many as 500 teenagers from the entire area, from cities like Detroit, Cleveland, Dayton, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, and we grew to having as many as 3,000 young people of the central east region become affiliated and that was as a result of our finding, being the founding father, so to speak, of the central east region here in Columbus, Ohio.

And many of the young people were going through interesting searches for their own identity at the time of the days of Haight-Ashbury, 1969-70. People had to choose between being a flower child or trying to find some kind of identity in contemporary society as a relevant society, reaching out to Jewish people. So, therefore, we were able to successfully attract the young people with Jewish rock music, people like Shlomo Carlebach and others- internationally known- came to Columbus very frequently and they helped us in these programs.

In 1957, when I arrived, one of the first things that was uppermost in my mind was, as I told the then-president of the congregation, Mr. Lou Levine, if I was to remain in Columbus, we would have to have a day school. And he subsequently introduced me to two people, one whom was Jerome Schottenstein of blessed memory; the other one was Harry Gilbert of blessed memory, both of the Agudas Achim congregation, and we introduced the idea of starting a day school.

And, after working very, very hard for a number of months, we were fortunate to start the Columbus Torah Academy. We started with 12 students. We gave them all free scholarships that first year and we were housed at the Agudas Achim Synagogue and the rest of that is history. The Columbus Torah Academy, of course, a very important, fine and excellent institution, has grown and continues to grow. In fact, my son-in-law was first president of the high school, which began about two years ago.

Another important thing was that I realized that we needed a mikva ritual place for the women of the community. The old mikva was in a very dilapidated neighborhood, on Livingston near Ohio Avenue. After much work and the cooperation of numerous people – I should mention that a person like Dr. Jerome Folkman, the Reform rabbi was very supportive of the new community mikva and he helped us achieve that very first contribution from Jack Resler, which is all very interesting because these were people who were not aligned with the philosophy or the ideology of ritual baths.

At any rate, we built the mikva and the community mikva was dedicated in 1970. It’s located at the Ssuth end of the Beth Jacob synagogue, with a separate entrance from the parking lot, shared today by, for sure over 100 families. The mikva which existed in 1957, I don’t think served more than five families, maybe seven. As a young rabbi coming to Columbus, I was obviously the youngest rabbi; my other colleagues were Nathan Zelizer who was the rabbi at Temple Tifereth Israel at the time. He was the dean of the rabbinate, so to speak, and there were Rabbi Samuel Rubenstein and Dr. Jerome Folkman. Those were the three major synagogues. There was a Rabbi Valinsky, of the other Orthodox synagogue, Congregation of Ahavas Sholom.

As the years went by I realized that we must set out to capture the intellectual understanding of the Jew and, to make orthodox Judaism very relevant to the non-observant Jew. Over the years, more modestly, we would have to say that we have achieved some measure of success. As of today, in 1993, over 53 of our youngsters from our congregation and from our N.C.S.Y chapter, went on to study in yeshivas and in schools in Israel and New York and in Baltimore and in Chicago, and from our synagogue we have numerous rabbis from these kinds and they all came from non-observant homes, most of them anyway, maybe just a handful of orthodox homes, at the time, and these young people today are in the professions of either attorneys, physicians, psychiatrists, successful business people, or rabbis - both male and female scientists and they are all alumni of our Beth Jacob youth group NCSY chapter. And, needless to say, we’re very, very proud of all of them. Married today, their children are now young practicing orthodox Jews, living in contemporary society and making important contributions to whichever community they live in, be it in Israel, Jerusalem, or be it New Jersey.

It’s very difficult and possibly foolish to try to predict what the future may hold for Columbus Jewry now that it’s 1993. Remember that the Columbus Jewish community now is one of the wealthiest communities in the country in terms of Federation; the per capita funds which are raised by Federation for the community of 15,000 Jews- but I think that our demographics are disappointing in the sense that we are reading of the constant high rate of interfaith marriages in the community, which all sociologists predict will create serious crises in terms of the future of the Jewish community. I think, therefore, that what we may witness and what we see is a strengthening of orthodox Judaism with a smaller group of people on the one hand, a self-contained group of people doing their thing, strengthening their own orthodox ideologies and households, and on the other hand, there will be a larger assimilated group in the community.

This may or may not be an accurate prediction of years to come. I also feel that more and more people, younger people, will opt to go to Israel, make aliyah as they find that, I’m speaking of young married couples, that they’ll find that the United States may not be the best place to raise in terms of everything being equal, the problems of assimilation, acculturation, and no matter how hard we try, no matter how many successes we may find about the Zionist movement and the returning Jew, in the long haul, these figures may not be strong enough to withstand the pressures of the larger numbers of assimilation and acculturation, so there may be more and more people who come from liberal homes, who will opt to go to Israel to find the greatest sense of stability for their own Jewishness and for their own homes and, hopefully, those of us who remain and work and those who follow will know that the work is cut out for them in places like Columbus, Ohio and the hinterlands of America. Even though we may not have large numbers, the work is here and there’s a great sense of satisfaction with each soul who turns to God for we always believe kol hamekayem nefesh achas b’yisroel… if you save even one Jewish soul, it’s as if you’ve saved the entire world and every soul is precious and every Jew is precious, so no matter what his level of religiosity of observance is, we all have to, in spite of it all, we have to keep some sense of optimism and hope for a greater future.

Interviewer: Thank you, Rabbi, for sharing your personal life experiences and views with the Columbus Jewish Historical Society.

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