COMMENTARY: A triple threat rabbi for the rabbinic Hall of Fame

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Truly great football players are called”triple threats”because they can run, pass, and kick with extraordinary ability. Because the game has become so specialized such gridiron stars are few in number, but when they do appear […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Truly great football players are called”triple threats”because they can run, pass, and kick with extraordinary ability. Because the game has become so specialized such gridiron stars are few in number, but when they do appear they are usually elected to the football Hall of Fame.


Triple threats are also scarce among the clergy.

A rabbi, priest, or minister may be a gifted scholar, but lack pastoral skills. A compassionate counselor may have little organizational and administrative talent, while a fantastic preacher may have trouble relating to individuals on a one-to-one basis. And visionaries frequently can’t translate their dreams into reality.

But for the past half century, Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman has been an authentic triple threat, a member of my personal rabbinic Hall of Fame. Friedman, still vigorous at 81, describes in his recently published autobiography,”Roots of the Future”(Gefen Publishers), his three careers as a remarkable military chaplain, dynamic congregational rabbi and superb organizational leader.

Friedman, born in Connecticut and a graduate of Yale, he turned his enormous energy to the rabbinate. At the end of World War II in 1945, Friedman was an Army chaplain stationed in Berlin where he served the many Jews in the American armed forces. But he also reached out to his co-religionists in the French, British, and Soviet military.

The rabbi led a double life while in Berlin because his”real”congregation in those years was the more than 250,000 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust languishing in”Displaced Persons”camps in Germany and Austria. With the strong support of President Truman and the U.S. Army, Friedman helped the terrorized Jewish survivors of Hitler rebuild their lives and communities within the camps.

But Friedman, with cloak and dagger secrecy, was also a key leader in the highly effective”illegal immigration”of the DPs to the future State of Israel while it was under British control. His account of secret truck convoys carrying bewildered men, women and children from the camps to barely seaworthy ships in France and Italy for transport across the Mediterranean to the Promised Land under the hostile eye of the British Navy is exciting reading.

Following his return to civilian life, Friedman served prominent synagogues in Denver and Milwaukee where he established a reputation for strong preaching, teaching and fund raising. Friedman’s passionate support of Israel and his public opposition to the ugly tactics of Sen. Joseph McCarthy made him a leader of the American Jewish community.

In 1955 at age 37, Friedman left the congregational rabbinate and became the chief executive officer of the well-known charity, United Jewish Appeal (UJA). For the next 20 years, Friedman devoted his considerable talent to raising hundreds of millions of dollars for health, education, welfare, resettlement and a host of other projects that benefited his fellow Jews throughout the world including the United States, Israel, the former Soviet Union and Arab countries. His decades of UJA leadership were tumultuous and included three Middle East wars and the struggle to free Soviet Jews.

But the unique feature of Friedman’s exciting career was his ability to understand that”to raise money you must first raise people.”Under his leadership, Friedman established several pioneering programs that are now standard features in many Jewish and Christian philanthropies.


The first was the young leadership training program. As a CEO, Friedman quickly realized a successful institution constantly needs new ideas and young dedicated leaders. He was shrewd enough to know that intense emotion or commitment to an ideal is not enough to hold young Jewish leaders. They must receive intensive education in their people’s long history, Jewish philosophy and an intellectual engagement with the classic texts of Judaism.

Friedman also recognized that hearing speeches about Israel’s achievements or the threats to Jewish survival in lands of oppression may be necessary but are not sufficient to mobilize both dollars and personal commitment to the cause. Over the years Friedman developed educational missions to many parts of the world where concerned leaders gained first-hand knowledge.

Friedman ends his stirring book with a detailed, creative plan to insure Jewish survival in America. It includes day schools, intensive campus programs, trips to Israel and summer camps for every Jewish youngster, massive adult education, a redesign of synagogue programs and an outreach to the intermarried.

Herb Friedman has something important to say, and today’s Jewish leaders would be wise to follow his programmatic blueprint. After all, his record of achievement in the military, the pulpit and the organizational world is unequaled … a true triple threat.

DEA END RUDIN

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