|
Alfred Gottschalk (March 7, 1930 – September 12, 2009) was a German-born American Rabbi who was a leader in the Reform Judaism movement, serving as head of the movement's Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC) for 30 years, as president from 1971 to 1996, and then as chancellor until 2000. In that role, Rabbi Gottschalk oversaw the ordination of the first women to be ordained as rabbis in the United States and Israel, and admitted gay and lesbian students to the school's seminary. During his tenure as president, he oversaw the development of new HUC campuses in Jerusalem, Los Angeles and New York City, three of the school's four campuses. ==Early life and education== Gottschalk was born in Oberwesel, Germany on March 7, 1930, the only son of Max and Erna (Trum) Gottschalk . He was born to a family that had lived in the Rhineland for four centuries.〔 As a child in 1937, he was admonished by his mother for leaving the house to watch Adolf Hitler pass by in a motorcade, telling him that "A Jew risks a lot doing that".〔 He would lose dozens of family members in The Holocaust, and maintained a commitment to the preservation of the Jewish religion and identity exemplified by his grandfather's having given him shreds of a Torah scroll the day after the November 1938 Kristallnacht that had been desecrated and thrown into a river during the anti-Jewish pogrom and telling Gottschalk that "one day we will put them together again".〔 His father escaped Nazi Germany for New York City in 1938.〔Martin, Douglas. ("Alfred Gottschalk, 79, Scholar of Reform Judaism, Is Dead" ), ''The New York Times'', September 15, 2009. Accessed September 16, 2009.〕 As a nine-year-old, Gottschalk was forced out of his classroom by a Nazi shouting "Jews, raus! (), raus! RAUS!", an incident that his successor as President of HUC, Rabbi David Ellenson described as being the impetus behind Gottschalk's "life's work on behalf of the Jewish people and humanity" and as one that Gottschalk would recall with "sadness, humiliation, and fury" 50 years later.〔 After his expulsion from school, he recalled being beaten on Good Friday by a group of Catholic boys for the death of Werner, a Catholic boy who was said to have been killed by Jews on Maundy Thursday in the 13th century.〔 He returned to visit his hometown of Oberwesel in September 2006, more than 60 years after he had left it, the only Jewish survivor of that town's small Jewish community.〔 He and his mother managed to leave Germany for the United States to join his father in 1939.〔 His family settled in Brooklyn, where he learned English while watching films he had paid for with money he had earned shining shoes. He "once thanked Ronald Reagan for teaching () English", having seen the President in many of the films he saw as a child new to the United States.〔 He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1945.〔Wilkinson, Howard. ("Only surviving Jewish native of village seeks reconciliation" ), copy of article from ''The Cincinnati Enquirer'' at Hebrew Union College web site. Accessed September 21, 2009.〕 He attended Boys High School and made the choice to become a Rabbi when he was 15 years old, having heard speeches from Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise. After his father died, Gottschalk helped support the family by playing semipro football.〔 He earned his undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College and then attended Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, from which he received his rabbinic ordination in 1957, simultaneously earning a master's in Hebrew literature.〔 In 1965, he earned his Ph.D. in Bible and Jewish thought from University of Southern California with a dissertation on Ahad Ha'am, the pen name of pre-state Zionist thinker and essayist Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alfred Gottschalk (rabbi)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|