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Published on: 4/15/2002
Last Visited: 4/15/2002
RABBI BERNARD FELSENTHALRead from the works of Bernard Felsenthal, Chicago's first Reform rabbi, and except for the archaic turns of language, you'd swear the writer lived at least a century later than he did.
Although Felsenthal was born in 1822 and died in 1908, his ideas-from espousing pluralism in the Jewish community to passionately defending the notion of a Jewish state-seem surprisingly modern.
He was one of the founders of the Reform Movement in America and went on to help found Sinai Congregation, which became one of the largest and most distinguished Reform temples in the Midwest.He also served as its first rabbi.
Felsenthal is remembered as a prolific writer, producing treatises on a wide array of Jewish subjects.As an octogenarian, he became one of the American Jewish world's staunchest defenders of Zionism.His biographers uniformly describe him as a gentle, scholarly soul to whom books and learning-and teaching his fellow Jews-meant the world.
He didn't set out to become a rabbi at all.
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Nevertheless, Felsenthal began studying Judaism early in life and had amassed a vast store of learning by the time he went to Munich to attend college, where he majored in mathematics.But when he tried to enter the civil service, he discovered that, as a Jew, there was no place for him there.That experience, by all accounts, affected him deeply.
He decided then to become a teacher instead, and taught Hebrew language and literature in his native village until 1854, when, seeking more freedom and greater opportunities, he immigrated to the United States along with other members of his family.
It was in his first rabbinical post, in the small community of Madison, Ind., that Felsenthal first showed his desire to see radical changes in the brand of Judaism practiced in America, writes H.L. Meites in his landmark 1924 volume, "History of the Jews of Chicago."
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Typical was the father of a child that Felsenthal tutored, who exclaimed, "What!A man with such notions expects to read prayers for us on Rosh Hashanah?Such a person wants to teach our children Judaism?"
He found a more ready audience for his ideas in Chicago, a city of 80,000 to which he moved in 1858.By this time, he had published articles in a number of journals, such as Isaac Mayer Wise's Israelite and David Einhorn's Sinai, and was beginning to be considered a leader in the fledgling Reform Movement.
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Felsenthal, along with a few others, gave it a giant push in 1859 when they founded the Judischer Reformverein (Jewish Reform Society).While working as a bank clerk, Felsenthal wrote the young movement's seminal statement of ideas in a pamphlet called "Kol Kore Bamidbar" ("A Voice Calling in the Wilderness").
In it, he called for a regeneration of religious life adapted to the customs of the New World, stressing the right of each individual to search for truth in his or her own fashion.Unlike later Reform leaders, he recommended the use of Hebrew in synagogue services.But he also propounded statements that, by his own admission, some would consider heresy, such as "The Bible is not the source of Judaism! ... the kernel of Judaism is natural religion in the soul of man."
The pamphlet stirred excitement and debate among Chicago Jews.In 1861, the results of the new movement became tangible when Felsenthal and others in the Reformverein founded the Sinai Reform Congregation, first located in a former church on Monroe Street just west of Clark.With some reluctance, Felsenthal became its first spiritual leader.
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Felsenthal served as rabbi for just three years, resigning in 1864 when the congregation refused to renew his contract for more than one year at a time, as was then customary for rabbis.Shortly afterwards, with new neighborhoods developing on Chicago's growing West Side, he became the spiritual leader of a new temple, Zion Congregation.He served there for 23 years until his retirement in 1886.That congregation would later evolve into today's Oak Park Temple B'nai Abraham Zion.
As one of the acknowledged leaders of Reform Judaism in America, Felsenthal continued to espouse new and, to some, radical ideas.He championed interfaith efforts between Christians and Jews and continued to do so even after an invitation to take part in the dedication of a new Unitarian church was withdrawn because some members refused to countenance a Jew speaking from the pulpit.He accepted that slight in a "friendly and understanding spirit," according to one biographer, which seemed to be the way he conducted all his life's business.
Felsenthal also spoke out strongly against an attempt by a group of Chicagoans to reintroduce Bible reading into public schools, calling it "an inexcusable, an undemocratic, an un-American tyrannizing of the minority."He spoke out again and again against slavery, which he called "the most shameful institution on earth."And when he discovered, during the Civil War, that field chaplains could only be "ordained ministers of some Christian denomination," he worked to bring the issue to the attention of President Abraham Lincoln.The president, discovering the inequity, immediately struck the word "Christian" and so cleared the way for the appointment of the first Jewish chaplains.
Beginning in 1897, when he was in his late 70s, Felsenthal embraced a new cause: Zionism.At the inception of the Zionist movement, he became one its leading spokespersons in America, incurring the wrath of most other Reform rabbis, since the movement then was strongly anti-Zionist.
But Felsenthal, proudly declaring himself the first non-Polish American Jewish leader to embrace the cause, continued to write pro-Zionist articles and to join the leading Zionist organizations.The "aged yet youthful master," as his disciples called him, continued to work vigorously for this cause, attending meetings and speaking at Zionist conferences until his death in 1908 at age 86 -- the model of a modern rabbi to the end.
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