One of the outstanding honors that our Jewish Community Center gives in recognition to community service is the Baltimore Jewish Hall of Fame.
There are some names who have been inducted to this Hall of Fame who have saved lives, literally kept people from starving, helped cure disease and made Baltimore a major center for what can be right about the human spirit.
There are names such as Shoshana Cardin, Henrietta Szold, Zanvyl Krieger, Joseph Meyerhoff and so many others.
So it pains me to learn that when the nominating committee came up with the name of the late Rabbi Herman Neuberger, they were basically told “no” by the Ner Israel powers that be.
I’m sure Ner Israel had their own reasons for that decision.
What a powerfully wrong call by Ner Israel.
Since 1997, I have heard Ner Israel officials and other Orthodox leaders verbally pound their chests over outreach to the non-Orthodox community. As recently as the last vote for the opening of the Owings Mills JCC on Shabbat, we listened to rabbis at the podium of a rally held on the outdoor patio of Northwestern High School lament that they didn’t do a good enough job of reaching out to those who don’t observe Shabbat in the same way they do.
But Rabbi Neuberger didn’t belong only to Ner Israel. He was a treasure of Baltimore’s Jewish community. To keep his name away from the recognition he so richly deserves is a decision based sadly in a spirit inconsistent with the vision of the broader Jewish community and its leadership.
Here was a man who was familiar with the “outside” world. This was a leader of leaders, because he gave every Jew and gentile he met respect. He asked about their families and wouldn’t forget a child’s name of someone who sought his counsel. Who sought his counsel? The very leaders of the land, of this state, mostly not Jewish. I can’t write that he spent hours counseling people and helping them, because if you added up the hours, it would translate into years of service. He personally saved a great part of Iran’s Jewish community. I remember the buzz in the room at a Ner Israel banquet when Senator Barbara Mikulski thanked Rabbi Neuberger and his son and current Ner Israel leader Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger for attending the viewing of her late father. It meant so much to her.
Be it Governor Martin O’Malley, former Gov. Bob Ehrlich, Sen. Mikulski, Cardinal Keeler, the leaders and the hard working people of our community, he was there for them.
He wouldn’t have agreed with the opening of the JCC on Shabbat in Owings Mills. We all know that. But he wouldn’t have harbored a grudge, he wasn’t that sort of person. We would have moved forward with Rabbi Neuberger and really worked towards the goal of one people. The lamenting of not bringing Shabbat to the masses, he wouldn’t have lamented, he would have done something about it.
Keeping his name out of the Hall of Fame?
Rest assured, it doesn’t represent Rabbi Herman Neuberger. So many of us still think the community hasn’t been the same since his passing. He is a Hall of Famer. And if the JCC wants to bestow that honor on him, this should happen.
He brought us together, he didn’t divide us. The JCC is about unity.
The decision of others to keep him out?
You know what that’s about
Sometimes I feel like the Orthodox community would just as soon have everyone else disappear.
The problem is, for many of the community, some don’t even know that other Jews exist to begin with or even recognize them as Jewish.
Rabbi Neuberger knew we were all at Sinai when the Torah was given.
We know that he should be recognized here in this city for what he meant to EVERY Jew, not just the ones who live on Yeshiva Lane.
Rabbi Neuberger, you are in God’s Hall of Fame.
Nobody has that power to keep you out.
In the meantime, people of reason, people who worked with Rabbi Neuberger know that he belongs in the same company as the other Baltimoreans who we call Hall of Famers.
Thank you Rabbi Neuberger, for though you passed in 2005, you’ll forever be remembered.