Walter Jacob, a Pittsburgh rabbi who helped revive Reform Judaism in Germany, dies at age 94 – The Forward

Rabbi Walter Jacob (center) ordains three rabbis during a ceremony at the Pestalozzi strasse synagogue in Berlin, November 4, 2010. (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images

(JTA) — PITTSBURGH — Rabbi Walter Jacob, who returned 60 years after leaving Germany as a refugee to help revitalize the liberal Jewish community, died Oct. 20 at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 94 years old.

Jacob, the longtime rabbi of Congregation Rodef Shalom in Pittsburgh, a Reform synagogue, came from a line of rabbis in Germany stretching back 400 years. In 1999, he honored this legacy by founding the company Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, the first liberal, or Reform, rabbinical seminary in continental Europe to open since the Holocaust.

Germany “is rebuilding a really solid Jewish life, and that’s a pretty good start,” Jacob, then president of Geiger College, said in 2006. when the seminary was about to ordain the first class of liberal rabbis in Germany since 1942. “My ancestors have been rabbis in Germany and Central Europe for 16 generations. I am glad that there will be new generations of rabbis.”

Opposing the Orthodox establishment in Germany, which was reluctant to recognize non-Orthodox congregations, as well as internal schisms among liberal congregationsJacob helped the reform movement in Germany grow from just a few member communities to over 30 by 2023.

“I had the honor of knowing Walter not only as an outstanding leader of our movement, but also as a warm and caring rabbi deeply committed to passing on his love of Judaism to others.” – said Rabbi Lea Mühlstein, president of the European Union for Progressive Judaism, in a statement. “A deep thinker, he always had some important thoughts to share, but above all he was a true mentalist who took great joy in seeing others succeed.”

Jacob was rabbi of his Pittsburgh congregation for 42 years and was rabbi emeritus for the past 27 years. In 1992-94 he was president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, an organization of Reform and in 1990-94 vice-president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

A prolific writer, he edited three volumes of Responsa Reform, or rabbinic guidance on the practical application of Jewish law and theory, for CCAR Press.

Jacob was born in 1930 in Augsburg, Germany, the son of Annette Loewenberg Jacob and Rabbi Ernst Jacob. According to the 2018 biography “The Seventeenth Generation: The Lifework of Rabbi Walter Jacob” commissioned by his synagogue, Jacob was the grandson of renowned biblical commentator Rabbi Benno Jacob (1862–1945), whose works Jacob translated into English.

The family fled Nazi Germany to London in 1939 and then to Missouri, where his father had worked as a rabbi since 1943. Walter Jacob received his bachelor’s degree from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri in 1950, and was ordained and he received his master’s degree during the Reform period in 1955 at the Jewish Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which was part of this movement. In 1961, he obtained a PhD from the same university.

Jacob and Irene Loewenthal married in 1958. They were cousins; her family from Hamburg managed to escape to London in 1938. The couple’s eldest daughter, Claire, was born disabled, and the Jacobs family she founded a facility for children like herself, Horizon Home, which is now part of Mainstay Life Services in Pittsburgh.

Irena Jacob died in 2012. Predeceased by their children Claire, Kenneth and Daniel.

Jacob was hired at Rodef Shalom by Rabbi Solomon Freehof in 1955 and served as a chaplain for the United States Air Force in the Philippines from 1955 to 1957, after which he returned to Pittsburgh to work at Rodef.

In 1986, Jacob and his wife founded the company Biblical Botanical Garden in Rodef Shalom, a project that aroused great interest in Poland and abroad. Jacob did interfaith work; his 43 books include “Christianity Through Jewish Eyes: The Search for Common Ground” (1984). He taught at Chatham College and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and was president of the American Religious Education Association from 1981-85.

In 1996, Jacob returned to Germany and served as honorary rabbi of the liberal Jewish congregation Beth Shalom in Munich. Noting that the country did not have its own seminary for liberal rabbis, he promised to found one and named it after a 19th-century German rabbi considered the father of Reform Judaism.

In 2015, the university he founded awarded the then Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, with the Prize. Abraham Geiger. In her remarks, Merkel noted “what a great gift it is that there is once again a diverse and rich Jewish life in Germany.” Its founder-rector was one of the speakers at Jacob’s funeral at Rodef Shalom on October 22.

Jacob’s awards in Germany included the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the title of professor of the state of Brandenburg. He was also appointed by Pope John Paul II as a commander of the Military Order of St. Gregory the Great.

At his funeral, Rabbi Deborah Pine, director of campus support at HIllel International, described Jacob as a mentor who knew what was most important. During their last visit two weeks before his death, Pine told her, “How can I help you? What do you need?” as she was leaving.

The theme of the speech at his funeral was Jacob’s commitment to science. Rabbi Danny Schiff, a Gefsky Fellow at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, told JTA that when he first met Jacob at the World Union for Progressive Judaism in Jerusalem, his senior colleague’s first question was, “What are you reading?”

Jacob’s interest in the responsa, Schiff said, was that it “produced real-world results,” adding, “The responsa is the intellectual side of Judaism that appeals most to the Jewish people.”

In his remarks at the funeral, Rabbi Andrew Busch of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, who served as Jacob’s assistant at Rodef Shalom, quoted Jacob from a 1995 article written for the Solomon Freehof Institute for Progressive Halacha, which Jacob founded.

“Judaism has always been a highly optimistic religion whose love of life permeates every aspect,” Jacob wrote. “Our love of life must lead to the desire to perpetuate it, and therefore each person must do everything in his power to continue it into the next generation.”