RABBI EVERETT GENDLER, R.I.P.: AN ELOQUENT VOICE
FOR JEWISH UNIVERSALISM AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
Allan C. Brownfeld
Issues
Spring - Summer 2022
Everett Gendler, a leading civil rights advocate, environmentalist, and advocate
of Jewish universalism died on April l at the age of 93. He led an extraordinary
life, and was a longtime friend of the American Council for Judaism.
Rabbi Gendler was jailed in Georgia in 1962 with the Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr., was the father of the Jewish environmentalism movement and spent the last
two decades helping organize non-violent protest in Tibet, collaborating with the
Dalai Lama. He was concerned that Zionism was corrupting Judaism by replacing God
with the State of Israel as a focus of attention and was concerned with the
mistreatment of the indigenous population of Palestine.
It was Rabbi Gendler’s view that Zionism, Jewish nationalism, is a rejection of
Judaism’s moral and ethical universal tradition. He has spent his life working to
make the world a better place for men and women of every race and religion. In
2013, he received the “Human Rights Hero” award from T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call
for Human Rights. Also in 2013, he was awarded the Presidents’. Medallion from
the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He was instrumental in
arranging Martin Luther King’s important address to the national rabbinical
convention on March 25, 1968, ten days before King’s death.
Born August 8, 1928 in Claritin, Iowa, Rabbi Gendler served from 1978-1995 as the
Jewish chaplain at Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. In the late 1950s
and early 1960s, he served as rabbi for congregations in Mexico City, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, and Havana, Cuba. He served as rabbi of the Jewish Center of
Princeton, New Jersey and Temple Emanuel of the Merrimack Valley in
Massachusetts.
In his book “Judaism For Universalists,” Gendler recalls, early in his career,
being referred to as “a radical universalist with a rabbinic degree.” If this
taunt had come at a later time, he writes, he would have replied, “Of course I’m
a universalist! How could I dare to be a rabbi without being concerned for all
human beings? Abram’s original command from God, as he was sent on his journey
and assured that ‘I shall make of thee a great nation,’ was ‘Be thou a blessing…
in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed’ (Genesis 12-2,3). Not to
be a universalist, not to be concerned that through the quality of Jewish life
all human families would be blessed, would represent a betrayal of the original
purpose of God’s call to Abram to become Abraham, the father of all three
monotheistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”
Rabbi Gendler made a notable contribution in translating the writings of Rabbi
Aaron Samuel Tamares (1869-1931), the rabbi in a small Polish town. A delegate to
the Fourth World Zionist Congress in London in 1900, Tamares became disillusioned
with political Zionism and wrote extensively about his rejection of nationalism
and embrace of pacifism and what he saw as the unique Jewish mission in the world
In Tamares’ view, the viability of the educational mission of the Jews to mankind
and therefore to the betterment of all humanity, was dependent on the continued
existence of the Jews throughout the world. The Zionist dream of “normalizing”
the Jewish condition ―including a return to national life was seen by Tamares as
a betrayal of the Jewish mission in history, to impart ethical living to all of
humanity. He believed that the idea of “exile” was not a punishment but a
purification since the Jewish mission is unlike the mission of the nations.
In 1929, Tamares, who was an Orthodox rabbi, wrote that the very notion of a
Jewish state as a spiritual center “was a contradiction to Judaism’s ultimate
purpose.” He noted that, “Judaism at root is not some religious concentration
which may be localized or situated in a single territory. Neither is Judaism a
‘nationality,’ in the sense of modern nationalism, fit to be woven into the
three-foldedness of ‘homeland, army and heroic songs.’ No, Judaism is Torah,
ethics and exaltation of spirit. If Judaism is truly Torah, then it cannot be
reduced to the confines of any particular territory. For as Scripture said of
Torah, ‘Its measure is greater than the earth.’”
In an interview with Lawrence Bush, then editor of Jewish Currents, Gendler was
asked about his skepticism about Zionism which, Bush noted, “is particularly
unusual for a contemporary Jewish book.” Gendler responds: “Yes, and it’s the one
Jews seem most concerned about: Israel. So let me say that I am overwhelmed and
delighted by the outpouring of scholarship and culture and sheer fruitfulness of
Jews living together and sustaining institutions in that land, but I have
personally not found visiting Israel a positive experience…My painful feeling has
been that Israel has become a too-available substitute for Deity or even values
in defining Jews and Judaism. Israel-centrism is a great danger for Jewish
identity, and the behavior of what I have seen since the 1967 war called
‘imperial Israel’ is a great danger to Jewish values…. You know the number of
non-Zionist Jews in the American Jewish community is quite sizable. And in my
congregations, people who shared my discomfort with Israel, especially with its
displacement of the Palestinians, had a place to come.”
Rabbi Gendler rejected the idea that Israel was the “homeland” of all Jews and
that those living elsewhere were in “exile,” and in a “diaspora.” He writes that,
“The entire notion of ‘diaspora’ leads to the view that the most significant
Jewish fact of my life is my not living in Israel. Subjectively, however, I find
that this fact hardly matters at all. I live my Jewish life in this place and
time…My life in America is far freer than it would be in Israel…Were I an Israeli
with concerns about life and politics in Israel extending to the situation of the
Palestinians, and were I to undertake there direct action of the kind in which
many of us in the U.S. participated during the civil rights movement…would I find
the atmosphere more respectful of civil disobedience than I did here? I think
not.”
In assessing contemporary Israel, Gendler urges readers to “…keep in mind such
elements as a state-authorized Chief Rabbinate refusing recognition of a
religious conversion overseen by as eminent an Orthodox rabbi as Haskell
Lookstein, the continuing indifference in Israel, without any serious move toward
exploration, of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, repeated in 2007 and 2017; and
the recently passed Israeli law enshrining to right of self-determination in
Israel ‘as unique to the Jewish people.’”
Everett Gendler lived a long and productive life. He was active until the end and
he will live on through the important words he has left with us, and through his
example of involvement in efforts to improve the world. His universal Jewish
vision came long before Zionism and will live on into the future.
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