Rabbi Emanuel Rose

Cohn: Let’s start out just quickly reviewing your general education and what it was like. Did you enjoy it?
ROSE: You mean going back to the early days? I was raised on Long Island, New York. I went through the public-school system. High school also was there, at Jamaica High School. At the time, I graduated high school my parents moved to Chicago because my father had a new congregation there. I went to Cincinnati because my brother and cousin were finishing up at the University of Cincinnati and going to enter into rabbinic school there. So I went to the University of Cincinnati and then on to rabbinic school. I completed rabbinic school. I had a very good Hebrew education when I was a youngster and through high school so I completed the five-year program in four years. I had student congregations, one year in Baltimore, Maryland and in my senior year I had a student congregation in Greenville, South Carolina. That meant, when you say you had a student congregation in our last two years, we would travel two weekends a month to our student congregations and conduct their work. I was able to fly from Cincinnati to both of those congregations so I could leave Friday morning and come back Sunday night. A lot of my fellow students had to leave by train on Thursday night and couldn’t get back until Monday morning. I was very fortunate. It was done by lottery so I just lucked out that way. The one in Baltimore was sort of a beginning congregation that was struggling. It was on the east side of Baltimore to have a congregation. I lived in the house where they also met for services. In Greenville, South Carolina, they were a long-developed congregation that had had many rabbis over the years but they couldn’t always afford a full-time rabbi so the year that I went there as a student rabbi (and I had a wonderful time there)

Cohn: What was your brother’s name?
ROSE: David. David Hillel.

Cohn: And he was also a rabbi.
ROSE: Yes, he was also a rabbi. My cousin was also a rabbi. He was in the same class with my brother, Herbert Rose.

Cohn: When did you realize that you wanted to be a rabbi?
ROSE: Hmm. After I got finished wanting to be a policeman and a fireman. I always wanted to be a rabbi. I wasn’t pushed in that direction in my home, I really wasn’t. I just liked it.

Cohn: What do you think were the influences that got you to that place?
ROSE: First of all, I had a very observant, Jewish home, number one. And as I said before I had a very good Hebrew education. I went to Hebrew School after regular school first for four afternoons a week and then we modernized so it got reduced to two afternoons a week. Then in high school I went to a Hebrew High School, which was again, after regular school. That met three times a week, two in my own synagogue (there were branches all around the city of New York) and then on Sunday we got together from all over New York City in this Florence Marshall Hebrew High School and we spent from 9:00 to 3:00 in the afternoon in this Hebrew atmosphere.

In addition to that, I went to Hebrew-speaking camp in Wisconsin for three years when I was in high school. I got into that because one of the teachers, my father was a rabbi and one of his Hebrew teachers became the head counselor of this Hebrew speaking camp, Camp Ramah, in Wisconsin. As a result of that connection I went to that Hebrew speaking camp. For three years of high school I spent the whole summer at Hebrew speaking camp. So that is a lot of influence. In addition to that, my Uncle Morris, who was also a rabbi (I mentioned my cousin Herbert Rose who was in the same rabbinic class as my brother. His father was Rabbi Morris Rose). Morris Rose was a very interesting personality. He was a part of the Revisionist Zionist Organization. This was a right-wing organization, in Jewish terms. They ran a camp, this was before Israel became a state, named Camp Betar of the Revisionist Movement. I was a kid at the time and my father wanted to take me and my brother up to visit his brother Morris at his camp. They played rough games because they were essentially training upper high school children to go and fight in Israel because they knew a fight was coming. So they trained them there at the camp in New Jersey. And the day that I was there they were playing a well-known game, Capture the Flag. They let me play with them, even though I was a kid. The Capture the Flag that I had known about was fun but it was sort of easy-going. They played rough. They were preparing for war. They were not just playing games. They let me play with them even though I was a little kid. So I was in that atmosphere for a very brief time. It was interesting. My uncle Morris had a fascinating life in the Revisionist Zionist Organization. Actually he was one of the two top leaders of the Organization in the United States.

Cohn: That was going to be my next question. What were your feelings about Zionism then and today? You were certainly “dumped” into it.
ROSE: I guess I was “dumped” into it. Of course my whole family background was pro the establishment of a Jewish state. Of course at the time I knew certain things about it, but not much at that age. I’ll tell you one example. I was in high school and I somehow had some older friends. My best friend was in his first year at Columbia University. I remember he invited me up to Columbia one day because someone was going to be there from what was not yet the state of Israel (he was actually there, I found out, to try to recruit college kids to go and fight for Israel). It was really quite a startling experience because I had never been in to that depth where all my friends were essentially being invited to come to Israel and fight. That was really something. The speaker (I am trying to remember his name. It will come to me after we are done today) became one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence of Israel. That had, of course a very heavy impact on me. [He later remembers the name: Moshe Shertok. “That was his name before Israel became a state, but as was true with so many of the Israeli leaders, they changed their names when Israel became a state. He changed it to Shaaret.”]

And of course the Holocaust was at that point. Interestingly, there wasn’t much talk by Jewish leaders about the Holocaust. That is really very interesting. First of all, not all the facts were known as we got to know them very quickly. They sort of didn’t want to talk about it in front of the children, these horrors that my parents were learning about. And they didn’t talk about it very much at all. Psychologically, that is a very interesting thing. So when I was old enough and began to really learn about it, it began hitting me like a ton of bricks. Then, of course, I became very aggressively supportive of the State of Israel after it became a state and remained so my entire life. Now as I look back I know that Israel is not perfect (I used to think that they were perfect). I began to realize, and I can’t remember where I picked this up: all national states are involved in unethical acts and unethical behaviors. I began to accept the reality that, for the purposes of survival, Israel also has been involved in some unethical acts. That added a dimension to my understanding of the dynamics of Israel because while I would like to hold Israel to a higher standard than other nations I realized that if I insisted on holding Israel to a higher definition (which I would hope one day it would be able to be) it would be tying one hand behind Israel’s back in a practical way. So I sort of had to live with both realities. The absolute need for a Jewish state and the ethical concerns that I have now after all these years. And frankly Marge, we are now living witnesses to what has just happened in three different Arab countries, the revolutions that have taken place in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, and now it is spreading to Libya. There were some protests in Iran a couple of years ago, which we all remember. If all of these things come together, I do have some rising concern for Israel’s future. Now I have a growing intense concern because we don’t know what is going to be the result of these Arab rebellions. So far they have not been anti-Israel and primarily not anti-US but they have been essentially people screaming to have their own economic rights. It just puts me a little on-edge because I don’t know if Israel will be able to get through this unscathed.

In talking and thinking about Israel and what my feeling were and became and so forth, I became aware of this organization called the American Council for Judaism, which was opposed to Israel’s existence. I fought them bitterly every time I could. I did get to know a couple of philosophical leaders of that movement early on in my career and then I began reading some of their stuff.

Cohn: Do you remember their names?
ROSE: One of them was Irving Reicher. He was a rabbi in San Francisco. Another one was Rabbi Stanley Brav from Cincinnati, who was a wonderful, wonderful rabbi in Cincinnati. He was not a professor at Hebrew Union College but he was a rabbi of a wonderful congregation there. He was one of the most beautiful human beings I had ever met in my life and I began doing some checking on stuff that he had written. He was concerned about the reality, the historic reality that I mentioned before, that if there were to be an Israel it would inevitably have to be engaged in unethical activities as a nation in order to survive. Some of these leaders did not want a Jewish state to have to do that. It wasn’t that they were keeping away from their Judaism. Stanley Brav was a great rabbi in Cincinnati. He was a wonderful human being. I think he may have been a pacifist. I can’t remember that part. His attitude was totally different from those people who didn’t want to be identified as Jews, which is why so many people were members of the American Council for Judaism. He had a philosophical view. He didn’t want a Jewish state to have to engage in unethical activity that all nations in the world have to be engaged in in order to survive. Now it may have been naïve, but you couldn’t ever accuse him of anything other than naiveté. I think that was true of a good number of people who were members of the American Council – definitely not all of them because I knew others who really were trying to run away. They didn’t want to be identified as Jewish. Very complicated stuff.

Another thing that happened when I was in high school. The United States sort of quietly helped the pre-Israelis get a hold of weapons. They were shipped out of the harbor in New York. Whoever controlled the harbor in New York was told to turn their eyes in a different direction. College kids were down loading weapons onto ships in the harbor at New York City!

Cohn: I never knew that.
ROSE: They were sending guns over to Israel. This is absolutely true. And the US State Department turned a blind eye to it and let it happen.

Cohn: Did you serve in the military?
ROSE: No, never. I missed it; it is kind of interesting. My brother didn’t miss it. My brother and my cousin were ahead of me in rabbinic school. At that point the Korean War was going on. Clergymen were never drafted. It was done through the organizations – Catholic organization, Jewish organizations, etc. It was done through the National Jewish Welfare Board and during the Korean War they still needed chaplains so they would let the rabbinic schools know how many chaplains they needed and then that is the way it happened. My brother David and cousin Herb both went into the Air Force. A couple of years later, when I was ordained, they didn’t need any rabbis anymore. My brother, interestingly, was assigned to the Air Force Academy in Denver (when it was still in Denver) but at the same time that they were building the new Air Force Chapel in Colorado Springs, which exists to this day. My brother was a consultant to building that chapel. In one chapel they had to house all of the religious groups. He gave the Jewish input as to what would be required for a Jewish service in that chapel so that it would be comfortable for Jews to go there. But they didn’t need me. I went out to visit him while I was still a rabbinic student.

Cohn: No about your adult life. When and how did you meet Lorraine?
ROSE: My first congregation, after I was ordained, was Temple Emanuel in New York City. Temple Emanuel, for those who may not know it, was at that time the largest and most famous Jewish congregation in America. It was on 5th Avenue and 65th Street where it still is. I was Assistant Rabbi there for three years before I came to Portland. In my last year and a half, right across the street from Temple Emanuel on 65th Street, was the home of the Reform Movement, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, as it was called. We recently changed the name of that organization to the Union of Reform Judaism. Lorraine and her twin sister were working in that building for one of my closest friends, Rabbi Irv Herman. One day he called me up and said, “Come on over here. I want you to see something.” So I went over and that is when he pointed Lorraine out to me and that is how we met. And I will never forget “life’s embarrassing moments.” I was in the office with my friend Irv Herman and when I walked out I left a note on Lorraine’s desk “Would you like to have dinner tonight?” And she said, “You mean him?” meaning Irv. And I said, “No, you.” [laughs] That is how it happened. I came home that night to my apartment and a friend was staying with me. Once in a while some of my rabbinic colleagues would stop off in New York City and they would stay in my apartment. And I said to him, “I’m going to marry that girl.” That is how it happened. Little by little it emerged. She had come over to the States with her twin sister. Her family, I think, always regretted it because her father wanted them to have a very strong experience here in the United States for six months. Lorraine didn’t really want to come. She had worked for the Israeli Embassy in London, which is another fascinating story. She really wanted to go to Israel and not come to the United States. But in that generation, if your father said you were going to the United States, you went to the United States. But a little bit about Lorraine: she worked for the Israeli Embassy in London. She had a great experience. She worked down in the bowels of the Embassy, which is where all the security stuff was. She just loved working there and met some fascinating people, really very significant people, ultimately, in Israel’s history. One of them I will mention, her immediate boss was a man by the name of Yuval Neeman. He was an outstanding scientist. Ultimately he paid for Lorraine to have Hebrew lessons because he was so anxious for her to go to Israel. He became the father of Israel’s atomic program. Everybody knew his name. I met him once. We don’t need to take time to talk about that.

Cohn: How many children do you have?
ROSE: We have four children, three queens and a king, in that order.

Cohn: Will you give me their names and their dates of birth?
ROSE: Yes. Melanie, 1961, Tanya in 1962, Laura in 1964, and Joshua was born in 1970.

Cohn: How was their Jewish education different from yours? And how was their Jewish life different from yours?
ROSE: Well, of course they were all raised in a rabbinic home. They all have wonderful, intense, Jewish feelings. Times change and history changes; it wasn’t the same turbulent, post-Holocaust, beginning of Israel period in which I was raised. It was a much calmer period in Jewish lifetime. But they had the Jewish camp experience. They went to our camp in California, the camp run by our movement. Obviously we were an observant home. They came to services a lot as children, and so on. Wonderful kids, all of them. No father could hope to have more loving children.

Cohn: As a father and a rabbi, what do you feel you have imparted to your children?
ROSE: I hope I imparted to them a love for Jewish teaching and the wisdom of Judaism and pride in being Jewish. I know they have that. And a love for the state of Israel. I know they all have that. As I said, it is a different kind of a time because they are exposed to so many other forces, which I’m sure you understand. In our lifetime today there are so many different options out there. They are involved in so much more than I was as a child, in broad community stuff, which they are involved with today. So it is not the same but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have those basic loves and attachments.

Cohn: What adjustments do you feel you made after moving to Portland?
ROSE: Our move to Portland (we got married three months after I started in Portland-I went back to London and we got married and then started our lives here). I think the most difficult thing was an adjustment to a small town by both of us. Lorraine wanted to go out once for cappuccino or a latte or something like that and all they served in Portland was straight coffee. That is no joke. You couldn’t get anything other than straight coffee in Portland. And the big restaurant that everybody went to was the hamburger place.

Cohn: Yaws.
ROSE: That’s rights. Yaws Hamburgers. That was the big place. But little by little we got to know Portland and love it. It was a difficult rabbinic beginning for me because I was very confused. They purposefully brought out a young man to be the rabbi here (and it had had some very famous rabbis – Stephen Wise was the rabbi here, Jonah B. Wise was the rabbi here – which was one of the things that piqued my interest in interviewing here) but when I came here I remember a confrontation I had with the first president and the executive board. I said, “Look, you wanted to have a young man. I am a young man. I have come out here with all kinds of new ideas and every time I give you an idea the answer is, ‘no’.” That was very painful at the beginning for me. But fortunately, after a couple of years the leadership changed. They began adjusting to a new rabbi, a young rabbi. There were some younger people on the board who took over the places of the…

Cohn: Who was the president at that time?
ROSE: When I first came it was Leland Lowenson. He was very devoted to the Temple but in terms of taking on new ideas, that was very difficult for him. Norman Savinar was the next president. He really heard me. He made all the difference in my rabbinic career. I have said all of this publicly (when he died, as a matter of fact, I spoke at his funeral and I told this story). He saw to it that things changed. He said, “As long as he is our rabbi he is going to have my support.” And that began to turn things around. The executive committee began supporting me and the ideas that I had. It took a couple of years, a painful couple of years but it worked, ultimately and it became a wonderful experience. We began really knowing a couple of people in the community well.

Cohn: I was going to ask you about that because when you came to Portland, as when I came to Portland, it was a very close-knit community. They really weren’t welcoming to outsiders. How did you feel about your acceptance in the outside community, and socially?
ROSE: Well I’ll tell you. Do you mean in the Jewish community? Within the congregation? Ultimately there were a few families that reached out to us, but beyond a few who became very good friends… there was a group that I can see with some perspective now. There was a group of about 300 families who were interrelated friend-wise, with a leadership on the board. There is an old term that used to be used in sociology: a “Sociogram.” If you would draw a sociogram you took “X” number of people and had the circles of their closest friends and then you saw all the interconnections that way. If a sociogram had been done there would have been about 300 families that were sort of connected in a variety of different ways, as friends or family. I think that group was really the bedrock of this institution for my entire rabbinate here. We eventually were invited to their parties.

When you talk about a best friend. What do you mean by a best friend? I had loads of really close friends in that group so it is not that any one or two or ten were very close friends. That whole batch we had a wonderful relationship with and they were all part of this big group. Then, of course, when you are friends with a lot of them the reputation would spread and then you became friends with the rest of them. That is about it. About 300 families or so. Portland was very different during those years, I think. I think there has been a big change. With the growth of Portland there has been a big change. A lot of new-comers, such as I was when I first came, but a lot of them, in numbers, began coming into Portland. They didn’t have roots here. Didn’t have family relationships here. I think that has made a difference in the whole city, in the whole community, and in the congregation as well. It is not that close-knit group that once existed. But there are both good things and bad things associated with that. It is not all negative by any means. And it is not all positive. It has been an interesting experience to examine all of those things. I remember when there was once the attitude extant in Portland of, “Come and visit us but don’t stay.” [laughs] We didn’t want to sully the beauty of the place. And that was a theme of Governor Tom McCall.

Then, in terms of involvement in the city, I always found involvement in the city easy.

Cohn: Well I’m going to ask you about that later.
ROSE: OK.

[END OF PART 1]

[Part 2 – 3/2/2011]

Cohn: I’d like to discuss your life as a rabbi. What was your involvement outside the community? In other words, what movements did you become involved in?
ROSE: Do you mean before I became a rabbi?

Cohn: No, I mean in this community?
ROSE: I’m not sure I understand that question.

Cohn: Your involvement outside of the synagogue.
ROSE: Oh boy, that is an interesting question, Marge. First of all I want to start out by saying that I have always found Portland (and Oregon but Portland particularly) to be extremely open to anybody who is new in the community. If anybody comes to town, forget now that I’m a rabbi, and wants to get involved in something, they can do it. You just get involved. I don’t care what it is. That is a wonderful characteristic of Portland. While, in time, I guess someone needs or wants to prove themselves, the fact is that it is open to newcomers and always has been. This relates to me because I had so many social and political interests that I was able to get involved in any organizations that I thought were important to me. And I did. Very early on I started getting involved in so many different areas, from political work to mental health work, the child-guidance clinic I was involved in, Oregon Mental Health Association I became chairman of. I have such a long list I can’t even remember.

Cohn: I remember many years ago you were in some movement having to do with Malcolm X. I forget who was there as the guest speaker but I remember distinctly that you were there.
ROSE: Yes, well all the Civil Rights stuff we were deeply involved in for many years. When I say, “we” I am thinking of some of the non-Jewish leaders in the community. Some of us particularly were in the forefront of this racial prejudice stuff. We were involved in a very organized way. There were three, four, or five of us right in the middle of so many events of the decade beginning in the mid- ‘60s until the Civil Rights laws were passed. When Linden Johnson was president after John F. Kennedy died he came through with this voting rights act. It was a turbulent period in American life. It was just one thing after another. The Kennedy killings and Martin Luther King’s killing, the Kent State riots, and riots on the campuses over the Viet Nam War.

Cohn: Oh you were very outspoken.
ROSE: Yes, very early on. I was actually one of the first in the country that spoke out against the war. I remember when I gave a sermon on it, the Oregonian printed a report on what I had said. The country was just not there. As a country we were so not catching up to the reality of what that war was about. Whoever wrote the article, that mood was reflected. It was like someone had come here from Mars. But it wasn’t all like that. There were a few voices in Washington, like Senator Morse, our own senator from Oregon. He was opposed to the war very early on. I have to acknowledge that was before I got involved. He was an agitating senator in Washington, talk about “mavericks.”

Cohn: Some of these things that you got involved in, were there repercussions from the congregation?
ROSE: You know, one of the wonderful things about being the rabbi of this congregation has been no matter who disagreed with me on a specific issue, my right to be involved and to speak from the pulpit on it was never challenged. Except one time and, interestingly that was over the Vietnam War talk. Someone wrote a letter challenging my right to speak from the pulpit on that kind of an issue. The board gave an answer, which then set the stage for what I just said. The board wrote, “We may not agree with the rabbi, but we will not challenge his right to speak at the pulpit.”

Cohn: Who was the president then?
ROSE: It was either, I think it was Norman Savinar but I can’t remember exactly. The interesting thing is that the person who wrote that letter, there has never been anyone with whom I have had more political agreements than anyone in this entire country. We just agree on everything. Only he was agitated about something I don’t know. But this principle of freedom of the pulpit has been a very important principle in Reform Judaism. This congregation stood behind me 100%. The other thing about it is that from a rabbinic standpoint I felt that I have that right and that with that right comes responsibility. So I always was very careful in my research on all of these controversial issues so that I couldn’t be attacked for incorrect or inaccurate statements. Interpretive things, sure, people disagree on that, but I had to do my homework. That was my obligation. On one side we have freedom but freedom does not mean you don’t have responsibility. We talk about that in society all the time. So I went out of my way to make sure I knew what I was talking about on these issues. As I say, I was involved in so many things.

Cohn: What was your favorite involvement, do you think?
ROSE: That is interesting. You mean outside of the congregation? I think my favorite involvement has to be my work with these other, Christian leaders in the community that was sort of an on-going thing. I will mention a few of their names. Bishop Paul Waldschmidt, number one. He was a dear, dear friend. I will tell you an interesting story about him after this. There was Bob Bonthius, who was senior minister at Westminster Presbyterian Church. Interestingly, they couldn’t handle his liberal politics and he eventually left here and it was a great loss to the community. Then there was Father Ed Blevin. He was a wonderful friend. He used to come here on Kol Nidre every year. There was Dr. Bill Cate, who was the president of the local council of churches. We used to do everything together. That was an ongoing involvement. We also had a TV show. For eight years Channel 8 had us on for a TV talk show. It was during the day. We used to record every week and we circulated who would be the chair of that discussion. That went on for eight years and then they wanted to move us to an evening taping time because advertising was becoming something much more important and we weren’t a show that had advertisements so they switched us to evenings, which we couldn’t handle. There were so many nights that I was out because of congregational work. I couldn’t put in another night out from my family. So it was not one event but it was an ongoing thing.

Cohn: What were the positive and negative factors to your becoming a public figure?
ROSE: Again, I have to say that whenever you speak out publicly on issues you are going to get hate mail and that sort of thing. Basically it was very positive being involved in all of these issues. I do have to say one thing that was different then from the way it is now. In the ‘60s and the ‘70s and even into the mid ‘80s, the local newspaper (meaning the Oregonian) was always interested. It had a religious editor and they were always interested in what religious leaders had to say. We were quoted very often. The result of that was that we acquired a large audience all over the state. I think that was very helpful because we were speaking about views that people identified with but didn’t necessarily hear about from their organizations or from their synagogues or churches. There was a broader audience (or if you cut the ego part of it) more people heard what you said. You would run into people and they would comment on it. So involvement was mostly good. I have very few negative memories about it.

Oh, but I didn’t mention: I guess somehow there was a decision made [at the Oregonian] not to have a religion editor anymore. So then the religious page at the Oregonian became ads for church services and what time they were. They were no longer interested in what we had to say. I don’t know what was behind that but it was certainly an absence of the religious voice in the community that has never reappeared. I mean, for the most superficial things, but not for controversial issues. They are really not interested in what any of us have to say anymore.

Cohn: Is there anything else that you want to talk about in your response to world changes? How do these world changes reflect on your synagogue?
ROSE: I would say I’m referring not so much to world changes. The changes that really have taken place are the general, societal, attitudinal changes. And this is an interesting thing, Marge. Attitudes towards institutions have changed. That started in the late ‘60s, actually. If you go to the roots of it, it was the late ‘60s when that generation finally rose up that was fighting the Vietnam War. Then there were the Kent State shootings. Therefore the college campuses were broiling. Little by little, that generation began attacking government institutions (verbally, not physically); attacking the concept of the centrality of power. They really began fighting against all institutions. Finally that reached religious institutions. They were no longer going to accept strong leadership coming from religious institutions. That is where big social change took place and it began reflecting itself in our own community as well. If we go back to the early ‘70s right up to our own day, in our own community in Portland, we have so many institutions. We used to joke that in Jewish life, everybody has an opinion. There are enough organizations for everybody to be president of at least one in their life time. Well the same thing has happened right here in Portland. We have so many Jewish institutions, so many synagogues. Every time somebody has an inclination to go in one direction rather than the way that the institution they are a part of is going, they start something new. So we have a multiplicity of institutions, which, personally, I think is strangling the community financially. That is what has happened. It was a whole societal change of people not taking power anymore and accepting strong centrality of anything. It wasn’t always done to fight. But it was more a feeling of, “We can’t have our way there so we are going to do our own thing.”

Cohn: What are there now, 19 congregations in this city?
ROSE: I understand it is something like that. And also, we have a lot of major Jewish institutions. I am not talking about synagogues now. I am talking about Federation and the Center and we have a lot of other organizations. I think that, too, is strangling the community. We have to get that straightened out. This is a message to anybody who reads this someday in the archives: we have to get our act together. Financially, the need will force itself on the community to somehow do a little better coordination of how things are done so that we can survive and maintain all of the good stuff that does go on but in a more financially efficient way. It can’t continue this way. Everyone is fighting to survive.

Cohn: As a slight off-shoot of this. There are groups that are becoming quite powerful that are not really part of the Jewish community and yet claim to be. For instance, I am speaking of Jews for Jesus or Christians for the survival of Israel. How do you feel these are impacting our community and how do you feel personally about these?
ROSE: I am very leery of that group. I think it is nice but they are hard-core evangelical groups that have their Christian reasons for being supportive of Israel. When you really get deep into it, it is not very complimentary to the perpetuation of Jewish life. Ultimately they want all the Jews to be in Israel for their own reasons, their own theological reasons. So I have always kept my distance. I know some groups in the Jewish community have welcomed them and have them participate in things. I am glad they exist on one level. Anything that helps Israel is fine with me. But I don’t think there is another issue on which I agree with them. They are so fundamentalist in everything.

Cohn: Have there been decisions you have made on which you have changed your mind? For instance, inter-marriage. I know this was a painful decision for you and we discussed it at the time you were in that painful decision. Do you still feel that way?
ROSE: There of course have been issues on which I have changed my mind. First of all, let me ask you a question. Are you going to be asking me about changes in the synagogue over the years? That is an important part of my rabbinate.

Cohn: I will be asking you at the end of the interview to talk about anything that we have not yet discusses, so there will be time for that.
ROSE: So now we are… There were two, extremely complex decisions. No, I am going to put in a third one. The first one was about the nature of our temple itself. When I came here we were a Classical Reform congregation. I felt the need to bring the congregation into the central mainstream of Reform Judaism. In order to do that I had to bring the board along with me in terms of changing the style of the services. Ultimately there was a new prayer book (there have subsequently been three). Also the style of prayer, the music that we used underwent a couple of major changes. We had a wonderful male soloist. And we used a choir. We used to use a full choir for every service. And we had a couple of wonderful, superb singers. First of all we had Dean Lieber, who was a great tenor. And then Bud Hjorth [pronounced “Yort”], who was a baritone. I wanted to bring the soloists down onto the pulpit. That was a bit controversial because he wasn’t Jewish. But he did such a magnificent interpretive job of our musical program in temple that people got to know and love Bud.

Then I got to the stage where I felt, “We now have cantors and it is about time that we make that change and bring in a cantor.” I spoke to the board about that. I was at Temple Emanu-El as an assistant rabbi before I came to Portland. That was, obviously, the flagship Reform congregation in the country, Classical Reform. But there was a group of Classical Reform congregations that always had cantors. So Emanu-El in New York had a great cantorial history. I had to convince our board that this was a great idea. Well, just at that time, about 25 years ago, Dr. David Schiff came to be a professor of music at Reed College. We heard about from my rabbi from Emanu-El who called to tell me about Dr. David Schiff coming out. And he said, “and his wife has just graduated from our cantorial school in New York and she has got a beautiful voice. Maybe you will want to hire her.” So I spoke to the board about it. They provided funds for me to go back to New York and audition her, which I did. Then I was able to convince the board to bring her on part-time. Cantor Judith Schiff. Then I said, “I think we really need this to be a full-time position.” They said, “OK. You raise the money for it.” [laughs] So I went to a few people (I have never told Judy Schiff who they are and I never will) and I was able to raise the money and make it a full-time job. We included it in our budget. That was a major, major change in the congregation. The new direction had been established and firmly set.

Then we began having some changes (really this was before Judy came) in the music. That made a dramatic change in the style of music that we were using. If you compare today what we have compared to what we had then, it is a different world of Jewish music.

Cohn: You said there were three things that you thought…
ROSE: Yes. But that was a long period of evolution and compromise. It was an adjustment for a lot of people. The second was the mixed-marriage situation, which you alluded to. That was a very, very difficult thing. I was wrestling with myself for a while on it. I realized very early on that my position was that I would not officiate for mixed-marriages. What I really began to see was that children that I graduated in our school would go away to college and get married and we would never see them again. They didn’t get married here and I would never see them again. So I decided that this was not a very healthful approach to the future of Jewish life. We wanted more Jewish children. So I carefully thought out a policy, which I carried out my whole life, which actually I continue on today (even though I am emeritus, I do occasional ceremonies). The conditions were strong. Everything short of conversion. They had to go to the Introduction to Judaism class, which Rabbi Stampfer, Rabbi Geller and myself had started up very early on. It was a wonderful thing and continues on to this day. People who are interested in getting married attend that for the most part. So I had the requirement to attend that class, and to attend services on, hopefully at least once a month for a year so that they were really exposed. And also they would have to meet with me privately many times throughout the year. They would have to promise to raise children as Jews and also the non-Jewish partner could not have any formal religion in his life (namely that would be a Christian religion). That could not be an important part of his or her life. Then I would officiate at their marriage. That was the policy that I adopted then and continued on throughout my career. I think it was a wise policy. The interesting thing is that the non-Jewish partner made a commitment, and it really meant something to them, making that commitment. They may have come from strong Christian traditions where creed was a critical belief thing that they had to accept in their earlier years and I think they translated that when they made a commitment to me that it was a commitment and they followed through on it. Oh, the other commitment was that they had to join the congregation. So the result was that we had more Jewish children coming in. They were going to get married whether I said yes or no. There are very few I am sure who, if a rabbi said no to them, wouldn’t get married. So we ended up having more Jewish children. The commitments were there. It was wonderful.

We also started an adult b’nei mitzvah class, which continues on to this day, where non-Jewish partners actually took a conversion class. I hate the word “conversion.” They became Jews during the course of time. That was wonderful. While that was always my hope, and I said that to the couples when they came in to see me, that I would never make this a requirement, that you had to accept Judaism. But I would hope that one day with all the range of exposure to this that you will want to formally look into Judaism. And it has worked that way a lot. And when it hasn’t, they have still maintained their commitments for the most part.

Cohn: I am sure there have been some who raised their hackles about not having anything Christian in the home, like a Christmas tree. I know there was a lot of scuttlebutt in the community about that.
ROSE: Yes, and I sort of threw out a percentage to the board. I said, “I don’t know how this is going to work but I would guess we are probably going to have a 60% to 70% success rate. To me that would be success.” I presented this whole thing to the board. Someone on the board raised his hand and wanted to make a motion to support the rabbi’s decision. I said, “I really appreciate that, but I don’t want a vote on this. This is a rabbinic decision. This is not a decision that a board can make. I am making this decision. I appreciate your support. Thank you very much.” And that was the policy of the congregation. We wrote a letter to the congregation explaining the policy. That was the second major thing.

The third, of course, was in the area of homosexuality, gay and lesbian relationships and so on. The whole thing started on two fronts. First of all, within the Reform Movement generally, there was a motion that came up at the National Convention of the Reform Movement, which at that time was called the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. It is now called Union of Reform Judaism. There was a technical reason for the change. I wish I could remember when but I don’t. A motion came up on the floor. In Reform Judaism there are three major institutions. One is the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which is the congregational organization. That is where lay people are. That is their part of the Reform Movement. And while it is headed and administrated by rabbis, it is the lay board that is the important part. Then there is the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which speaks for itself – that is rabbis. Then there is the Hebrew Union College, which is the seminary. Those are the three groups that make up Reform Judaism. I remember that at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations the head of the Union at the time was a very dear friend of mine, the late Rabbi Alex Schindler. Through him and the board mechanisms there was a motion brought up to support gay/lesbian relationships. I remember at the time I was engaged in a discussion on the floor. There are 3000 delegates that go to that meeting and we had a discussion on the floor about it. I remember having a friendly disagreement with some of my friends. I said, “Look, this is not a motion that should at this time be before this organization before it is decided upon by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. This cannot be a lay-led issue. It has to be a theological issue. I really would like to see this referred to the floor of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Then let it come back here for discussion. I am totally in favor of this, but I think that procedurally, it should come from a different way.” And that is what happened ultimately. It went to the CCAR and then to the Union and it was adopted. On one side of it there was an institutional part of this. All of the steps that came along with it. First there was accepting homosexuality. Then there was accepting the relationships. Then it was saying yes it OK for rabbis to marry people. It was an evolution of positions on the part of the rabbinic group. There were a lot of wonderful papers written. It is a very open organization. There is one huge paper that was written about whether or not gays or lesbians should be ordained. That was the institutional part.

But the personal part, as a rabbi, in Reform Judaism we don’t take orders from the Central Conference of American Rabbis. It is a guiding organization for us. That guidance is very important for us. We usually, I would say 95% of the rabbis are in line with what the positions are at the Central Conference. But we are not bound by the decisions that they make. Every rabbi had to deal with it by him or herself (when we got to the point of ordaining women as rabbis – that was a separate issue). So I went through this process of whether or not I was going to marry gay and lesbian couples and I ultimately came to the decision, of course, that the answer is yes. And also there was a matter of naming children in the congregation that came from gay and lesbian families. I think the first time I named a child from a gay/lesbian family I thought probably a third of the congregation would faint. [laughs] Yes, because nobody was used to this. They were very nervous too. They were very self-conscious. And I did it and it went just fine. Now nobody gives it a second thought. Oh, I think that is not true. I think people still wrestle with it in many ways. But in terms of my dealing with it I think I worked it through over a period of times and that is where I am.

Cohn: Let’s talk about what you consider to be the highlights of your career. Are there things that you would like to bring into this interview that you think were so important?
ROSE: Yes, there are a lot of things. First of all let’s talk about education. In the field of education, we worked through, over the years, a whole series of different approaches to how we were going to run the school. We finally reached the point where I said we need to have a professional educator. Education is far too important. I don’t care how dedicated lay-people are, with whatever experience, they are not formally trained educated. And we had some dedicated people who were members of the congregation but I felt we really needed professional educators. So ultimately we did transition to having a professional educator and I am thrilled with that. It made all the difference in the development of our school. Then there was the development of early childhood education. We started that up and it has become a wonderful part of our congregation. Because you think, you take a child at a young age. They can learn a hell of a lot when they are three, and four, and five. So we started what has turned out to be an eminently successful early childhood education program. We had a separate director for that.

We always had a strong emphasis on the camp program down at Camp Swig. For so many years there were a lot of high school programs that were part of the Camp Swig program. We sent them. I developed scholarship funds, through members’ generosity, and one of the members of our congregation was intense on camps. I’m not going to mention any names. She was enormously helpful and then I had to raise money on the side to make it possible for every youngster to go to Camp Swig. We had significant scholarships sending our high school kids down to Camp Swig. Then, somehow in the communities all over the country (there are many camps in the Reform Movement all over the country. Ours was Camp Swig in California. Today there is Camp Kalsman up in Washington). Somehow, socially, or sociologically, many less high school kids went to camp over a period of time. I guess they were working, or doing something in connection with preparing for college. So less and less numbers in high school were attending our camps around the country. The programs switched. The focus of the programs began going lower and lower, grade-wise; there were less and less high school programs. I was sorry to see that happen. I felt that when the high schoolers went it was really an important part of their growth. How much sophisticated stuff can you teach to seven and eight and nine years old? Not that it is not important – it is very important- but it is a different level of approach to teaching. Concurrently with that I emphasized the development of our high school program. The high school program was critical to me in terms of how it developed educationally. I was very involved in that. I taught both the confirmation class and senior high school class. I used some very sophisticated materials in both of those grades because I wanted to see a very sophisticated group of children leaving the congregation with a solid education. They may not have known all of the rituals of Orthodox Jewish life, but theologically and “religion”-wise, they knew more about Jewish law and the history of Jewish law than anybody in the community.

Cohn: And also I think that Birthright and taking these young people to Israel has been very impactful.
ROSE: That was going to be the next thing that I mentioned. Our program started before Birthright. I was convinced that we needed to send our children for an Israel experience. There were two components to this. Someone left a big endowment for Jewish education in the city. I’m not going to get into the particulars of how this evolved because it was a very painful kind of an experience. But out of it I was able to have guaranteed a third of the funds from that endowment for a program to send our entering seniors to Israel for the summer. That had a two-fold purpose. One, I had to raise additional money, because the money from the endowment wasn’t enough. We wanted to give a basic amount, the majority of the cost of the trip. As they became more expensive the parent had to pay more money. Almost all of our junior went to Israel for a summer of study. Some of them decided to spend the whole year in Israel, their junior year. But most of them spent the summer. That became a critical part of our educational program as well. I am not sure where it is today. That was something that we did before the Birthright thing came, which is a college program. I was very proud of that.

The other thing we did was we have a tremendous social justice program – social action, based in Washington, D.C. It is the Religious Action Center in Washington. I raised money for that so that we could send our Confirmation class back for a long weekend at the Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C. And when I say a long weekend I mean they left Thursday and they came back Monday. The Center had that kind of a program for Confirmation class students but it was essentially feeding an east coast population. We were the first west coast congregation to break through and send our kids, because it was that much more expensive. I was proud of that. We have all of our Confirmation classes go back; to this day that happens. You have to fill out a questionnaire before they go to Washington, for them to make all the hotel arrangements and so forth. You also have to put down who your representatives are, both congressmen and senators. They would arrange for everyone who attended the weekend session, on the last day they would go in and lobby their congressmen and senators on a particular issue that they were brought up to speed on. It was a great program and I am thrilled that it is continuing on to this day under Rabbi [Michael] Cahana.

Cohn: After 50 years at Beth Israel, how did you feel about retiring and what are you doing now to keep busy?
ROSE: I felt wonderful about my retirement. Lorraine was really worried about me but I haven’t had any problems with it; just none. She was amazed too. She had an office set up for me with all of the stuff that I needed, the desk and the file drawers and the computers and so on and so forth. I have loved it. As I look back and think about it I felt, I guess, that I had had a successful career and that I didn’t feel that I had missed something and I had to keep on doing it. It is a totally relaxed experience for me. I am working on two things (that I have been working on for too long now). One is writing a book about all of the social and political issues that I have been involved with throughout my career, which would be an expansion of some of the things I have spoken to you about and a broadening to speak about so many more that I didn’t speak about. The other one is a scholarly article, a follow-up on my doctoral degree on Vatican Two. That is more of a scholarly piece of work and that is fun.

Cohn: I hope that the Oregon Jewish Museum can get a copy of those two to put with your file in the archives.
ROSE: When I am finished with them [laughs]. God-willing, it should be soon.

Cohn: Finally, you have been such an important person in this community, what would you consider to be your legacy?
ROSE: Wow. I guess I have to keep that to two areas, one I sort of alluded to before. I’ll do the community outside of the congregation first. Outside of the congregation I think that there was a generation of people in our community who heard my voice one way or another on important, critical, ethical/social issues of our day. There are people who I meet from time to time who say that they were at such-and-such a meeting or rally that I spoke at and they were impacted by it for whatever reason. That is a nice feeling to have.

And the other one is in the congregation itself. All of these programs that I developed, the staff that I brought in (which is here to this day). It is six years out [since retirement]. I brought in a great staff. The building. This building which I worked so hard for. It started with the seed of my wanting a chapel. We had a tiny chapel across the street. Then this building was built 14 years ago.

Cohn: The Pollin Chapel
ROSE: The Pollin Chapel, Goodman Hall. It is called the Schnitzer Family Center. The administrative center, which is upstairs, houses also the board room and the whole set of offices that we have upstairs, this magnificent chapel that we are sitting in. We needed a chapel. That is how it started. We needed a place for an alternative style of worship. I knew it for years. I kept on talking to the board about it. We really need a different space; a larger space. We had plans drawn up (that won’t appear anywhere) to expand the chapel across the street. Harry Herzog, who is a member of our board and an architect, drew up plans. But that didn’t work. I became chairman of the board of Lewis and Clark College at one point. That is another one of my involvements. I loved it. I went on that board. I became an officer and then a chairman of the board for several years. What happened was that I realized that colleges need to have an endowment in order to pay their bills. Half of the cost of the school is paid by yearly payments by students and the other half through the endowment. I began translating that into synagogue life. “My God, we don’t have an endowment. We are going to be in trouble down the way.” So I put the whole thing together and I spoke to the past presidents about our need to have an endowment drive. We need a new chapel. We need a new building – and so on. They said, “Oh we can do that.” Well, two years later they couldn’t do it. They agreed with my initial suggestion, which was to hire a professional fund-raising operation to help us develop a campaign. There are a lot of things involved in that. To make a long story short. They agreed. We followed the procedure that they recommended. And the result was we raised some endowment funds. Not enough. You can’t stop raising endowment funds, otherwise you are pressured. But we were able to end up not only with this chapel. And I will say this, Marge: any rabbi in the country would be happy (if it is not a cathedral synagogue as we are with that unbelievable building across the street) to have a chapel like this. It is a magnificent space. I thank “the Three Harolds” (Harold Schnitzer, Harold Pollin, and Doug Goodman) for being chairs of this entire building construction. They did a great job. We hired Zimmer Gunsul Frasca (ZGF) for the architecture. But most of all we have to thank our congregants who were so generous. Unbelievably generous, to support this project, contribute to the endowment and to add that additional piece onto our educational center. This end of the building is brand new. We so needed that additional section there. Everybody who gave is listed out in the foyer. It is all so great. And there were so many people involved. It bounced off of my original idea and I worked with the committee all along but it was basically all congregants developing it.

Cohn: Finally, is there anything that I have neglected to ask you that you would like to include?
ROSE: I just want to add one more thing about the changes in the main temple. You never say the old pulpit. It had a stage front. There were no steps running up to it. And the reading rostrum was in the middle of the pulpit. You had to ascend a circular stairway to get up to the ark, which was only a half-ark; it didn’t go all the way down to the floor. I found that very forbidding when I came to Portland. If you can picture it, you are looking at a stage front. I guess the reading of the Torah was done from way up those steps. It was like reading the Torah from Mount Sinai. That may have been the original idea. I prevailed upon the board to make a major change in the pulpit. That was a really dangerous thing to do because there was an integral relationship with everything in the temple to up there. I designed the basic layout of what I hoped we would see. Then a committee went to work on it and figured out the details as to how it was done. What we see now is the result. We took away two front rows of the temple, made it possible to have these rising stairs up to the pulpit. The stairs are very wide. Before it looked like the pulpit was shrunken down, but when we put those steps up it widened the whole thing and made it feel much more welcoming. It made for a warmer relationship between the pulpit and the congregation. I was thrilled with that. I pulled the reader’s desk over to the side. I didn’t want it in the middle because we made those full-length ark doors with steps up to the ark so you could see straight up to the ark. And instead of the reading desk being the central focus, it was the ark, which is what I wanted. That is the one other thing I wanted to add. I am very pleased with the way things happened. It was all done, of course, with the board and the congregation cooperating in all of these changes that took place over the years. That is another reason that I have no problem with retirement. I feel so good about all of these things. The whole thing has been a wonderful experience. Not without its pain, of course. Life is life and you have pain. I wasn’t always at peace with the board or with individuals on the board. We disagreed. But mostly the presidents, with only a couple of exceptions, and I had wonderful relationships. That was wonderful.

Cohn: I want to thank you so much for the time that you have spent and for the honesty you have exhibited in this interview. We are very grateful and I hope it was a good experience for you.
ROSE: It was fun. Thank you Marge. It is my pleasure.

I did want to add a clarification. This new building is the Schnitzer Family Chapel. Inside is the Pollin Family Chapel, Goodman Hall, the Robert Weil Administrative Center (which is upstairs with the offices). There is the Lipman Foyer, and the Semler Board Room. Everything is named over there. I wanted to be sure I got that in.