Remembrance for Dick Israel July 14, 2000 Rabbi Jeffrey Summit
This is a tremendous loss. While we are blessed to have with us still friends and family members who we love and who love us deeply, these precious people who make up our communities, there is a small group of people who live life on a larger scale, who seem to have been given more than the regular measure of wisdom, whose passions and interests are unusual and vivid, whose advice, solutions and direction feel truer and more valuable. This is how I experienced Dick Israel in my daily contact with him over the past twenty-one years. I know that many friends and family members saw him in this light.
I often tell my students that if in their time in college they find one true teacher, one real mentor, they are fortunate. Dick was this kind of teacher for me. He taught me the work that I love, being a rabbi with students on campus. I have never met anyone who had a deeper understanding of the importance, the methodology and the art of engaging students in Jewish learning and moving them to construct an active Jewish life. Colleagues from around the country recognized Dick as a master, a rabbi's rabbi. His credibility came from his wonderfully broad and eclectic Jewish knowledge, his gift for formulating the right questions, and his rock solid belief that what he was teaching, our tradition, Torah and mitzvot, offered real and substantial answers to life's most profound questions. His credibility was bolstered by his wonderfully clear writing and his delight in talking to other interesting human beings.
From Dick, I learned such axioms as the "five hour car ride test" in thinking about hiring a staff member (How would you feel about riding five hours in the car with that person?), I learned the "pig rule" about public arguments (Never fight with pigs: you both roll around in the mud, get all dirty and the pig loves it) and the practical truth about the difficulty of trying to satisfy a large, diverse community (No good deed goes unpunished). Dick had an unusual gift of sharing the right story at the right time, pulling it up from Pesikta Rabbati or the Bagavagita or Jane Austin. And the story left you clearer and more settled, and you felt that you had accessed a deep stream of wisdom that you knew existed but Dick was able to lead you to the water.
I didn't go to Dick for warm-fuzzies. His reactions were sometimes sharp. It helped to be clear and centered before you asked him a question. You went to Dick for truth, for historical grounding, for insight and sophisticated wisdom. And for single malt scotch, great hot sauce, primo olive oil, tips on hiking gear and running shoes. That is, things that required a discerning mind and palate, because Dick was totally in love with the complexity of the world. His bemused fascination was an on-going bracha. Dick appreciated and enjoyed different kinds of Jews. Differing cultures and religions. I can't quite convey how important it was for me to have a dear friend who was seventy years old and constantly learning new things, reading new books, writing new talks. He modeled a creative and inventive approach towards retirement and I feel so robbed not to be able to see how he was going to negotiate what he called "his declining years," the years in which he could finally decline to do whatever he wished not to. I was learning new things from him constantly.
As we became closer friends over the years, we talked more and more about marriage, children and family. On our runs, that in the last several years became walks, Dick would often speak about his children and his love and pride and connection with you were so deep. The joy that he found in his family was profound and central to what he viewed as his life's accomplishments, especially in these recent years when he was taking more time to reflect. Sherry, I know you know this, but as he spoke about you, it was clear that his connection to you was the bedrock of his being. Last week when we were walking he was bragging about the teaching you were doing, the quality of your academic work. He was more than proud: he spoke with enthusiasm and conviction about the importance of your teaching and consulting.
I know that Dick cultivated and enjoyed a curmudgeon-liness, typified by growling at things and sometimes people he didn't like (grrrr). This would sometimes scare people who didn't know him well. He was often genuinely puzzled when people would see him as prickly. He was an extremely practical and pragmatic optimist. He had a vision of an ideal society but, as he often said, he knew that we live in an unredeemed world and he had a keen understanding of the difficulties and dangers of trying to impose that vision upon other people.
For me, for many of us, this loss feels like a tear in our beings, an un-fillable space. His son, David said it well when he said that this must have been what it felt like when the Library in Alexandria burned down. Such treasure lost. A light in Torah gone out. Who will we call to answer our questions, on issues great and small?
So, we will turn to each other and we will answer each other's questions and know that Dick would be quite miffed at us if we didn't find a way, after a while, to pull together and carry on and fully understand that he is a part of the now in all of us. All the support, all the answers, all the comfort a person can bring is remembered and repeated for your sake. Everything changes. Everything passes but love. And in time, peace will abide with us.