Temple News
Rabbi William J. Gordon
September 1928~January 2010
By Jan Seeley
The funeral service of Rabbi William J. Gordon was overflowing with those who came to honor and memorialize this gentle man. The room was filled beyond capacity and spilled outside where extra chairs had been set up to accommodate this huge crowd.
Rabbi Bill Gordon, z.l.
He was well represented by five members of the rabbinate, all close friends, and his family who each spoke with adoring humor and such deep love and respect for this wonderfully gifted man.
His daughter spoke of the lessons she learned from her father, notable the time the family celebrated Passover in a prison with the Jewish inmates. He believed in the goodness of people despite their mistakes and brought dignity even to those who society throws away.
Being in this room, filled with people, the affect he had had on them over his 48-years as a Rabbi was clearly apparent. You could feel the love they held for him; for the individual touch and indelible mark he had left on each of them. They had come to say thank you and so-long.
Rabbi Gordon's brand was "being of service" in whatever form that took and he truly lived as if that was his guiding light. When our congregant, Mary Slotnick, met him and told him about TBS, without hesitation he offered his services in any capacity we might need.
TBS only met Rabbi Gordon and his family in the fall of 2009 where he officiated at our High Holiday services, but in this short time we quickly developed a very warm affinity and deep respect for him and his unique style. During the services, Rabbi Gordon turned to me and said, "I love your services - everyone participates!" That really was suggestive of who he was; he wanted every Jew, no matter their background, gender or education level, to connect to the beauty of Judaism wherever it resonated with them and then he built on that. He was open and approachable, easily granting you your opinions and ideas as if he was learning as much from you as he was teaching you.
He lived in the fluctuating and often vicious world of cancer for about the last eight years, but he refused to make this a focal point in his life and consequently not many people in our congregation knew he was ill. In his determined fashion to make every moment count, he officiated our Shabbat services on January 15th while in tremendous pain, known only to a few, just a week before he entered hospice care.
Rabbi Gordon made this world a sweeter place. His light has dimmed for now, but all those who knew him will carry that light adding their own gifts to his and paying it forward.
Our deepest sympathies and love to Rabbi Gordon's beloved wife, Deena and their amazing family: Bruce, Rayna and Mitch Gordon, Melissa, Steve and Eden Latrell, Michelle & Brandon, Ethan and Jonah Simon and Sydney Gordon. Even though it was fleeting, our congregation was so very fortunate to have met this outstanding man and shared in his superlative life. His memory is forever a sweet, sweet blessing.
TBS Namesake Rabbi Solomon Kleinman Celebrates 90th Birthday
By the late 1950's many members of the Los Angeles Hebrew Association of the Deaf longed for a synagogue in which they could nurture their unique style of worship, study and social interaction. At the same time, Rose Zucker was looking for a way to provide her deaf daughter, Helen, with a Jewish education. With the help and advice of Rabbi Solomon Kleinman, a synagogue of, not for, Deaf Jews was born. In gratitude to Rabbi Solomon Kleinman the members named the synagogue: Temple Beth Solomon of the Deaf.
Rabbi Solomon Kleinman
Rose, a feisty woman with a deep sense of righteousness, had approached the heads of the Conservative and Orthodox organizations for help to arrange some kind of Jewish education for her deaf daughter - she was turned down flat, citing this would breach Hallachic Law. But then she met Rabbi Solomon Kleinman, the Regional Director of the UAHC, the arm of the Reform movement, and everything changed.
Rabbi Kleinman recalls with great satisfaction how he enthusiastically embraced the undertaking that would result in the creation of the first congregation anywhere in the world to serve the Jewish Deaf.
When Rose and Rabbi Kleinman met, she explained how many Jewish deaf children, away at residential schools were sent to church on Sundays with their Christian classmates and he agreed that somehow a class or school for them must be created. But then upon hearing there were as many as 500 Deaf Jews in Los Angeles, he thought "Why not create a Deaf congregation with a school!"
He realized that the two largest obstacles would be funding and staff, which was solved by the generosity of Helen Winer and the Sisterhood of Wilshire Boulevard Temple who agreed to provide the funding. With this first obstacle overcome, the rest quickly followed: religious school classes began with space donated at University Synagogue, teachers were hired and three or four classes began. Beth Gesner was hired to interpret and Rabbi Kleinman led the first Shabbat service.
TBS came together very quickly and Rabbi Kleinman's role changed to focus on working with student rabbis who served the congregation in its early years; most notably, Jerry Fisher and Bernard King.
Rabbi Kleinman has a long distinguished career with a multitude of milestone accomplishments. In addition to serving as a Rabbi in several pulpits, he procured the property and established Camp Swig, established Union Hebrew High School, served as Dean of LA College of Jewish Studies, advocated for farm workers, participated in the Civil rights movement, and the list goes on and on.
But to TBS, his greatest legacy is the gift he gave us: recognition with dignity and respect to be included as capable, self-sustaining members of the Jewish people. This is a man with a sense of justice and heart, who understood the need and eagerly reached out to a disenfranchised group that only wanted to worship as Jews - he made sure that came to fruition.
Rabbi Kleinman is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Ahavat Shalom, the same synagogue where we now worship. It appears we have come full circle - at the same time that TBS celebrates our 50th year, we pay tribute to Rabbi Kleinman as he celebrates his 90th year.
Please plan to join us on April 9th as we applaud a most admirable man who along with the vision of a mother, made it possible for the Deaf Jews of Los Angeles to experience a full Jewish life with pride.
Jean Greenberg
Charter member, Jean Greenberg, daughter of Freda Schuman and Clifford Greenberg, passed away on Christmas day, 2009. She passed in the home of her grandparents, Laura and Samuel Schuman, as she wished it to be, the home in which she was raised by her mother and grandparents and lived her entire eighty-eight years.
Jean Greenberg, z.l.
Jean was a very private person, so we do not know a lot about her early years, but that she was born in Chicago on September 19th, 1921. Her mother Freda was deaf/blind and was married to Clifford Greenberg, a deaf man, for a short time before she divorced him for what was rumored to be infidelity. Jean was fiercely devoted to her mother and acted as her eyes and ears connecting her to the world. Freda and Jean became Charter Members of TBS in 1960. Her beloved mother passed away nine years later, but Jean remained a steadfast member of TBS.
Jean carried herself as one who was "all business", stern and uncompromising, but the truth is she was a passionate, ferociously loyal, proud woman who always had your back and whose devotion and integrity were unfailing. When she considered you a friend, she would defend and protect you to the end.
Because of her unshakable independence, Jean did not accept help or accolades well; she was much more comfortable giving it, and working behind the scenes. Forty-one years serving as TBS' donations chairwoman, Jean quietly kvelled with her walls and shelves boasting a proud gallery of gifts and awards: Distinguished Service, Dedicated Service, Woman of the Year (twice), Lifetime Honorary Membership, Special Recognition and dozens of Merit and Appreciation plaques recognizing her years of steadfast allegiance. She cherished her TBS family.
Jean kept boxes of impeccable records, a wonderful historian, and knew and loved each of you intimately, even if she had never personally met you. If you supported TBS, then she supported you. Her paramount concern was TBS, its members and their families and friends. Your lives went thru her hands for 41 years. She was the first to know who married whom, who had a baby, who died, who had bar/bat mitzvah, who had a birthday or anniversary, who won an award, who was engaged, who was ill, who took a trip, who had surgery and who was related to whom. I spoke to her every week for almost 20 years and always her foremost worry was: "What happened to that certain someone that she regularly heard from, who all of a sudden was quiet; what was wrong??" She felt it her personal responsibility to keep the TBS family safe from the dangers of the world. If the donations were down on any given month, she would be extremely worried as if this was somehow a signal of decline.
This intensity to nurture and protect most likely was realized at an early age borne from a self-assigned responsibility for her mother once she understood the scope of what it meant to be deaf and blind in a world that had no understanding of this condition. This characteristic was then transported into every aspect of Jean's life, most notably in her long career as administrative assistant to Hollywood actress, Marilyn Maxwell. Jean became ardent fan, bodyguard, babysitter, advocate and best friend to a woman, who upon a chance meeting, immediately perceived Jean as a woman of integrity and brilliance.
As Matthew Davis, Marilyn Maxwell's son and Jean's godson, tells the story: As a teenager, Jean was a Hollywood movie enthusiast of the highest order. She would regularly stand outside the gates of the MGM studios in Culver City waiting for the stars to exit and reward them with a bouquet of flowers to show her appreciation for the many hours of pleasure they gave her. One particular day as she waited patiently for Vivien Leigh to leave the studio, the sun began to set and her bouquet began to wilt, the gates never offered her up. Instead, a car pulled out, stopped, rolled down the window and began to question Jean as to her purpose for being there. Jean explained that she had been waiting for Miss Leigh, but she never came and now she feared she had missed her bus and it was getting dark. The woman in the car, Marilyn Maxwell, having seen Jean outside the gates on several occasions, offered her a ride home, as it fortuitously turned out they both lived in the Fairfax area. As they rode home, Marilyn quickly realized that Jean was exceptionally smart and courageous and offered her a job as her assistant, beginning their 26-year association.
Matt went on to say his mother was always amazed at Jean's ability to s imultaneously answer the phone, rehearse lines with her and listen to the baseball game with the ever-present transistor radio earphones stuck in her ears, and never miss a beat.
I first met Jean twenty years ago at my first Shabbat service, the first week I began working for TBS. Sitting in the back pew of the sanctuary was a woman wearing earphones attached to a small radio that I thought an odd sight for a deaf synagogue. I was later to find out that Jean was a diehard Dodger fan and rather than having to choose between the baseball game and Shabbat services, her ingenious solution was to bring the Dodgers to Shabbat; she knew that God must be a baseball fan. Jean never missed a Shabbat service and never missed a game.
Matt has many wonderful Hollywood stories and memories of his mother and Jean. It was truly the happiest time in her life, doing what she loved in the industry she loved surrounded by people she loved. Tragedy cut it short with the very premature death of Marilyn from a heart attack ending a quarter century long relationship, a grief from which Jean never recovered.
Jean's passing is the end of an era. Her love and devotion to TBS will never again be equaled.
Freda Urling summed it up perfectly in her memorial message: "In memory of a righteous woman and a beautiful soul..." May her memory be for an ever-sweet blessing.
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