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Rabbi Goldstein's August Message: In Tribute

My friend. colleague and teacher Rabbi Dow Marmur passed away in Jerusalem at the end of July. I think it fitting that I tell you about his influence on me, because it will help you understand how I became the Rabbi I now am, and thus, how City Shul developed into what it now is.

One Monday in 1983, there appeared a sealed, handwritten letter on my desk as Assistant Rabbi at Holy Blossom. I recognized the small, precise fountain-pen ink handwriting on the envelope immediately. The envelope was addressed simply: Rabbi Elyse Goldstein. I began to tremble. Dow Marmur was an exacting and demanding senior Rabbi, but always fair and always inspirational. He was my first senior and I, his first assistant at Holy Blossom. We were both “newbies” but he had years of experience and wisdom over mine. What did I do wrong or right to warrant a handwritten note? (This was of course the days before email, but until his death Dow always wrote handwritten notes.) Written inside, one simple sentence I have never forgotten: “Saturday was Shabbat Mevarchim. Best, Dow. ” I had left out the announcement of the new moon at services. For all my years in the Rabbinate following that note, I have not neglected to announce it ever again.

Rabbi Marmur was my first and most important rabbinic mentor, but more than that.  At a time when this town was not-quite-ready for the kind of feminist presence I was, and at a time when being a female rabbi was still strange, exotic and suspect (especially among my Conservative and Orthodox "colleagues" who didn't quite know what to do with me) Dow became my unwavering champion and advocate. He insisted, much before it was popular or expected, that a congregant could not choose or ask for a male colleague in place of me (and there were 2 men at Holy B with me at the time, an associate and an educator, so it would have been easy to pass me over.) He encouraged me to grow, to experiment, to bring feminist changes.

His insistence on preparation, on excellence and on scholarship became my personal benchmarks.

In my long Rabbinate since then, I still ask myself in many situations: WWDD, What Would Dow Do? He taught me how to insist that congregants take responsibility for their own programming, and thus you now understand why my first response to "why doesn't City Shul do x, y or z?" is always "let me know when you've organized that. I am here to support you." He taught me that the Rabbi-congregation relationship is one of covenant and not of contract; that the trust a congregation has in its rabbi is a measure of the trust the rabbi has in them as well. It was Dow I turned to for sage advice when I left the congregational rabbinate to start Kolel, and then again when I returned to it to start City Shul. He watched City Shul from a distance and always had a good word to say about what we were doing.

His integrity, ethics, and critiques of a sloppy rabbinate and a lacklustre congregation, plus his ideal vision of what makes a good Reform Jew, live on in my own practice.

In Pirke Avot 4:17, Rabbi Shimon teaches that the crown of a good name is above all other crowns. I have seen Dow defend other people’s good names, and it is he who inspired me to create one for myself. It is his good name which will live on forever through the Rabbis he mentored and inspired. 

I visited Rabbi Marmur every winter I Israel; one of the highlights always of my time there. We would laugh at the foibles of that early rabbinate and reflect on its current and future directions. This is my last photo with him in Jerusalem. I asked him to smile at the camera. He said, with that dry British accent, "I AM smiling." Oh so Classic Dow. יהי זכרו ברוך. May his memory be a blessing.

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