Letters to the editor
Readers respond
A ‘helpful and honorable account’ of the life of Rabbi Walter Jacob
I hope that every reader of the Chronicle will join me in heartfelt gratitude to Eric Lidji for his beautiful and sensitive tribute to Rabbi Walter Jacob (“Rabbi Walter Jacob dies at 94,” Nov. 1). He has provided us all with a helpful and honorable account of the rabbi’s career at Rodef Shalom Congregation and the wider impact he made on our community.
Each generation is privileged to know one or two “rabbi’s rabbis” who model the role of teacher, pastor and preacher. For all of us in Pittsburgh, Walter Jacob’s life was unique in generational bounty and rabbinic blessing. That his influence far transcended our civic boundaries and national borders can only serve to make us more blessed to have had him in our midst.
When I first arrived in town over 50 years ago, Dr. Solomon Freehof was still very much in our midst and Dr. Jacob had “recently” succeeded him as senior rabbi in Rodef Shalom’s pulpit. Lidji’s respectful retrospective allows us all to reflect on the decades of service through which the “younger” rabbi guided the destinies of Rodef Shalom and contributed to the entire American Reform movement. From embers of Shoah to Medinat Yisrael, from “Save Soviet Jewry” to progressive halacha, his place is assured in the annals of our people.
Rabbi Stephen E. Steindel
Rabbi emeritus, Congregation Beth Shalom
Squirrel Hill Falk Lab School still has work to do
After reading “Falk Lab School apologizes after ‘offensive’ Bread and Puppet Rosh Hashana performance” (Nov. 8), I am left wondering how parents have confidence in educators who have so utterly and completely failed in their mission: What has been seen and heard can never be unseen and unheard. I am also left wondering at the matter now being considered as righted — by a mere apology.
The article did not mention any attempt to correct the misimpression left upon those who viewed the Bread and Puppet program with an accurate representation of the history and the facts. Is that how true educators proceed?
Dr. Miriam Weiss
Pittsburgh
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