Rabbi Daniel Isaak

Frankel: Good Morning.
ISAAK: Good morning.

Frankel: I will ask you to begin by stating your full name, place and date of birth.
ISAAK: I am Daniel Isaak and I was born in San Francisco, California June 5th, 1949. Just celebrated my 65th birthday

Frankel: Describe to me the household you lived in growing up. Who were the members of the family?
ISAAK: I grew up with my parents. For the first nine years of my life I was the only child. I have a sister that’s nine years younger than I am. We grew up in a middle class home. I attended a Conservative synagogue. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany. My parents had very German names; my father was Helmut, my mother was Ellen and my sister is Deborah. I’m first generation. All of my parents’ friends when I was growing up were also German Jews who had escaped Germany.

Frankel: When did they escape?
ISAAK: My father’s family was really a very Zionist family. The whole family was planning to go to Palestine and then my grandfather died of natural causes; he’s buried in Ashacu Buchen, this town in northern Bavaria. And when he died, I don’t know which agency, the Jewish agency or whatever, was not interested in a woman and her three teenage kids. 

Frankel: What year was that?
ISAAK: My father then went to Palestine in 1937; he was 18 years old. He was in Palestine for ten years. He was in the Royal Air Force in North Africa, was the only survivor of a plane crash that crashed in the Mediterranean, swam 21 miles in 19 hours (or was it 19 miles in 21 hours? I don’t remember), which garnered a tiny article in the Air Force newsletter. And my mother, the story I understand, was slightly too old to be eligible for the Kindertransport but she went on a kinder transport, accompanied by her younger brother. She went to England to a family my grandparents knew and felt she would be well cared for there. She was not treated well. She became the caretaker and nursemaid to a child who was, I don’t know what kind of illness she had but they took this family and my mother then, at some point to Switzerland and then my mother, a very shy 16 year old, made her way from Switzerland to Spain, to Portugal to a boat to come to America.

Frankel: Do you know what year that was?
ISAAK: I figure it all took place in 1938. But I don’t exactly know when she left. My grandfather on my mother’s side was the first one to leave. He was a manufacture’s rep so he always had a passport. A police office came to their house one day and said he was on the list for the next day and he left that night by himself. There are stories that this officer came back and raped my grandmother. I don’t know how true that story is or not true. But then each of them made their way. My grandparents eventually made their way to England as well. They became butler and maid to a family and got fired because my grandfather couldn’t get the glockenspiel notes correct for calling people to lunch and to dinner. Those are sort of the family stories that are told.

Frankel: What city did your mother grow up in?
ISAAK: Berlin. They lived in an apartment, evidently very, very comfortably on one of the main streets. I can’t think of the street. Hitler passed by her home each day on his way to the 1936 Olympics. My maternal grandparents were not particularly religious. My grandfather, I’m told, would go on High Holidays with his top hat to services. My grandmother couldn’t maintain any sort of kosher home so they did not have a kosher home. My father grew up in a home that was more religious. But he always said that while they may have called it Orthodox, it was much closer to Conservative. They were not particular fanatic and my grandfather was—this was a town of tailors so he had a tailor shop in this small town. And I’ve been to that town. I’ve not been to Berlin but I’ve been to [unclear]. I’ve been to the gravesite. Almost every member of our family has made their way to the gravesite. My daughter went there; she went to a wedding. She went to the town of Ashacu Buchen and was very surprised because this was the town of her great grandfather and she said, “This is a very hip town.” So she was surprised. It’s one these picturesque towns on the Rhine River with a schloss. I was living on the East Coast, my parents in San Francisco and when they were invited to come back for one of the—I don’t remember the name of it but they invited all the people to come back to the town and I went.

Frankel: At the expense of the German government?
ISAAK: At the expense of the German government. And I went. I wasn’t going to go and then I called them to wish them a good trip and I realized that this was never to be repeated. So a friend of ours got me on a PIA charter. Do you know what PIA is?

Frankel: No.
ISAAK: Pakistan International Airlines. That’s a whole story in and of itself. I met my parents in the town. And it was really quite some experience. The most dramatic experience was that while my father did not find people who were his peers my uncle, who was a year younger and who was much more of a character, found people who he played soccer with. We sat in a café with them. My German isn’t bad. My understanding is better than my speaking. And I’m listening to their description and it was so shocking that I had to review it with my father afterwards to make sure I understood. They remembered Kristallnacht when their fathers got drunk and went out and bashed in Jewish stores and beat up people. And then they said they remembered in 1942 the Jews were left. Now German Jewry was a little different than Eastern European Jewry. German Jews had a lot of warnings. Who was left in 1942 were either the elderly or people who thought they were untouchable. And the Jews who were left in 1942 were told to come down to the station. And these guys described the whole town came down to the train station. There were two cars there. The Jews were put in the first car and all the luggage was put in the second car and the first car left the station. And the second car never left the station. And those last Jews were on their way to Auschwitz. So that was just one of those traumatic stories.

Frankel: Let’s go back to your father who went to Israel and lived there for 10 years. Where did he land when he first arrived?
ISAAK: I don’t know a lot about it. I do know that one of the first questions was should he go to a kibbutz. And he asked “Well, what happens on a kibbutz?” and they said well they take good care of you. And he said “What does a 17-year-old want to be taken care of?” so he didn’t go to kibbutz. He had a cousin in Pardes Hama. He went to Pardes Hama. And then he talked about a place called Tel Shalom. I looked on every map when I was there, couldn’t find it. I went down to the tourist agency and in my best Hebrew asked if they could tell me where Tel Shalom was and a woman, of course, said “Would you like to tell me in English.” But she didn’t know where Tel Shalom was either. So I wrote to my father and he said—now remember he hadn’t been there in 35 years and he said you take the train, it’s between Benyamina and Carcoor, you take the train to Benyamina, you get off the train, you go up the hill and there is a beit sefer ha-kal-i, an agricultural school and on the corner there’s a sign that says Tel Shalom. I figured I’m on a wild goose chase but I went. I went to Benyamina, I got off the train, I climbed up the hill, there was the agricultural school and there on the corner was a sign that said Tel Shalom 1 kilometer. I walked down the street a little ways I see a fellow in the backyard, and I say: “efo merkaz ha ir?” Where’s the center of the town, of the city. And he says “Which city?” and I said “Tel Shalom.” He said, “This is it.” It was a yeka schuna – a little community of Jews. So that was where he lived. He had unusual experiences. He worked on farms; he worked for people who he found to be real hypocrites. For instance, they would not let him use a straight razor because they were Orthodox and you don’t use a straight razor. But then he found the person who was his boss was actually using a straight razor. And other kinds of things. He joined the Royal Air Force.

Frankel: Was it easy?
ISAAK: I don’t know, to join the Royal Air Force. I think there were an awful lot of young men; I don’t know how many. Going there was a program called Hachshara. But then he was in the Royal Air Force for quite a while – in North Africa, in Libya – and somehow he had, during that experience, some contact with Ethiopian Jews because he would talk about, “I have met Jews that are darker than any African American you’ve ever met here.”

Frankel: Was he part of the Jewish Brigade?
ISAAK: No, I think the Jewish Brigade was, was that WW One? No, that was WW Two, the Jewish Brigade? No I don’t think so. I think he was in a regular British unit.

Frankel: And following the war, is that when he left?
ISAAK: He left in 1947 and came here because all of his family was in America. His mother and his brother and his sister were all in San Francisco. So he came to San Francisco.

Frankel: How did he meet your mother?
ISAAK: My mother was living in Chicago and she came to visit a friend who was married to my father’s brother. Both women were named Ellen so when she married my father, my aunt was Little Ellen and my mother was Big Ellen. Growing up I never thought that was peculiar.

Frankel: What languages were spoken at home?
ISAAK: I was convinced that they only spoke English. And the only reason I got a wakeup call was when Carol came for the first time. . . .

Frankel: Carol, your wife?
ISAAK: Yes, when Carol came to San Francisco and she said to me (because we met while I was in rabbinical school), “Do they speak German at home?” and I said, “No, they don’t speak German at home.” Well she came for Pesach and my aunts and uncles were there and I was totally unaware how many in-jokes and German expressions there were because Carol was constantly pulling on my sleeve, “What did they say, what did they say.” And I was totally oblivious to it. For the most part my sense was, well we were with my grandparents, my mother’s parents, the conversation was in German. But at home the conversation was in English and the only time they spoke German was when they didn’t want me to understand something. Which was the incentive for me to learn German.

Frankel: Since your father lived in Israel for so long did he speak Hebrew to you or try to teach you?
ISAAK: He didn’t try to teach me but he had a passion for Hebrew. As a matter of fact, he would get regularly an Israeli newspaper; I don’t remember the name of it. [It was an] American published newspaper. [He was] was very upset when it didn’t arrive on the appropriate day and when he died, in his wallet were the vocabulary words he was working on. I don’t think when he was in Palestine he was at all religious. I don’t think he went to synagogue with any regularity. But he started taking me to synagogue when I was six. We went to synagogue every Shabbos. I got to meet all the old men and that was really my introduction. And I went to Hebrew school and then, at the age of 14, for the first time I went to camp Ramah.

Frankel: What about celebrations of Jewish holidays at home?
ISAAK: Oh yes, we celebrated all the Jewish holidays. Certainly the high holidays were celebrated: Passover, Hanukkah. We did not build a sukkah at home. When the shammas at our synagogue was becoming older and frail my father would help out. And after Mr. Fiebush died my father became the shammas of the synagogue. And my mother took over the kitchen at the synagogue. So my mother became a kosher caterer. We did not have a kosher home when I was growing up though it was kind of kosher style. We never ate milk and meat together. Though my mother, when I was little, did not buy kosher meat, we never had ham or shellfish of course. And although my mother learned all the rules, because she didn’t grow up in that kind of environment, I think their home actually became a kosher home when I went to rabbinical school.

Frankel: What was your father’s occupation?
ISAAK: My father was a plasterer. He looked high and low for, how do you say plaster in Hebrew? The word was tayach. He came to the United States. His English wasn’t very good. The union was not particularly open to Jews as I understand. San Francisco is a very strong union town and someone got him into the plasterer’s union, which was one of the better paid construction jobs. And in San Francisco everything is plaster; nothing can be made out of brick because of the earthquakes. He would take great pride. My junior high school was one that he worked on, plastered. The original San Francisco airport, there were certain buildings.

Frankel: Did you have a bar mitzvah? 
ISAAK: I did. As a matter of fact a very good friend of mine as I was growing up was David Dalin whose father was the rabbi. And that particular year there was not only the rabbi’s son and my father, who before he was shammas had been on the board, but there were several past presidents’ children. The rabbi decided to have an experimental class. He would start us in Hebrew school when we were six. So we went three days a week starting in the first grade and these were the people I grew up with. So we continued with Hebrew school all the way through. Mr. Firsinger was our first Hebrew teacher; Mr.Tuller was our teacher.

Frankel: What was the name of the synagogue?
ISAAK: It was Ner Tamid in San Francisco, a conservative synagogue. My rabbi, Bill Dalin actually had strong yichis. He was related to the chief rabbi, there was a man in Jerusalem that was called Hanazir who was his cousin. So he was from Lithuania and from a very elite and ultra frum family. So he was from Lithuania, his wife was from South Africa and a cousin of his. 

Frankel: You went to public school?
ISAAK: I went to public school. I went to afternoon Hebrew school.

Frankel: You mentioned [Camp] Ramah.
ISAAK: And I went to Ramah. I went for the first time when I was 14. So most of the kids, like at Solomon Schecter by the time you’re 14 the same kids have been coming for a number of years so I was sort of a new kid. And we had four guys from San Francisco and four L.A. guys; we were in a bunk together. It was really an eye opening experience for me. I went for two years as a camper then I didn’t go again for a number of years. And then applied again when I was, I think 19, and I went as a counselor. I went for a number of years and then they moved me up, I became a rosh eida in the old camp. And then we moved to the new camp, it’s not so new anymore. But those years it was brand new.

Frankel: When you graduated from high school where did you go?
ISAAK: I went to Berkeley, thinking of myself as a math major. And I had taken calculus in high school. So I thought, “What do you take?” I took honors calculus. That was a big mistake. So I looked around and thought, “If I’m not going to be a math major what am I going to do?” The two things I found of interest were economics and linguistics. So I had a double major in economics and linguistics from Berkeley and was also involved with the Near Eastern Languages department. Then, when my rabbi in San Francisco took a sabbatical, Jacob Milgrem was a brand new professor at Berkeley. He had been a rabbi in Richmond, Virginia and now was changing from his rabbinic career to an academic career and had a family. He was able to supplement his income by being our rabbi while Rabbi Dalin was on sabbatical. Getting to know him was very interesting. He’s really become one of the great biblical scholars of our time.

Frankel: When did that leap from economic and linguistics happen?
ISAAK: My junior year I went to Israel. University of California has a special program for overseas students – ‘Education Abroad’ it’s called, in a number of different centers. One was in Jerusalem. So I went to Israel and spent my junior year in Israel, which created a conflict. Because the question was: “Was I going to make aliyah and move to Israel and figure out what I was going to do there? Or was I going to do something else?” I came back and decided I was going to stay in the United States and applied for graduate school in linguistics and rabbinical school. And rabbinical school won out. I applied to Jewish Theological Seminary.

Frankel: Do you remember what clinched it?
ISAAK: Because my friend was the rabbi’s son I spent a lot of time in his house. And I was intrigued by the things that he did, the lifecycle events he was involved with and people in personal crisis, leading a community. And he was a positive example and then I saw other examples that I thought were negative examples, of people who I thought were not the best leaders of the Jewish community. So it was that probably more than anything else. When I met my wife she did not understand why I was not becoming a psychologist or psychiatrist. And I said to her “I enjoy dealing with people who are basically healthy. I’m not as interested in dealing with people who for whom you see only for a limited period of time through crisis or through real emotional sickness.” But as a rabbi occasionally you deal with people who need something much more interesting and then hopefully I can refer them on. But I’m dealing with people who are going through normal life crises of loss, of celebration and to be able to be involved in people’s lives over a long period of time. I had a wedding last week; I have a wedding next week; I have a wedding next week and all three—in the first case the groom in the other two cases the bride—grew up here. I officiated at their bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah and now can watch them celebrate getting married.

Frankel: Who were your teachers at JTS?
ISAAK: My first Talmud teacher was really just a wonderful human being who died very young named Hillel Hyman. I went to rabbinical school in the mechina program.

Frankel: Can you explain?
ISAAK: I had never really formally studied Talmud before and I think they’ve changed things but they had this sort of unusual situation where you could enter the first, second or third year of rabbinical school depending on how much Talmud you knew. If you could take an exam on 10 [INAUDIBLE sounds like: blot] you could enter the first year, 25 [INAUDIBLE sounds like: blot] you could enter the second year, 50 [INAUDIBLE sounds like: blot] of Talmud you could enter the third year. So I came to interview and I told the interview committee… In order to sign the application, you were signing a commitment to be fully, hopefully observant. I said “I want you to understand, I signed it to sign and apply.” But, I said “I have never been completely shomer shabbat (or Sabbath observant) or observed the dietary laws exclusively and I don’t know if that’s what I’m prepared to do.” So they conferred and they asked me to come back the next day. And I said, “I’m very sorry. I’m going back to California later this afternoon.” And they asked if I would wait in the next room. So I waited in the next room and the committee was headed by a really wonderful person named Max Ardst. A committee came in, none of these people did I know but one of them was the next chancellor of the seminary. And they said because I was applying for the preparatory program, they would accept me on the following condition: They would accept me if I promised not to embarrass them. So I said “What does that mean?” by the way this was very unusual for the seminary. They said “Well, they gave me two examples. They wanted me to commit that I would not smoke in my room on Shabbat (I didn’t smoke anyway so that was not an issue), and I wouldn’t take public transportation in Manhattan on Shabbat. Those were the best examples they could give me. I thought I could live with that very easily. And the third thing was that if I was not comfortable with being shomer Shabbat and shomer kashrut that I would voluntarily resign during that first year. And they also wanted me to live in the dorm so that I would be in the environment. So those were the conditions that I came to the seminary. And I had a very good friend who came with me, not to rabbinical school, but he was taking graduate studies at the seminary at the same time. At that time it was only men in the class; there were no women, not yet. Women came in after I graduated. And I was really now in a seven-year program. But if you learned enough Talmud in the mechina program you could jump into the second year of rabbinical school, which all but one of us did. There were five of us in the mechina program. One really brilliant fellow, who had never studied in Hebrew, was in that program. I ended up in a five-year program rather than a seven-year program. During my junior year, Carol and I got married and we went to Israel in our first year of marriage, in 1974, as part of JTS. But since Carol had a child from her first marriage (we were taking Gabriel with us)– Gabriel was in the 4th grade –they wouldn’t let us live in the pnemia in the dormitory. So we lived in our own apartment and that was a trying year, our first year of marriage in Jerusalem. Carol went to ulpan; Gabriel was put in a regular school program. We decided to put him in a lo dati, in a non-religious public school, we thought that would be trauma enough. In 1974 I’d been to Israel in my junior year 1969, 1970. I was there during a time of unbelievable euphoria. After 1967 Israelis were king of the world; they were arrogant. And then we came in 1974 and I came to a completely different Israel. After 1973 the country was depressed. It was like night and day it was such a different country. 

Frankel: Any experiences that stand out during those five years? Was it culture shock?
ISAAK: I’m glad that I went to New York because I could have also gone to Los Angeles. I had also toyed with applying to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical School which was brand new. But there’s something about knowing New York, knowing Manhattan, having access to national Jewish organizations, to how things function that was very important. I taught while I was at the seminary at the “mother church” of the Reconstructionist Movement, where Mordecai Kaplan was still alive and still there. He was the rabbi emeritus and there was a young, British rabbi that came from a very black-hat community in Britain, Alan Miller, who was the head rabbi there. And I had certain experiences there that I talk about to this day. Alan Miller would speak for 45 minutes on a Saturday morning without a note in front of him, rile up everybody, and then he would sit down. Then there was an open microphone. And one Shabbos morning he came in with a newspaper about the opening of Disneyworld in Florida. And he said, “This is Judaism. Judaism is in a dream world, Judaism is positivist and we live in a negativist (he didn’t use “optimistic” and “pessimistic,”) positivist and we live in a negative world.” And he went on and got everybody all riled up. People got up and yelled and screamed after he sat down. We went upstairs; everybody took their little kiddush cup and we waited for the rabbi to come upstairs and all of a sudden there was a rap on the wall, bang bang bang, and everybody looked around and here was Mordechai Kaplan with his raincoat on, wrapping his umbrella against the wall. And he then started to speak. And somebody near me said, “Can’t hear you.” To which he said, “You shut your g-d dammed mouth and you’ll hear what I have to say.” He then went ahead, as we’re all standing there with our kiddush cups, with a 15-20 minute rebuttal to what the rabbi had said downstairs. Judaism is not positivist and not negativist, Judaism is iffist. Which is very funny because the iffist text is, of course, the second paragraph of the shema which Mordechai Kaplan removed from his prayer book. But, he said, “Judaism is iffist. ‘If you follow my commandments, things will go well. If you don’t follow my commandments…’ ochen vey right?”

Frankel: What shul was that?
ISAAK: This is the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the SAJ on West 86th Street.

Frankel: Was he still teaching at JTS when you were there?
ISAAK: No, he was retired. The funny thing was that his first synagogue was the Jewish Center which was just down the block. Both synagogues celebrated their 50th anniversary at the same time. Why? Because when Mordechai Kaplan left the Jewish Center—Society for the Advancement of Judaism does not sound like the name of a synagogue, it was his think tank that then he turned into a synagogue. Well they took their anniversary from when he left the synagogue and they also counted their anniversary from when he left the Jewish Center. Which was a very formal synagogue where the leaders of the synagogue came in top hats. I don’t know if they still do at the Jewish Center. But it’s interesting. The Upper West Side has changed enormously. There’s been a whole huge renaissance on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And it was not that way when I was there. There were a few synagogues and then when Carol and I got married we came back that last year and Gabriel and I would wander around from synagogue to synagogue Shabbos morning for services.

Frankel: What was your parents’ reaction when you announced you were going to rabbinical school?
ISAAK: My parents were enthusiastic and encouraging. My father had wanted to be a Jewish teacher. And because of Hitler he never became a Jewish teacher. My mother’s parents were not happy. My grandfather had been a WW I war hero. I still have a photograph of him with a spits with a point. And Germany had turned against him and it was because of his Judaism. So it wasn’t that he ever renounced his Judaism but they were not enthusiastic about my going to rabbinical school. “What kind of job is that for a Jewish boy?” but my parents they had been, all these years, involved in the synagogue so it was not a radical thing for me to do.

Frankel: So what happens when you become ordained and become a rabbi? What’s the process? How are you placed?
ISAAK: I belong now, now no one will tell you this, but I belong to a closed shop union. [Laughs] The Rabbinical Assembly has a placement service. For instance, Neveh Shalom has in its constitution that it will only hire a rabbi from the Rabbinical Assembly in a Conservative synagogue. So I belong to this important club from which my pension is connected to. It’s a placement service. And it’s changed over the years but at the time synagogues would list, as Neveh Shalom will now with its senior rabbi search, list itself and fill out a questionnaire (it used to be by mail, not it’s by email of course). It will list all the synagogues it’s looking for, the size of the synagogues in terms of the number of members, and whether there’s a cantor, whether there’s an education director, whether there’s a day school in the community, certain basic indications. And if you’re interested in that synagogue you’ll ask for the entire questionnaire and then you can submit your name to be sent to that synagogue for the synagogue to go through its own interview process.

Frankel: Which was your first pulpit?
ISAAK: One of the issues was is that I still wanted to remain in the New York Metropolitan area because of my step-son. So I was hired by a synagogue at Temple Beth El in Hackensack, New Jersey. It was about a 250 family congregation. I was younger than most of the member congregants’ children. And therefore I never walked out of the house without a coat and tie and I grew a beard. It was an old synagogue but they’d built a new building and it was built by people who were looking forward to having their children’s weddings in the building. The classrooms were sort of collapsible and it opened up… I made a mistake at the very beginning and I invited people to come to an oneg Shabbat to the social hall. And they said. “Rabbi, that’s the ballroom.” [laughs] All kinds of things I had to get used to. In a sense it was a very good situation. I was replacing two rabbis. The main rabbi was the rabbi during the week then there was a second rabbi that was there for Shabbat. The reputation was that whatever the congregation asked to be done, each rabbi would point to the other rabbi. So now they were going to have one person and there was no shirking that responsibility. It had a small religious school and I was also the education director. In this school we combined our synagogue with two other synagogues, two small synagogues in the area to create a little larger school. I was there for three years.

Frankel: Would you say that the seminary prepares you to lead life-cycle events or was it very academic?
ISAAK: No, the seminary was then (and I don’t know what it is today)… but the seminary in many ways despised its own product because they were academics. So we had, during our senior year, a class on practical rabbinics. Practical rabbinics was, ‘how do you fill out a katubah?” and, “how do you prepare a eulogy?” And those kinds of things. But nothing else really was preparing you with dealing with a community, with a congregation. We actually did have a course on—it really wasn’t called psychology it was called psychiatry. It was led by a very wonderful man who actually was not a rabbi but he had studied in the seminary as well. Seminary was mostly text study, bible, Talmud, philosophy.

Frankel: Who was the chancellor when you were there?
ISAAK: Dr. Finklestein was still there. Was he still the chancellor? There were luminaries who were there. I remember people walking into the dining room. It was Louis Finklestein. It was Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Frankel: Did you study with them?
ISAAK: I did not because Heschel died the next year. And there was Dr. Shaul Lieberman. These were some of the great… But all of them were really Eastern European trained. One of the big changes in the seminary and the question was, ‘would the seminary ever be able to function with American trained scholars?’ That’s a major transition that has happened, that the scholars at the seminary are American trained.

Frankel: Was that during your time?
ISAAK: Some of the professors yes, and even students changed. Because many of the students prior to my coming to the seminary were students coming out of the yeshiva. So while I was there it was discovered that many of us had never studied the traditional medieval commentators. So Joel Ross decided (he was a Talmud professor) that he would teach a class in medieval commentators because we had really never studied in an academic sense all the different medieval commentators. So this was a transition within the students. And the other transition was that the seminary comes out of the vishenshafte juden tombs, the scientific study of text but they never touched certain biblical texts with a hard criticism or documentary hypothesis. And as a matter of fact Solomon Schechter, who was long dead when I got there, called higher criticism higher antisemitism. And it took a while until they incorporated the work of Yehezkel Kaufmann who proved that in fact that the documentary hypothesis is not antisemitism. So all these were kinds of transitions that were going on, academic transitions.

Frankel: So going back to your first pulpit do you have awkward memories of your first life-cycle events that you led?
ISAAK: I think the first week I was there I was called by someone to go to the hospital to visit someone who was dying. So how often did I visit as rabbi going to the hospital? And here I walked into the ICU and I said to this man that I was Rabbi Isaak. And he held onto my hand and he couldn’t speak. And it was as if he was holding on to life itself and no one ever treated me like that before. I came to the hospital and there was a woman in traction, a young woman in traction. I introduced myself, I said, “I’m Rabbi Isaak from Temple Beth El here in Hackensack.” And she said “No you’re not.” Well, her issue was that a rabbi can’t be younger than she is. [laughs] So the people were very nice but when there were social occasions Carol and I were seated at the kiddie table. Now I think that’s pretty nice but… But there really was kavod harav respect for me and it was a good first experience.

Frankel: You were the only rabbi so you couldn’t consult with anyone else?
ISAAK: Right, I had no other, I remember that someone came to me and wanted to change somebody’s name. I didn’t know anything about that. So I called a professor of mine who laughed. He said, “That would be fitting for you.” because I was a little bit of a rebel at the seminary. He described to me what this is all about because I had no experience with it. When we got married, which was while I was still in rabbinical school, the question was who was going to officiate at our wedding. So the most logical person was Alan Miller who was the rabbi of the SAJ. We met with him and somehow everything was wrong. So it was actually one of my professors, Neil Gilman who was one of the first people who I met when I came to interview at the seminary and was our teacher for one of our classes during our first year who officiated at our wedding. 

Frankel: So you chose to leave after three years?
ISAAK: Yes, I thought it was time to move on and looked at different places. Actually I grew up in California so I knew, basically from San Francisco to LA and now living on the east coast I knew from Boston to Washington DC. But I was getting these lists of places I’d never heard of before that were looking for rabbis. So in 1978 after my second year we took this new baby that we had and we just drove and tried to go to cities that were looking for rabbis, see what these communities were like. So we drove to DC through Virginia down the Blue Ridge Parkway all the way down to the Oakiephenokie swamp park in Southern Georgia and then up the coast and looked at communities. I interviewed in a number of places. I interviewed in Texas both in Austin and in Houston. I interviewed in a number of other places but ended up in a community in Briarcliff Manor, New York. And we drove around since we could go from Hackensack, it was about a 45-minute drive. My wife found it very intimidating. It was all beautiful homes. Everybody took care of their lawns. I was hired by the congregation. We took a house in South Carolina. And when you rent a house people leave magazines in the living room or in the bathroom; you’re reading a magazine. And all of a sudden I’m reading a Time magazine or Newsweek and there’s an article about Briarcliff Manor, about a man who killed his entire family. So I showed it to Carol, I said “See, it’s not a perfect community, they’ve got problems there too.” [laughs]

Frankel: How large a congregation was that one?
ISAAK: That was about 350 families that became about 500 families. I was there for 14 years.

Frankel: Were you their only rabbi?
ISAAK: I was the only rabbi. For a while we didn’t have a cantor so I was rabbi and doing some of the cantor… We did have somebody do bar and bat mitzvah training. It was a younger congregation; it was a more vibrant congregation. Everything going on, tikkun olam and adult education and social activities and a lot of life-cycle events. Two of my kids were born in Briarcliff and they then went to day school in White Plains.

Frankel: A Jewish day school?
ISAAK: Solomon Schecter School. One of the challenges was, as a rabbi, socially everybody was wealthier than we were. Or certainly everybody who was very involved in the synagogue. There were a lot of lawyers, a lot of doctors. And this was, in many ways, a commuter synagogue. We were 30 miles north of New York City. People got on the train early in the morning and they commuted into New York City. When we moved to Portland my son Ari, at the age of 15, said, “I learned something very important.” So this tells you not about Portland as much as it tells you about the previous city. “You don’t tell people what kind of skis you have.” [laughs] People were very label conscious. We drove our little Toyota and everybody else came to synagogue in their BMW and their Mercedes, their fancy cars. One of the things I really liked was that I came to Neveh Shalom, I looked in the parking lot. You couldn’t tell if people were wealthy or not wealthy. Everybody drove all kinds of cars and labels were not important.

Frankel: I’m also curious, before you moved here to Portland would you say that the east coast Conservative Movement and congregants are more observant?
ISAAK: This congregation were not more observant. But I was really on the geographic outskirts of the cyclops which was the New York Federation. So I had to find my own way in terms of Jewish counseling services, old age home and assisted living kinds of things that the New York Metropolitan Federation, all five boroughs of New York, Westchester county and I don’t remember what else but I was really at the outskirts of it. So did not have that sense of community with… And things got to be outrageously expensive. I could not go to community events because they started at $500 and $1000 a seat. So those kinds of things were difficult.

Frankel: Did you choose to move to the West Coast following that second congregation?
ISAAK: Yes. We were ready to move on and I was looking at that list. I get of congregations that are looking and I had noticed Neveh Shalom in Portland, Oregon. And then we actually went to a family event. It was the birthday party of one of Carol’s cousins. One of Carol’s other cousins came, Susan Axel, who has since moved to Portland because she was not then living in Portland. They were living in Texas at the time. And they said, “Our kids belong to this wonderful synagogue in Portland, Oregon and they’re looking for a rabbi.” I think I had already submitted my resume and asked that my resume be sent to Portland, Oregon.

Frankel: Had you heard of Rabbi Stampfer before you moved here?
ISAAK: I had heard of Rabbi Stampfer probably through… I didn’t know very much but I knew one or two of his kids went to Camp Ramah so I knew the name.

Frankel: What was your experience during that interview?
ISAAK: There were phone interviews; there was no Skype yet. I was asked to come. And before I came I decided that I really ought to talk to the retiring rabbi. So I called him up, Rabbi Stampfer, and I introduced myself very cordially. I was trying to make conversation. And I said I knew he’d been here for 40 years and I said, “You must have mixed feelings about the whole idea of retirement.” To which his response was simply “Nope.” [laughs] And I thought to myself ‘uh oh.’ Come on, you know, you’ve got to have some mixed feelings about it. But there was that ‘nope’ response. And I learned afterwards the United Synagogue and, I think, the Rabbinical Assembly Placement Service, had said to the leaders of the congregation that the senior rabbi, you’ve got to get rid of him; he’s got to leave the community. There’s no way that anybody can come if he’s around. My own thought was really very different. I was not aware of those conversations but I was looking to how the community was treating their long standing rabbi and hopefully if I stuck around I would be treated similarly. But the congregation said, “You know, the rabbi’s going to continue to live in his house.” And actually that was something that Carol and I were very, very pleased with. Because in the east there are a lot of congregations that have a manse, similar to Christian clergy. So we had never owned our own home.

Frankel: And it was adjacent to the synagogue, close?
ISAAK: Yes, so we lived in a house in Briarcliff but it was a house that the synagogue owned. They provided gardeners that cut the lawn and other things. But then when it came to when we had a new baby and I wanted (I should have done this myself, I didn’t handle this well – it’s their house)… I asked that they put in an electric garage door opener. And I sat at a meeting where the board had this long discussion about the spending of a hundred and fifty dollars for putting in an electric garage door opener. And people would say, “Well I don’t have an electric garage door opener.” They didn’t put the electric garage door opener in. So we were looking forward to being able to live in our own house. Carol went to Cooper Union to the school of architecture so having your own house was something that was very, very important. So we could come here and we could own our own house because the Stampfers were going to remain where they were; that was terrific. And when I came to interview we stayed with the Axels. We didn’t know them very well but they were cousins. Then for Shabbat we stayed with the Stampfers. And that was very lovely. I think for my wife, Goldie’s reputation was intimidating because Goldie was the classic rebbetzin who was the second rabbi in terms of making calls to people who were in the hospital, remembering everybody’s birthday, doing things. And I think in the interview when Carol was here with me and they asked her and she said, “I’m not Goldie Stampfer.” So Carol had been a professional in her own right as a designer and had no idea. This was the first time she was going to move, aside from the year we spent in Israel together which was not an easy year. This was the first time we were going to move out of the New York Metropolitan area. And although we didn’t use it all the time, the fact that the theater and the museums and everything was there… What was she going to do out here on the west coast? Well we discovered very lovely theater here and Carol eventually discovered the museum and became a docent went through training and became a docent. And our kids really thrived here. At that time the day school only went up to sixth grade or fourth grade, I don’t remember.

Frankel: Fifth, I was told and then two years later they extended it.
ISAAK: They extended it, right. But he went to West Sylvan and all of a sudden—there was a teacher, Mr. Galindo at West Sylvan who just loved him to death and he’d never had that kind of experience before. So all of our kids did very, very well. Ari was antsy and living in the suburbs where he had to be driven everywhere was very difficult. And we got here and he got a bus pass and he was now independent. And my daughter, who had said to us, when we said, “We’re moving to Portland, Oregon.” She said (she was the only one who really had very tight connections), “You’re destroying my life.” And after a year she said, “I’ve learned something very important.” She said, “I learned I could make friends anywhere.” And one of the things that was done, that Jackie Lesh did, was she arranged for our kids to have pen pals before we moved here. And those friends are still my kids’ friends and that first summer they went to Camp Solomon Schechter. Misha went to second session and my other two kids, Ari and Marissa, went to the third session. We did not know. We dropped Misha off. We drove all the way across country and we dropped Misha off at camp and then we drove down and we did not know that he was really angry with us. He told everybody at the camp that he was homeless. He said, “I left my home. I don’t know where I’m going to live.” So he told them he was homeless.

Frankel: Let’s move now to the congregation and how different or similar was it.
ISAAK: First of all, the synagogue was much bigger. And a lot of things going on and this was a kind of community that I had not experienced before in terms of a Federation and all the different Jewish Family and Child Services. And although I had colleagues around I was much more involved with the interfaith group in my previous congregation because the ministers and the priests were much closer. And here I came and had a whole ministerial group.

Frankel: You’re referring to the Oregon Board of Rabbis?
ISAAK: The Oregon Board of Rabbis. So the only rabbi that I knew when I got here was Rabbi Stampfer and I didn’t know him all that well yet. But we were beginning to develop a very nice and respectful relationship. And the story that I tell each time I teach the Introduction to Judaism Class is that I came to my first Board of Rabbis meeting and the agenda at that meeting was that Lois Shenker had just been hired the year before to be the coordinator of the Introduction to Judaism Class. That class had been going on for years but with no coordinator. I was told that there were boxes of books that were just sort of thrown on the floor. No one took role. The registration was just sort of… 

And they decided the year before I came that they really ought to have somebody that held the whole thing together. And that was Lois Shenker. And for the first time Lois now had everybody fill out an evaluation at the end of the class and she was coming now to the first Board of the Rabbis meeting to share the evaluation. So I met Rabbi Rose and I met Rabbi Geller and I met Joey Wolf and I met Lori Rutenberg and Gary Schoenberg. So Lois said everybody was very positive on their evaluations. She said there were two subjects that were not taught and students remarked that they were surprised. One was dietary laws and the other was God. Well, I looked around the room to see what everybody’s reaction would be. And nobody thought that was unusual. That here we have 18 weeks devoted to an Introduction to Judaism class and nobody talked about God. I think rabbi Stampfer was the only one that reacted and he said, “Well all the classes are about God.” Well that’s a fake, they’re not all about God; they don’t even mention God. You can talk about life-cycle events; you can talk about the cycle of the year; you can even talk about bible and not talk directly about God. So the decision at that meeting was, ‘Yes, we probably should talk about God. We’ll make the 18 weeks 19 weeks.’–which sounded like the shemone esre from 18 blessings to 19 blessings and we’ll have a class on God and theology. And since I was the new guy I got to teach God and theology and I’ve been doing God and theology… So one class devoted to God and theology and I usually ask everyone at the beginning of class if this was an introduction to Roman Catholicism or Mormonism or the Presbyterian and it was 19 weeks long, how many weeks to would be devoted to the subject of God? And the answer is either half or all of them. So I tell the story about how this class was created.

Frankel: What would you say is the most important role of a rabbi and especially in your congregation?
ISAAK: One? [laughs]

Frankel: Roles, plural.
ISAAK: I think it’s really to be there for the people in both their celebrations and their crises. I’m not as good as many other people are (and I think over the years that’s not gotten better, perhaps gotten worse) in knowing, in remembering everybody’s name. But people really want to be known. They want to be welcomed. They want you to know their name; they want you to know about them. They want you to ask about Uncle Joe who’s in the hospital in Dallas, Texas. And that’s tough. One of the complaints that was sort of very surprising to me was people said, “You often look busy and you don’t take time to welcome to people or greet the people or talk to the people.” So that was something that I tried to make an effort to do. But it came as a surprise because it’s something that I thought that I already did. But people don’t simply want—and I understand that—they don’t simply want to be someone to whom a bill is sent and they pay their dues. When people leave the synagogue after a year or two and I look at the list and I can’t put a face with the name, we failed, I failed. And the synagogue has failed. And they resigned because they didn’t make a connection. Now it’s also their fault for not trying to be known.

Frankel: Besides the location when you look into a pulpit what do you look for? In other words, before you decide, you make a decision that ‘Yes, you’re going to serve that pulpit.’ What are the criteria that determine that?
ISAAK: For instance I interviewed in Austin, Texas. Austin, Texas has changed a tremendous amount but Austin, Texas was a very young community and I was coming with my son at the time who was a teenager. And if I had any hope that my stepson would socialize, date, eventually marry someone who was Jewish, it wasn’t going to happen in Austin, Texas. So you look at your own family dynamic you look where you can be fulfilled. One of the things they also said in Austin, I guess it was a pretty good example, that they lost their two previous rabbis. Why? One became a stock broker and the other one got so involved in the university that he was never around the synagogue. So they said that anybody that comes here is not going to have anything to do with the university and I looked at the community and I thought, ‘That university is the only source of intellectual stimulation in this community.’ So to come and be told that’s a restriction because of the previous rabbi… I think you look at what the previous experience was. One of the first interviews I went to, I hadn’t even graduated from the seminary yet, did not know how I would be a rabbi, Carol would be the rabbi’s wife and they were firing the previous rabbi and the previous rabbi’s wife was teaching in the religious school and all kinds of things and finally I said, “Why are you getting rid of your previous rabbi?” To which the president of the synagogue looked me in the eye and he said, “Because I don’t like him.” [laughs] I thought to myself, “I’m not coming here.” So it’s like visiting colleges; you’ve got to find, hopefully, where the right fit is politically, religiously, socially.

Frankel: Were you able to establish that before you came here?
ISAAK: I don’t think you ever really establish that but you get indications. I saw that the kinds of things that Rabbi Stampfer had done, was involved with were the kinds of things I was comfortable with. And I was returning back to the West Coast. My last conversation with my father before we came here was about his coming to my installation. And it’s interesting, my whole growing up my father would say, “Someday we’re going to go visit Oregon. I hear it’s beautiful up there. But my father never made it. It actually was an argument. He felt he couldn’t leave the synagogue in order to come up for this installation. And I said, “Dad, the rabbi takes a vacation. You can take a week off and come up to the installation.” Well, he passed away very suddenly and he never made it to my installation at that time.

Frankel: Having Rabbi Stampfer, Rabbi Emeritus right here, did you feel you couldn’t make changes? Or were you ever considering you’d like to make changes? How did his presence..?
ISAAK: I don’t think it was his presence; we made some changes. Much of the direction he had led the congregation in was something I was comfortable with. Some of the changes were relatively minor but it wasn’t what Rabbi Stampfer would think of them.

Frankel: Can you mention some changes that you did introduce?
ISAAK: I decided that the sanctuary was really too big for Shabbos morning. So I chained off the side sections. I invited Rabbi Stampfer to sit on the pulpit and he said no, he wouldn’t sit in the pulpit. So maybe a month, maybe six weeks went by and he walked in and he saw [the rope] and he just pulled it off and he went and sat down. Well that was the end of trying to. . . . he didn’t know that I had done that; that was going to be his seat. He was not going to move and sit in the middle. It began with little changes. In many ways the Friday night was a Reform service and the Shabbos morning service was a traditional service. So there was a lot of English Friday night and no English Shabbos morning. The tradition was to stand up for the Shemah Friday night and to sit down for the Shemah Saturday morning. And I thought ‘Why are we doing that?’ So we sat down for the shemah. When I got here for the first year I was here for the High Holidays and there were two Kol Nidre services. There was an early Kol Nidre service and a late Kol Nidre service. And you had to finish that Kol Nidre service exactly at the right time so that people could leave, get in their cars, get out before the next group got in. And not only was I troubled by that but I was troubled by the fact that Kol Nidre is supposed to start before it gets dark. So we only had one Kol Nidre service. 

Prior to my coming the alternate service was really run by the downstairs minyan and there was no. . . . So we sort of professionalized downstairs. The downstairs minyan people are still very involved with downstairs but we had a group of Neveh Shalom students who were in rabbinical school who led those services for many years for the downstairs High Holiday services. And originally we had different colored tickets as to whether you were upstairs or downstairs. And then we decided that was unnecessary. We got rid of the different colored tickets. There was a lot of upset about not having a late Kol Nidre service because people liked being able to have dinner later and then come to Kol Nidre. So I’d have to think about what other kinds of changes. 

I can’t say I did it too often, but my ability to go and talk with Rabbi Stampfer about certain things, one of the things that a rabbi needs I think, is somebody to share stories, often funny stories, ridiculous stories, which I would do with my wife. But now I had Rabbi Stampfer who, when I would share a story with him, he could laugh. It was just very funny because he would know exactly who the cast of characters were and what was going on. Lynn Fitzsimmons, who is a relative (her husband is Irish) decided for her son’s bar mitzvah that she was going to put a shamrock on the kippah. So I thought, ‘Is this OK?’ What are we doing here? So I remember I sat with Rabbi Stampfer at one point and I told him the story and he said, “You know all the ridiculous things they put on kipot? Cartoon characters, ball teams.” He said “What the hell do you care?” So there were times when I would think, “Do you think this is OK?” And very often that was not only the years of experience, it was not his responsibility anymore. Sometimes he would say, “That’s why you’re the rabbi.” [laughs] So it was always nice to have him here. And we always had a respectful relationship. And I always appreciated that all of his kids dealt well—you know this could be a very difficult transition. I had a mother-in-law whose older brother was a dentist. When he retired he’d been her only dentist all of her life. And now she was in her 70s and in a quandary. She’d never been to another dentist. Well, you know, your father’s the rabbi; all of a sudden he’s not the rabbi anymore. But all of their kids not only are enormously respectful, even though they’ve made different choices in their lives between career and level of Jewish practice. All of them are enormously respectful and have been respectful of me. When Shaul comes to town he always comes to visit. 

Frankel: How about the involvement of the younger people of the synagogue. Since you’ve been there more than 20 years have you made any observations about changes?
ISAAK: 20 years is almost a generation. So we’ve had a lot of funerals. A whole generation has died off. We come to Holocaust commemorations and the only Holocaust survivors we have are people who were very, very young at the time of the Holocaust because anybody that was older has passed away. One of the really wonderful things has been that I think that we’ve successfully ducked the trend, not only in the Jewish community in general but in the conservative movement in particular where, in many conservative synagogues there are no young people anymore they don’t have a religious school anymore; they don’t have a preschool. And we talk about the graying of the Jewish community but it’s more than the graying of the Jewish community but where are the young people? And because of our Foundation School we’ve put a lot of energy into seeing that we have young people. We have a little bit of a crisis now with our Foundation School but I think with our new Foundation school director that will correct itself. But yes, having young people, having people who step into… I looked at minyan today thinking about meeting with you and I thought were any of these people coming to minyan when I first got here? And I think there was only one who was at minyan this morning who would have come to minyan 20 years ago. So the fact that these kinds of things repair themselves with the next generation and people continue to fill those things in. That’s very satisfying.

Frankel: How about your involvement beyond Neveh Shalom, the Board of Rabbis, is there a good relationship with the other rabbis?
ISAAK: There is a great relationship with other rabbis. Even with our Orthodox rabbis who are, you know—there was a time when we sat with our Orthodox colleagues and they called us all heretics. [laughs]

Frankel: Would they even join the Board of Rabbis?
ISAAK: Now, as a matter of fact, we have a kind of relationship that we did not have before. Rabbi Kaplan comes to some of our meetings. All of the Orthodox rabbis get our emails. They respond even if they don’t come to meetings. We have a committee that oversees the mikvah that involves the Orthodox community, partly because, I think, they don’t want to go to the Chabad mikvah. But whatever the motivations… For a long time, Rabbi Geller oversaw the mikvah and for the Orthodox rabbis that wasn’t good enough. But now that’s very good. There’s always a little bit of competition that we have but it’s not the kind of competition that I think exists in many other communities and that’s because we continue to be a growing community. Because somebody belongs to another synagogue. Saturday night we went to our neighbor’s house and we’re very, very good friends with Susan Grayburn and Bill June. They belong to Beth Israel and most of the people who were there were Beth Israel people. Late in the evening Michael Cahana came because he was officiating at a bar mitzvah Saturday evening. So we have a pretty good… and there’s been a huge changeover. I came to be the successor rabbi to the first of the triumbrant. And now rabbi Geller has passed away and they’ve had their own troubles at Shaarie Torah. Rabbi Rose is retired and Rabbi Stampfer, although he came for a while to Board of Rabbi meetings has not come to Board of Rabbis meetings, does not participate in that way. So there’s been that huge rabbinic transition. And this is a community that… You know there are some communities, some synagogues that every two years they’re hiring another rabbi. That usually means there’s something wrong in the congregation. So we’ve had an expansion of many other congregations with Shir Tikvah on the eastside and South Metro, they don’t call themselves South Metro anymore—in Lake Oswego. Right away rabbi Zuckerman decided that we should have a memorial service for the three teenagers in Israel. Although several of the rabbis said they were not able to make it everybody said they were on board and right away we cooperated to put that service together. 

Frankel: Did the relationship with Shaarie Torah, now that they’ve joined the Conservative Movement change in anyway with Neveh Shalom?
ISAAK: No, I don’t think that’s changed anything. I always considered Shaarie Torah a right wing Conservative congregation and we being a more moderate or left wing Conservative congregation when Rabbi Geller was there. So I don’t know that that’s changed anything. Now with their new transition we’ll see if they can strengthen what they have which I hope they’ll do because I think they serve an important purpose in the community.

Frankel: Can you elaborate?
ISAAK: A Presbyterian minister friend of mine in Briarcliff shared with me a survey that was done in a very large Presbyterian church that asked everybody, “Why are you here this morning?” And there were all kinds of reasons. Some said, ‘It’s the closest church.’ Some said they liked the Sunday school. Some said they like the particular minister. But the answer that was most prevalent was that someone invited me here. So I think having different possibilities is healthy. That people can find their own expression. And Shaarie Torah, in a lot of different ways, is very different from Neveh Shalom. It may change now but it had a different political outlook in many ways—about Israel. And so I think that it’s important that people have those options available to them.

Frankel: What about your involvement with the ecumenical community, not just Christian but Muslim, how did it come about?
ISAAK: David Leslie had become a very good friend. He’s the executive director of the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon. Rabbi Stampfer had a very tight relationship with his predecessor. I had a good relationship with Rodney Page too when I first came. He put me on various committees. But Ecumenical Ministries, I’m told, the very largest Christian ecumenical organization in the country. That includes, not only the archdiocese and the liberal protestant group but also the conservative protestant groups that participate. I think David would really like to make it an inter-faith group but it’s not an inter-faith group. But they’ve actually coordinated many of the activities that have gone on and have given me access to a lot of the ministers and discussions about Israel. So I’ve gotten to know many of the ministers in a much more informal than I had in my previous congregation where we really had a formal organization. We met once a month, we had lunch in each other’s churches but it was a much smaller community. And 9/11 was a wake-up call in so many ways but it certainly was a wake-up call for the Muslim community because they had been—no one was aware that there was a Muslim community here in Portland. They purposely kept very low profile. And they realized that this was not good. And I think in many ways they found the model in the Jewish community an interesting model, that we do not remain anonymous, we do not remain quiet and we see in many ways the Christian community has their own agenda which is to bring the Christian community together. Our agenda is really very different. And our agenda really has to do with having people—that we want to have relations so that if there are issues we know who to turn to and they know people within the Jewish community that they can consult with immediately. After 9/11 we put on a number of interfaith services about it which the Muslim community participated in. We put together a group, just a Muslim Arab Jewish group, there were eleven of us and eleven of them. We created really strong bonds and strong friendships and a way for them to access us and for us to access them.

Frankel: Who made the first step?
ISAAK: Joey Wolf and I were involved. We were very lucky to have Nohat Tulan who was really the very elegant, well-spoken leader in the Muslim Arab community. It’s a great loss to us that he’s passed away, dean at Portland State University. And we had a few people that we were in touch with then from the Muslim community. Washdi Said who is the head of the Muslim Educational Trust, runs a school. And my dear friend, who’s become my dear friend, Shachrir Achmad who is really from Bangladesh. We met once a month and we met once in a Jewish environment, once in a Muslim environment. We always ate dinner together, we talked about Islam, we talked about Judaism, we compared and were terrified to talk about the Middle East situation. Somehow it was easy to talk about. One of the things that I think was difficult with that group was that they were not used to being self- critical. We Jews are always self-critical. I think there was a feeling that our criticism of Israel meant that, on some level, we were not loyal to Israel, not Zionists. And I think they had a hard time understanding that we could both be critical of the government, critical of their policies but still feel enormous attachment and connection. And it took them time until they could express some—I don’t know if they totally felt comfortable doing it but—criticism as well.

Frankel: Were there any women involved?
ISAAK: Yes, on both sides. And what was very interesting was that all of the Muslims were people with, if not PhDs, advanced degrees. All very, very educated, which is not our initial assumption about the American Muslim community.

Frankel: You speak of them in the past. Is that group no longer…?
ISAAK: The group no longer exists as a group but we still have our connections so often Shacrir and I will participate in a forum at a church or in high school to talk about Islam and Judaism. I think Joey Wolf does as well. And those connections were very important then and I think they’re still very, very important. You know, who can you trust and… one of my favorite expressions in Hebrew is “kabdehu v’chashdehu” which means respect him and suspect him. Who do you have total trust in and who do you say well I have a very cordial relationship but I don’t know that I have total trust in how they… But I have a very, very close relationship with Mary Jo Tulley at the archdiocese. And within the protestant community as well. You know with his bbs issue with Israel. I understand the frustration with things having to do with Israel what they have to understand is this is not the way to make progress in the way that they would like to make progress. But we have relations with the Presbyterian community and with the different communities.

Frankel: In your many roles as a rabbi what would you say gives you the greatest satisfaction?
ISAAK: I think watching families grow, mature, develop, confront crises. Sometimes the crises, whether they have to do with incorrigible children, sometimes incorrigible parents and even death, is how people are able to put their lives back together again and recoup. You know I have more weddings now than I’ve ever had before, how wonderful. The wedding I had yesterday, I know the Bergs very well I watched Hannah and her sister Marta go through our religious school, they’re now adults. That’s great satisfaction.

Frankel: What direction would you like to see the synagogue go in the future?
ISAAK: Well I think we have to continue to fight to be relevant to attract young people to still have a handle with what’s going on the eastside where so many young people are. So we have programming there. One of the things we created in the last 20 years is this program where we send kids to Israel.

Frankel: Through Birthright?
ISAAK: Not Birthright. Birthright is for the college kids. This is our program through the high school program that we set up a scholarship if the kids fulfill their responsibility. And we had nine kids go on one program, three on another; they’re all in Israel right now. I think Israel is an increasing challenge. It’s an increasing challenge because the generation that was excited about the creation of the state of Israel, they’re not leading the community any longer. Jews take Israel for granted and when I see my own daughter and son-in-law who’ve been to Israel, who have friends in Israel, my daughter’s doing her PhD thesis about Israel, they have trouble calling themselves Zionists. I see that as a real problem. Where that’s going I don’t know. What we should do about it, I’m not exactly sure. It’s not going to be the same Zionism that my generation had and the previous generation had.

Frankel: Do you care to share some of your plans for after retirement?
ISAAK: They’re still unclear but I got myself involved with the Oregon Food Bank on their board. I may get involved with Planned Parenthood. It’s a whole different kind of thing. My ability to have some time to do some other kinds of things in the community.

Frankel: You’re planning to stay?
ISAAK: We’re planning to stay. We have our four kids, our youngest is still here, Misha. And now we have two that are living in New York. And Ari lives in San Diego. But yes, we love this community. We really love Portland. We moved here and I went to a Rabbinical Assembly convention maybe three years later. We went in the car and Carol came with me and we’re driving up and I needed to get gas and I get to the gas station and I start talking to the fellow who’s pumping gas. He isn’t sort of responsive and Carol says, “This isn’t Portland.” [laughs] People don’t necessarily talk to strangers. So the whole issue with the idea that Rabbi Stampfer had to leave the community… I saw this in my previous congregation. I had Ruth Seldin whose father was a very, very well-known Conservative rabbi in Long Island and he was determined that when he retired he was going to leave the community. And he moved near us and all of a sudden I saw a man who didn’t have an identity anymore. He didn’t have his shoemaker; he didn’t have his doctor. He didn’t have all the people that he knew. He had to go someplace else and create a new life. I’m not sure I understand that. We’ll see how comfortable the next rabbi is with now having two emeriti. And hopefully we will not breathe down his or her throat. And the congregation will be stronger.

Frankel: Joan, I wanted to ask if there were any questions you were burning to ask.
Weil: No, actually I enjoyed listening very much because I’ve been here longer than you.

ISAAK: When did you come to Portland?
Weil: 1977 so it’s an interesting perspective.

Frankel: Any additional comments you’d like to make?
ISAAK: I think we covered pretty much everything but I think a generational change—it’s so interesting how much stays the same and how much really, at the same time, changes. Several of those institutions that Rabbi Stampfer created are now consolidating; that’s probably good. You know the community is a dynamic place, new leaders, new people come, money is always an issue. Ismar Shoresh who was chancellor of the seminary, I remember he gave a talk once. And the theme, we always say that Israel is the great miracle. Look what Israel has created in terms of a society. But he said, “Understand that Israel has the coercive powers of taxation, of putting an army together, that governments have certain powers.” He said, “If you really look at it, the real miracle is America. What the American Jewish community has created with the only coercive powers of tax deduction. With synagogues and schools and universities and libraries and old age homes. It’s really miraculous.” Portland is a relatively small community and all the different things that really function and function well are a great tribute to the enormous generosity of a community. 

I sat at a dinner once with Arlene Schnitzer, I think it was a Stampfer dinner. She was on a tirade about all these rich people that she knows that don’t contribute anything. It was sort of eye opening that we have people that, whether wealthy or not wealthy make sure that this community and every other Jewish community functions. And we send money to Israel on top of it. It’s really an enormous tribute to our small community. And I think really a model that everybody else looks to in terms of the Jewish community. When I came here, those ten commandments–behind the ten commandments was a slate, if you remember. It wasn’t stucco like it is now. And the slate was peeling. It was both unsightly and dangerous because pieces could fall off. So they decided they would repair it. Letters came down, I walked around with a lamed which was three feet high and I showed the kids how big the letters were. Then they put stucco there and rather than having the letters stick out, which they used to—but before they put the letters back I came to one of my very first board meetings, this was, I think, my first year here. And the scaffold was still up and Gary Pearlman, head of the beautification committee came to the board. My wife had been invited to sit on the beautification committee but she didn’t warn me, Gary came and he said, “In 1989 we did a renovation in the synagogue and one of the things that we did was simplify everything in the sanctuary. We simplified the lighting, we simplified the ark and to modernize it from 1964 to 1989.” And he said “Our recommendation is that we do the same thing with the ten commandments.” And everybody thought ‘What is he talking about?’ And he said “We think that the letters shouldn’t go back up.” That the frame of the ten commandments was enough, and keep the letters off. Dead silence in the room until somebody said “Well Rabbi, what do you think?” I didn’t know what I was supposed to think and I don’t know that I had any thoughts. But what had happened was something fascinating. In 1964, I’m told, when people drove up to the synagogue, they were sort of shocked. “Did it have to be that public? Did it have to be that big?’ People were not altogether happy. So what they decided at that meeting was that the scaffold would stay up and the board members would informally ask members of the community what they thought. And they would discuss it again at the next meeting. Everybody came back to the next meeting and there was no discussion. The first order of business was the letters go back up. What’s very interesting is what changed between 1964 and 1994 was a sense of comfort in being Jewish, a sense of pride and a sense of, “It’s ok to be very public.” Now whether that’s the result of the ’67 war or a result of something else… In high school and college I never would have walked around with a kippah on. My kids, both Marisa and Micha decided in high school that they were going to wear a kippah to high school. I looked at it with curiosity and for at least a year they wore a kippah to Lincoln High School. So there was something in the Jewish community that was reflected in those letters and has really changed about our willingness to be out there and to say we are Jews and this is who we are and we are comfortable with that. But we still have this very exaggerated, and I think I like it, sense of communal responsibility. We are all upset, not only about these three kids but about this Muslim kid who was burned to kid and this other kid that was beaten up by the soldiers, because it was done in our name. we could simply dismiss it but we don’t because what Israel does. It’s not just the prime minister, the Knesset, the government. It’s what every Israeli does sort of reflects on who we are. And every Jew in America, [when there is a] Nobel Prize winner, we take a little credit, we get… What’s his name who stole money, and mostly Jewish money? Madoff! And we’re horrified. But one of the other things that goes on that I think is very important is we think that we’re on the verge of an outbreak of antisemitism and we’re wrong. We thought we were going to have antisemitism after Jonathan Pollard. We thought there would be antisemitism when we had the oil crisis, they’d blame Israel. With the Wall Street scandal and all these Jewish names. We live in a different world than we used to live in and that’s good.