Albert Friedlander
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Albert Hoschander Friedlander (born 10 May 1927 in Berlin - 8 July 2004, London) was a Rabbi and teacher.
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[edit] Life
Friedlander was the son of a textile broker, Alex Friedlander (d. 1956) and Sali Friedlander (d. 1965). In 1961, he married Evelyn Friedlander and had three children.
In 1952, he was ordained as a rabbi having previously studied in Chicago, Cincinnati and New York. From 1956 to 1961 he served as Rabbi for Temple B'nai Brith, a Reform synagogue founded in 1845 and located in Wilkes-Barre, PA. During his tenure there he also served as a part time faculty member for Wilkes College (now university). He then left for a position as advisor to Jewish students at Columbia University in New York City. In 1971, was the Rabbi at Westminster Synagogue in Knightsbridge, London. In 1993 he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (the Order of Merit) from the German government and in 2001 he became the first overseas-born Rabbi to be awarded an OBE.
From 1975-1995 he was the Vice President for the World Union of Progressive Judaism.
He was chairman of the British branch of the World Conference on Religion and Peace (1990-94), committed to the Three Faiths Forum, and a president of the Conference of Christians and Jews.
He was also a lecturer at the Leo Baeck College from 1967-71, before becoming Director of Studies 1971-1982 and then Dean from 1982-2004
[edit] Rabbi A H Friedlander on the Hebron Massacre of 1995
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This section is written like a personal reflection or essay and may require cleanup. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (December 2007) |
'Tragedies unite or divide the world. Certainly, the murderer at Hebron tore apart much of the fragile web of peace that concerned Israelis and Palestinians had begun to weave together.
Some of that web was an illusion, concealing problems that still defy solutions. Nevertheless, the Jewish community felt deeply involved in the peace negotiations and has been traumatized by what happened when death invaded a holy place.
The first reaction within British Jewry was great anguish. In my synagogue we held prayers for the men, women and children who were murdered at the time of their prayers. We had a larger than average congregation, which seemed to mirror what was happening all over London.
Almost every synagogue heard its rabbi follow the lead of the Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, who had made a clear public statement: "Violence is evil. Violence committed in the name of God is doubly evil. Violence committed against those engaged in worshiping God is unspeakably evil." He spoke for all British Jewry.
As Rabbi Rodney Mariner pointed out to his congregation, there was almost an overreaction. When a Jew kills another Jew, this causes distress; but a Jew killing non-Jews creates panic. More than insecurity is involved. There was the sense that we fail when our neighbors suffer through acts that emanate from our larger Jewish community.
It cannot be stated that we have stumbled from the moral high ground the murderer and the Kach party which gave him the religious and political structure for that suicidal attack has no moral high ground and Baruch Goldstein does not represent the Jewish community.
The need to distance oneself from that action still dominates British Jewry. There will be a memorial service for the victims at the West London Synagogue tomorrow. Rabbi Hugo Gryn hopes for Palestinian participation. Jeffery Rose, the chairman of the European Board of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, in London, wrote an open letter to Afif Safieh, the head of the PLO delegation to the United Kingdom, in which he expressed "the most profound sympathy for this totally unacceptable act and sent condolences to the families of the bereaved. Rabbi Jacqueline Tabick, speaking for the Reform and Liberal rabbinate, expressed outrage and pain.
The question has to be asked whether these rabbis represent the congregations, and here doubt creeps in. After the anguish comes uncertainty, and after that fear. In my synagogue and others, concerned parents called to announce they would not send their children to religion school: synagogues suddenly seemed to be likely targets.
A sense of grievance has begun to manifest itself within some segments of the Jewish community. "Did the world cry out when the synagogue in Istanbul was bombed? I was asked. "Why this concentrated, orchestrated outrage against the action of a single madman? There is sympathy for the settlers in those areas exposed to constant dangers. Slowly, the British Jewish community begins to fall back into the political and religious factions that often finds it difficult to work together.
Yet something endures after that shattering event. British Jewry is united in the desire for peace in the Middle East and all know that this peace has been threatened.
The one clear lesson that has been taught is that violence and fanaticism can destroy this world. There are fuller synagogues this week where Jews pray for reconciliation and peace.
[edit] Rabbi A H Friedlander Quotes
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Festivals do come to an end; and times of sadness follow days of exultation. Ritual is frozen theology which only comes to life when actual devotion and personal commitment by the worshipper turn the text and ceremony into a personal experience. 'I was brought out of Egypt', says the Jew on the first day; and many of us who came out of the much darker Egypt that was Nazi Germany say this with the deepest conviction and the most profound gratitude."
"Liturgy is frozen theology. Beliefs which have risen out of life experiences have been patterned into an ordered arrangement – a siddur – in which their daily repetition re-enforces the teachings of the past. They become an experience of their professors, who make the formula of the past a description of the present. Yet each generation encounters new events, which fight their way into the liturgy and bring with them new thoughts about the relationship between humanity and God. The new thought demands inclusion into the authoritative texts in which this dialogue between the finite and the Infinite takes place."
"Prayers are needed to link our concern with that of the Mitmensch. And religious services are needed to bring up expression before the altar, to assert our experiences as a people, and to re-encounter God, who is not only found in silence, but also in speech."
"I am able to address to you, only because I understand your suffering. I must continue to speak because we encounter one another not only within suffering, but also within history." – July 20th, 1984, Berlin at the 40th commemoration of the July plot against Hitler.
[edit] Selected bibliography
- "Never Trust A God Over 30" (1967)
- Leo Baeck: Teacher Of Theresienstadt (1968)
- Out Of The Whirlwind: A Reader Of Holocaust Literature (1968)
- The Six Days Of Destruction (with Elie Wiesel, 1988)
- A Thread Of Gold: Journeys Towards Reconciliation (1990)
- Riders Towards The Dawn: From Ultimate Suffering To Tempered Hope (1993)
