Confronting Hate

The Untold Story of the Rabbi Who Stood Up for Human Rights, Racial Justice, and Religious Reconciliation

Deborah Hart Strober, Gerald S. Strober

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781510745391
• eBook ISBN: 9781510745407
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Civil Rights in Politics

In this biography, Gerald and Deborah Strober draw from original source materials and numerous interviews to detail the life and career of the esteemed Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, a seminal 20th century figure in interfaith relations in the US and around the world. From his position as Director of Interreligious Affairs at the American Jewish Committee, Rabbi Tanenbaum was deeply involved in the historic Vatican II Council, which promulgated a landmark encyclical on Catholic-Jewish relations. Rabbi Tanenbaum also was one of the few Jewish leaders who worked closely with Reverend Billy Graham and other evangelicals. He worked tirelessly as a civil rights activist and was active in the cause of Soviet Jewry, as well. Confronting Hate details this esteemed career and his interactions with the likes of television legends Norman Lear, Don Hewitt, and Franco Zeffirelli; Jesse Jackson; Martin Luther King, Jr.; and several US presidents, from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush. This book leaves no stone unturned in covering the public and private aspects of the life of "the human rights rabbi."The authors bring to light the immense international influence that Rabbi Tanenbaum has even today, more than twenty-five years after his passing.

PART I

IN THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER 1

Baltimore: Living above the Store

Every spring, as the Passover and Easter holidays approached, Sadie Tanenbaum [Marc’s mother] would prepare extra food—matzo balls and other kosher-for-Pesach delicacies—and distribute them to their Jewish and Gentile neighbors alike, a gesture toward the less fortunate that had “quite an impact on” on young Marc Tanenbaum.

—Sima Scherr, Marc’s sister

MARC TANENBAUM’S STORY BEGINS IN Baltimore, a city with an important past in early American history. Given Baltimore’s excellent natural resources and the development of major shipping and rail lines, it is not surprising that the city became a magnet for immigrants from nations throughout Europe seeking economic opportunities and, in the case of Eastern European Jews, freedom from anti-Semitism.

While there had been a Jewish presence in major eastern seaboard cities from New York to Savannah since the late seventeenth century, Jewish settlement in Baltimore dated back only to the mid-eighteenth century. Among the city’s earliest-known Jewish residents was a merchant named Jacob Hart, a native of Fürth, Germany, who supplied the Marquis de Lafayette with war matériel during the American Revolution.

One explanation for the relatively belated arrival of Jews to Baltimore was that during the administration of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, in 1649 the Toleration Act was promulgated, granting freedom of religion to Catholics and Protestants—but not to Jews. Following the American Revolution, a further hindrance to Jewish settlement in the city may have been a clause in the state of Maryland’s Constitution limiting the rights of non-Christians. In 1826, however, legislation known as “The Jew Bill” was enacted, nullifying the religion-based restrictions, and Jewish settlement in the city began to increase.

The Jewish population grew, particularly during the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1925, Baltimore was home to approximately 65,000 Jews. While the first to arrive were mainly immigrants from Germany, a much larger group came later, composed of those fleeing the virulent anti-Semitism and pogroms that had erupted throughout Eastern Europe.

Much of Baltimore’s Jewish population would be concentrated in East Baltimore, where a number of significant Jewish institutions would be developed, including synagogues and day schools. In 1850, Baltimore would become home to the first YMHA to be established in the United States. Baltimore Hebrew College was founded in 1919 and the Ner Israel Rabbinical College in 1933.

Early in the twentieth century, the stream of immigrants arriving from Ukrainian shtetls would include Sadie Baumsiger, from Olita, and Abraham Tanenbaum, from Dimidivka, near the Bug River. Sadie, born in 1900, was sixteen years old when she arrived at Ellis Island. Sadie was acutely aware that those seeking a better life in America could be turned back at the whim of an immigration officer. And so, she prepared carefully for her arrival. While she had been wearing her auburn hair fashioned in a long pigtail that made her look younger, she thought she would stand a better chance of passing muster by cutting it off and, thus, appearing more mature, as well as looking very healthy.

Sadie’s careful preparations paid off; she was admitted to the United States without incident. But she almost didn’t arrive when she intended to. Sadie’s older brother, Harry—she was the middle child, and Max was the youngest of the three siblings—had sent money intended to purchase a ticket, but for Max. But the high-spirited Sadie declared, “Oh, no! I’m going next!” She arrived in America in the middle of World War I and quickly went to work sewing clothing for soldiers. Max made it to America not long afterward, but not before witnessing fierce fighting during the war between Red and White Russian factions. He was at one point forced to hide behind tombstones in a cemetery while bullets were flying back and forth.

Meanwhile, Abraham Tanenbaum was witnessing terrible acts of anti-Semitism in Dimidivka. During a Good Friday sermon at a local church, the priest raged about the Jews as Christ killers. Soon after, Abraham’s brother, Aaron, was abducted, taken to a bridge, and thrown into the Bug River, where he perished. This was the unambiguous signal for Abraham that it was time to leave for America. Arriving in New York in 1907, he joined the city’s Jewish immigrant community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and found work in a sweatshop there.

After a time, Abraham made his way to Baltimore, where a landsman—someone from his village—named Grossblatt and his family were living. The Grossblatts not only offered Abraham temporary lodging in their home, they introduced him to the young woman with beautiful auburn hair who had so carefully prepared herself for inspection at Ellis Island.

Soon thereafter, Sadie Baumsiger and Abraham Tanenbaum would be married. The newlyweds would operate a series of grocery stores at various locations in Baltimore before moving into a modest 2,200-square-foot brick-and-stucco corner house built at 1850 Light Street in 1905. It was across the way from a factory that manufactured metal buckets in what was then a largely Italian, German, and Irish neighborhood not far from the city’s Inner Harbor.

Assuming that the local streetcar line would one day extend as far as 1850 Light Street, the Tanenbaums opened a shop on the ground floor, reasoning that people getting off the streetcar in front of their store would shop there on their way home. But the streetcar extension never materialized, and the family would always struggle to make ends meet.

The Tanenbaums lived behind and above their store. Their dining room was in back of the store, and at the rear of the building, there was a kitchen, in which there was a small sofa. There were three bedrooms on the second floor: Sadie and Abraham’s at the front, overlooking Light Street; another one next to theirs, then a hallway; and at the back of the house, another bedroom.

It was in this house that Herman Marc Tanenbaum, the second of Sadie and Abraham’s three children, was born on Tuesday, October 13, 1925. His Hebrew name was Chaim Mordechai, which pays homage to the hero of the Purim story. He would later adopt “Marc” as his first name because he never liked his original first name, and he would relegate Herman to serving as his middle name. Herman’s older brother, Ernest—everybody called him Ernie—had been born three years earlier, and his sister Sima would come along in 1928.

As the three Tanenbaum children were growing up, their father, whom Herman would later recall as having been “more the dreamer of the family, the poet,” loved to tell stories about Sholem Aleichem. But he also told his American-born children about the dark side of shtetl life—the terrible acts of anti-Semitism and the horrific pogroms. Abraham provided his children with plenty of love, but it was impossible to shelter them from the growing awareness that he had a serious heart condition.

Still, the Tanenbaum home was full of life. While Abraham was deeply rooted in Orthodox Jewish observance, he enjoyed secular pursuits, among them keeping up with current events. And so he would begin each day by switching on his radio and listening to the news of the world.

When it came to their children’s education, Abraham and Sadie believed in a strong grounding in Jewish tradition. And so they enrolled Herman in the city’s Talmudical Academy, which at that time provided students through the eighth grade with both a secular and Jewish education. Its students began their school day with prayer and the study of the Bible as well as other Jewish texts. Then came secular subjects, including languages—Hebrew, English, French, and Latin—as well as mathematics, sciences, and history.

Following Herman’s years at the Talmudical Academy, he attended Baltimore City High School. An excellent student, he would graduate from high school at the age of fifteen.

As the Tanenbaum children grew into adolescence, Herman and Ernie would often wrestle in their back bedroom. Sima, who could hear their horseplay, was both angry and resentful because she longed to share in the fun. But the boys would have none of her. As Sima would recall many decades later, “I felt like I missed out on that part of our youth.”

Despite that grievance, Sima looked back with great affection at her brother Herman, whom she at that time called by his Hebrew name, Chaim. “He was the serious one, the academic, always sitting at the dining room table, studying,” she recalled. Ernie, four years Herman’s senior, was tall, handsome, and gregarious, she recalled, adding he was “more outgoing, the comedian, an actor and a performer.” By contrast, Sima described Herman as being “short, plump, and pimply.”

Herman would adopt a very protective attitude toward his sister, helping her academically and also helping her to understand the physiological changes wrought by adolescence—developments that Sadie, due to her own upbringing and modesty, wasn’t able to discuss with her daughter. “At that time,” Sima would recall many years later, “immigrant parents didn’t speak too easily about such things.” When Herman became a rabbinical student, she said, “I felt free to ask him what was happening. And he did an excellent job, and I always appreciated that.”

Herman, Ernest, and Sima were true children of the Depression. After school and during vacations, they helped out in their parents’ small grocery store, where credit was always extended to their mostly poor customers. One day, when Herman opened the cash register, he found only a single quarter in the change section. He recalled feeling intense panic, because he couldn’t understand how the Tanenbaum family could possibly survive.

But survive they did, and every spring, as the Passover and Easter holidays approached, Sadie, the major businesswoman of the family, would prepare extra food—matzo balls and other kosher-for-Pesach delicacies—and distribute them to their Jewish and gentile neighbors alike, a gesture toward the less fortunate that Sima said had “quite an impact on Herman.” Moreover, at Christmastime, Sadie would fill baskets with food for their needy neighbors, because she felt that they could not be without food on their big holiday. Herman would accompany his mother as she distributed these gifts.

While the Tanenbaums managed to support their family on the income from the store, Abraham urged his son Herman to become a physician, because, as he liked to say, “There will always be sick people,” and therefore, Herman would always be able to make a living. Being able to say “my son the doctor” was, of course, hardly an unfamiliar aspiration among Jewish immigrant parents. Sadie, however, despite being the more practical parent, wanted Herman to become a rabbi. Herman would later conclude that one reason for this aspiration was that she felt that she had to prove her own orthodoxy to her parents, and there was no better way to do so than to produce a rabbi for the family.

Initially, Herman’s father’s wish seemingly prevailed. As Herman began to contemplate going to medical school in Baltimore, he and his Uncle Max Baumsiger, who regarded Herman as the son he never had, began to explore the possibility of Herman obtaining a scholarship. And so Herman applied to both the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University for financial assistance.

In the 1930s, however, such preeminent institutions had stiff quotas for Jewish students, and Herman’s prospects for admission seemed shaky. And so a bit of a conspiracy was hatched: the principal of the Baltimore Hebrew Academy and Sadie joined forces to obtain Herman a scholarship to study at Yeshiva College—it was not until 1945 that this college would become the liberal arts division of the larger Yeshiva University—in New York City. There, Herman was assured, in addition to religious training in the Orthodox tradition, he could take science and premed courses in preparation for medical school later on.

While resisting that idea for several months, Herman went on to enroll in several individual premed courses at Johns Hopkins. Herman was also interested in literature, and he took several courses in Shakespearean plays, all the while realizing that he was merely avoiding a major decision about his future.

Herman’s scholarship came through, and Sadie and Abraham escorted their reluctant teenager up to New York and handed him over to Yeshiva’s registrar. Herman, six months shy of his fifteenth birthday, cried “like a baby,” because, as he told an interviewer nearly forty years later, “I was a baby.” Indeed, he was still wearing children’s knee pants on the day he reported for classes at Yeshiva College.

Despite Herman’s reluctance to confront his future and leave his loving family, his college experience in New York City would profoundly affect his life.

CHAPTER 2

A Rebel in New York City

“I sensed from the minute I met him that he was a very curious person, he was very open; he was very pluralistic. He was different than most of the people I was meeting at that time.”

—Myron Fenster, rabbi emeritus, Shelter Rock Jewish Center, Roslyn, New York; schoolmate of Herman Tanenbaum at Yeshiva College and the Jewish Theological Seminary

IMAGINE HERMAN’S SENSE OF WONDER on the day in 1940 that he first eyed one towering skyscraper after another as he and his parents arrived in New York City en route to the campus of Yeshiva College in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan!

And imagine Herman’s amazement as he caught sight of Yeshiva’s main building, a massive, four-storied edifice at 500 West 185th Street, replete with such architectural features as a soaring corner tower, turrets, minarets, arches, buttresses, and balconies. Its walls were infused with surprising orange-hued and marble striping reminiscent of Byzantine architecture.

The building had been erected in 1929 as the epicenter of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva College, America’s oldest and largest Jewish-sponsored institution of higher learning.

At the time of Herman’s enrollment, classes in which the students studied Talmud began in the morning and continued until 3 p.m. The remainder of the day and the early evening hours were devoted to liberal arts, including Jewish history, literature, and philosophy.

Once Herman had gotten over the initial shock “of being thrown into this whole different kind of world,” he adjusted well to his new surroundings. Loving dormitory life, he made friends with “some wonderful guys, a bunch of very bright, very gifted people,” and he experienced “a real sense of continuity and family.” He did so despite being several years younger than most of his classmates.

Herman thrived academically, receiving A’s in all his courses that first year. Best of all, however, Yeshiva’s biological sciences program was proving to be as excellent as Uncle Max had pr...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: The Rabbi Who Refused to Stand Idly By
• Part I: In the Beginning
• Part II: The Bridge Builder Who Served As “Secretary of State for the Jews”
• Part III: Vatican Council II
• Part IV: A Prophet for Our Time
• Part V: New Personal and Professional Horizons
• List of Interviewees
• Chapter Notes
• Index
• Photo Insert