As you may know, one of my retirement activities has been my activity with the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, which I serve as vice president. The Haberman Institute is named after its founder, Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman, who created the institute under the name Foundation for Jewish Studies 40 years ago. This year we have devoted a number of programs to the memory of Rabbi Haberman.

Joshua Haberman was born in Vienna and was in rabbinical school there when the Nazis moved into and merged Austria with Germany. Luckily (to put it mildly), he received a tuition free scholarship to complete his studies at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and came to Cincinnati in the fall of 1938.

We had already done a program on the Jews of Vienna, and last night was our program on Rabbi Haberman’s time in Cincinnati. Our presenter was University of Michigan professor Karla Goldman, who formerly taught at Hebrew Union.

Her talk was fascinating. It was not a chronological history of the Cincinnati Jewish community, and it was not solely the story of Rabbi Haberman’s experiences when he was there at school. Goldman took a much more interesting and unique approach.

HUC had given scholarships to eight young rabbis or rabbinical students – seven from Germany, and Josh Haberman from Austria. Karla Goldman told the story of all eight of these rabbis, who had just escaped Nazi Germany and wound up in the heart of 1930s classical American Reform Judaism, something to them completely foreign.

There was so much that surprised them. They were met at Cincinnati Union Station by Prof. Nelson Glueck of HUC and his wife, and brought to their house for an American breakfast. These eight kosher-keeping rabbis were served bacon and eggs. You can imagine their shock.

Then, on the first Shabbat, they were told that a car was going to pick them up and take them to services. Sure, some German Jews must have driven on Saturdays, but the idea that a rabbinical school would pick them up to drive them to services? You can imagine their shock.

When they got to the synagogue, they were given prayer books unlike any they had seen before, mainly in English. In fact, virtually the entire service was in English – almost no Hebrew. And of course, their English was still very weak. They understood little.

Finally, at the end of service, they met the rabbi, David Philipson, one of the most prominent Classical Reform rabbis in the country. Philipson was not too happy to meet them, it appears. In fact, he was apoplectic – how dare these young men come into his temple with their heads covered. If that happened again, he would kick them out.

Karla Goldman told these stories and much more, leading to how all of these rabbis became rabbinic leaders, and how almost all of them stayed in the Reform movement, helping to reset the Reform movement and push it back to many traditional practices.

Her talk showed she did quite a bit of research – looking at such things as memoirs and letters written by the eight foreign born rabbis, Jewish newspapers and newsletters of the time and more, as well as from the writings and sermons of Rabbi Haberman.

When I introduced her, this type of a talk was not what I expected. I thought she was going to talk more about the general history of the Cincinnati Jewish community, which would have been interesting, but not as interesting. I mentioned that I expected to hear about Jewish celebrities born in Cincinnati – director Steven Spielberg, actress Theda Bara, scientist Albert Sabin, mayor/tv host Jerry Springer, actress Sarah Jessica Parker, or activist Jerry Rubin. Or how about square matzos, first produced by Cincinnati’s Manischewitz family?