Lives of Consequence
Rabbi Paul H. Levenson ’53
Growing up on Long Island, in Lawrence, N.Y., Rabbi Paul H. Levenson ’53 was, as he says, “actively Jewish” at Temple Israel, as were his parents. His mother was an officer in the temple’s Sisterhood. His father was on the temple board; served as treasurer, chair of the religious school and music committees.
Levenson, however, did not decide to become a rabbi until he came to Geneva.
“One of my classmates with a Jewish name told me that he was going to officially become an Episcopalian,” he says. “I was shocked. I never met anyone who had a Jewish name who was going to get baptized as a Christian of any kind. I spoke to him and he said he didn’t know anything about being Jewish.”
It was that experience that made Levenson “want to teach Jewish kids about being Jewish,” he says. “I’d had such a good experience, myself, that I wanted to share that.”
When Levenson graduated from Hobart in 1953, he attended Hebrew Union College (Reform) in Cincinnati, before traveling to study in Israel.
“In Israel I studied full time, every morning and many afternoons in a Yeshiva, an Orthodox day school for high school kids, who knew lots more than I did,” he says.
After a year studying at Yeshiva Kol Torah and Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he completed his rabbinic education in 1959 at Hebrew Union in New York City, which had joined with the Jewish Institute of Religion.
He went on to teach Jewish Studies for 10 years at Rockhurst College, a Catholic school in Kansas City, Mo. He later created many Jewish Studies courses and taught them as well when he served as Hillel Director at Northeastern University. He was a congregational rabbi for his other 30 years, plus 20 as a hospital chaplain including his latest, retirement years.
“In hospitals,” Levenson says, “Jewish patients need someone who understands their ‘Jewish culture’ far beyond a prayer to God for healing. Many American Jews, as well as those in Israel, came from Eastern Europe where Stalin and others Communists forbade any overt expression of Jewish religious life. Consequently they knew nothing or little of Jewish religious practices.” This was true, Levenson recalls, of the father of his friend whom he met at HWS back in the early 1950s.
Levenson is now Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Chayai Shalom in Easton, Mass., in addition to his continuing as Jewish Chaplain in two of Boston’s biggest hospitals, caring for infirmed and dying persons, Jews and non-Jews alike.
His involvement in the community has grown and developed over the years, from a member of research committees for hospitals and medical schools, to his activism for fair housing practices, the advancement of the state of Israel and civil rights. In the 1960s, Levenson took part in civil rights demonstrations and was present at the National Mall to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. In the late 1980s, he marched on Washington with Elie Wiesel and Natan Sharansky and 250,000 other people in support of the rights of Soviet Jews to emigrate from their autocratic country.
Of service to others, Levenson says, “As you can tell from my brief ‘bio,’ I took up challenges and went wherever my Rabbinic colleagues and I were needed.”
For Levenson, it’s the tradition of Judaism that provides that connection to the community. He and his wife, who died this year, and their four children and five grandchildren have always been very active in the overall Jewish community wherever they lived.
“I’m very traditional in my outlook on life, and in every other way, because I know what was done in times past,” Levenson says, and has tried to reincorporate traditional aspects of the Jewish experience into his teachings and into his passion for songwriting (see www.rablev.com).
“The traditional Sabbath, lighting of the Shabbat candles, going to synagogue Friday night -- in my own congregation we did even more than that,” he says. “We sang many traditional songs and Israeli songs. Why? Because they’re a fun, important, memorable, and authentic part of the ongoing, existential Jewish experience.”