Thanksgiving Sermon of Rabbi Zev Zahavy from 1943

Here is my dad's incredible inspiring and uplifting sermon from 1943 for the holiday of Thanksgiving. It was a dark year in the history of humankind. Yet Rabbi Zahavy found ways to weave together precepts from our classical Jewish tradition to give hope and optimism to those who faced the bewildering frightening world of 1943.

I read this sermon every year and it inspires me more each time. My father was an impresario of the rabbinic pulpit.

Click here for the original text of Rabbi Zev Zahavy's 1943 Thanksgiving Sermon, published by the RCA, Rabbinical Council of America.

From the Manual of Holiday and Occasional Sermons, published in 1943 by the Rabbinical Council of America. This publication contains various sermons for Jewish holidays like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Succoth, as well as other occasions. Specifically, the excerpts detail the full text of a sermon titled “Reasons for Thanksgiving Today” by Rabbi Zev Goldstein, which discusses why American Jews should observe the Thanksgiving holiday, even amid the second World War. The sermon explores themes of gratitude, faith, and hope during a period of global crisis, referencing the importance of thanking G-d for safety, recovery from illness, and freedom from servitude.

Here is a link to the video overview from NotebookLM (2025 - my dad would've liked this).  

And here is the link to the notebook itself. Or click below and watch. Expand it to full screen for greatest enjoyment!

A big hat tip to Zechariah for finding this and sending it to us.

This sermon for Thanksgiving Day discusses the following main points:
* **The Importance of Thanksgiving:** The sermon emphasizes the significance of Thanksgiving as a time for reflection and gratitude, especially during challenging times.
* **Reasons for Thanksgiving:** It explores the four reasons for giving thanks mentioned in the Talmud: safe passage across the ocean, completing a journey through the wilderness, recovery from illness, and release from servitude.
* **Challenges to Gratitude:** The sermon acknowledges the difficulties in finding reasons for gratitude in the face of war, suffering, and injustice.
* **The Jewish Perspective on Suffering:** It highlights the Jewish tradition of finding meaning and expressing gratitude even in difficult circumstances, drawing on the example of Rabbi Akiva.
* **Hope and Faith in the Future:** The sermon emphasizes the importance of maintaining hope and faith in the future, even during times of crisis.
* **A Prayer for a Better Future:** It concludes with a prayer for a future characterized by peace, justice, and freedom.
Overall, the sermon encourages listeners to find reasons for gratitude and to maintain hope for a better future, even in the face of adversity.

A Happy St. Patrick's Day Recollection: When a Little Boy Met the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin Ireland

One St. Patrick's day, when I was a little boy, I met Bobby Briscoe, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin Ireland, at my father's synagogue in New York City on East 67th Street.

I vividly remember his top hat and the big medal around his neck which swung out at me when he bent down to shake my hand. 

It was a grand day for the Jewish and the Irish!

The New York Times wrote up the visit. A wonderful New York story of a previous innocent age. 

New York Times. Published: March 17, 1957

BRISCOE ATTENDS PRE-PURIM RITES 
Lord Mayor Prays at Altar in Traditional Shawl - Pays Visit to Cardinal
By IRVING SPIEGEL ·

The Lord Mayor of Dublin devoted forty minutes yesterday morning to being plain Robert Briscoe and worshiping in the Orthodox Jewish faith of his ancestors.

He prayed at a Sabbath of Remembrance and pre-Purim service at Congregation Zichron Ephraim, 163 East Sixty-seventh Street. With the prayer shawl he brought with him for the service around his shoulders, he received the Orthodox honor, aliyah - an invitation to the altar.

Then he recited the traditional prayers in Hebrew before and after readings from the Torah. The aliyah was also extended to City Council President Abe Stark and Kings County District Attorney Edward S. Silver, who had of accompanied Mr. Briscoe to the synagogue.

Because of a heavy schedule, Mr. Briscoe and his group did not stay for the entire service. Rabbi Zev Zahavy, spiritual leader of the congregation said that the Lord Mayor's presence at the services was "an inspiration to all Jews in America and throughout the world."

In keeping with the Orthodox custom of not riding on Saturday, the Lord Mayor and his group walked from the Pierre Hotel, where he is staying, to the synagogue. In addition to Mr. Silver and Mr. Stark, Mr. Briscoe was escorted by two detectives of Jewish and Irish extraction, Ely Kerner and John O'Hagan.

Wears Kelly Green Tie

The Lord Mayor wore a cut-away coat, a black topper, a Kelly green tie with a golden harp embroidered in it.

As he strode up Fifth Avenue to attend synagogue services. he passed a group of policemen awaiting their parade assignments and remarked: "Top o' the morning. It's a fine day."

He paused to talk to a group of policewomen. Holding his prayer shawl, he told one young policewoman that, if she saw her commanding officer, "tell him I'm on my way to say my prayers."

Leaving the synagogue, he stopped at Engine Company 39, at 157 East Sixty-seventh Street, and told Lieut Joseph Kennedy, the commander: "No fires today, it's St. Patrick's Day."

Earlier in the morning, he had visited Cardinal Spellman at the Roman Catholic prelate's reidence at 452 Madison Avenue. Mr. Briscoe delivered a personal greeting in behalf of Archbishop John Charles McQuade of Dublin, and gave the Cardinal forty-five sets of Rosary beads, three boxes of chocolates and a glass bowl - all products of Ireland.

Cardinal Spellman told his guest: "There has not been as much excitement here since the Dionne quintuplets." Mr. Briscoe remarked that he was going to attend synagogue services.

"Be sure to leave all those Rosary beads here," the Cardinal replied with a laugh.

Mr. Briscoe laughed. "That's very good, very good," he said.

He returned to the Pierre, but not before being hailed by storekeepers, taxicab drivers and pedestrians. There was a brief rest and then he set out for the synagogue. Mr. Briscoe had originally intended to attend services at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on West Eighty-third Street but decided against it because of the long walk.

He returned to the hotel at noon for a brief visit with James A. Farley, chairman of the parade, and out again - this time for the St. Patrick's Day Parade with a ringing declaration of: "What a beautiful day!"

And fast forward to 2025 - my son and two grandsons are lifting a pint to celebrate the family ties in Dublin - visiting to cheer on the Minnesota Vikings football team!

Yahrzeit of my mother Edith Zahavy

We are observing today the 26th Yahrzeit of my mother Edith Zahavy (aleha hashalom).

We miss her so very much. She would have loved to see the progress of her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and take pride in all of their accomplishments. She would have loved to read books to her great-grandchildren and to watch them play and grow.

She was born in NYC and attended the public schools in Washington Heights. She watched from her classroom window as they built the George Washington Bridge.

She graduated from Hunter High School, Hunter College and went on to a career in public service at the OPA and then into the field education. 

Together with my dad, she founded the Park East Day School when my father was rabbi at the Park East Synagogue, then called Congregation Zichron Ephraim. She subsequently taught in NYC public schools for many years.

She is interred on Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem. Her beautiful memorial photo site is here.

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy - Yahrzeit Number 11

Photos

Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy

New York City 

September 8, 1918 - May 1, 2012

Nine Minute ZZ Slideshow
edited by Barak Zahavy
200+ ZZ Sermons cited in the New York Times - Download PDF

edited by Tzvee Zahavy

My father's most valuable autographs - the signatures on his ordination parchment

I republished this post in honor of the Yeshiva University Chag HaSemikhah Convocation that took place on Sunday, March 19, 2017 and in honor of the 75th anniversary of my father receiving his ordination.

I received my rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva in 1973. My father received his semichah on March 19, 1942 = א׳ בְּנִיסָן תש״ב

Here is my original post:

In May 2012, during the shiva for my dad, Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy, I showed many people an important part of our inheritance from him - five valuable autographs.

Now these are not autographs of Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle or of U.S. presidents or anything like that. 

These are the five signatures on my dad's klaf - on his diploma of ordination from Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, which he received in 1942.

The priceless autographs are by five great Torah scholars, Rabbi Binyamin Aronowitz, Rabbi Bernard L. Levinthal of Philadelphia, Rabbi Samuel Belkin, Rabbi Moses Shatzkes (the Lomza Rav) and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik of Boston (the Rav).

Rabbi Yossi Adler looked at the klaf during the shiva in Teaneck and confirmed what I had been told, that it was rare to have five signatures on such a document. My own ordination has two (Rabbis Belkin and Soloveitchik).

I once asked my dad what it was like to go before these five great rabbis and be examined before receiving semichah - ordination. He told me, "They were tough. They asked difficult questions. They made me sweat."

I greatly treasure this meaningful part of the legacy of my dad.

When my Father was Rabbi at the Park East Synagogue

Praying and the synagogue were central to my life since my early childhood. My father, Zev Zahavy, was the rabbi of several distinguished New York City synagogues on the West side and then the East Side of Manhattan. I recall many times accompanying him to his work. His study in the synagogue was off to the side of the main sanctuary, lined with books, filled with a musty smell and having the creakiest wood floor I ever walked on.

The author (right) with his Dad (center) in 5715 in the synagogue sukkah

The synagogue in Manhattan at that time was a stately place with formal services, led by a professional Hazzan. My dad wore a robe and high hat - black during the year and white on the High Holy Days.

He was famous in the city for his sermons. He labored over them for hours. He would send "releases" to the local papers (like the NY Times' 230+ citations of his sermons -- here in online book form) to let them know about what he would be preaching on Saturday. Those were the fifties and the Times and other papers covered the Saturday and Sunday sermons. Frequently we would look around the sanctuary to see if the reporter from the Times was present. We'd know because he'd sit in the back and be writing feverishly on his reporter's pad. (Not iPad... real paper pad.)

My father was ambitious especially about increasing the attendance at the services. We had to count the number of people in shul and discuss that at the lunch table. Then he'd ask us how the sermon was and we all answered enthusiastically every week, "It was terrrrrrific!"

Rude Reader or Right Reader? Your Dear Rabbi Zahavy Jewish Standard Talmudic Advice Column for October 2019

Dear Rabbi Zahavy
Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

During the lengthy Rosh Hashanah services, I was reading a personal book in synagogue to help me pass the time. A person I know saw me doing this and criticized me for my rude behavior. I feel like he was out of line and want to tell him that I did nothing wrong. What is your advice for the best approach to doing this?

Reader in Ramapo

Dear Reader,

Up front, my advice to anyone who receives unsolicited advice or criticism for behavior that is mainly innocuous is to reply to the critic, “Thank you for your suggestions,” and to avoid further confrontations. So that’s what I suggest here as well, because I am assuming that in reading your book, you were not doing anything distracting or disruptive to others during the services.

In fact, what we do during our synagogue services are mainly activities that we could describe generally as “reading a book.” The sanctioned books that we use, of course, are the siddur for most services, the machzor for the holidays, and the Tanach for the Torah and haftarah scriptural readings.

Now if you want to know if by reading your own book you “did nothing wrong” and argue that viewpoint with your friend, well, that involves some further contextual analysis and some lengthier discussion of social norms.

Context does matter. Reading a book quietly in a public setting ordinarily is not rude or improper. So, you start off with a strong justification of the propriety of your actions. And in a general way, your friend was out of line for nosing into your activity.

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy column for September 2019 - Your talmudic advice column - What should I do about our tribal rituals and knowledge

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy column for September 2019
Your Talmudic advice column
What should I do about our tribal rituals and knowledge

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I was shocked to read an op-ed in an Israeli newspaper by a writer who made radical assertions — seemingly without much evidence to support his assertions — that circumcision (bris milah) was not a central ritual of ancient Israel. The writer, moreover, proposed eliminating circumcision from Judaism, seemingly reflecting his blindness to his own Jewish culture and religion. Is eliminating circumcision now a trend among some secularist Jews? What can we do to stop this trend?

Bris Defender in Bergenfield

Dear Defender,

While many Jews assume that circumcision is a universal practice among their fellow Jews, that has not always been entirely true. In the early days of Reform Judaism in the 19th century, some classical Reform Jews openly opposed all rituals, including circumcision. And today, as you suspect, there are some young Jewish Israeli parents who refuse to circumcise their sons.

I have a devout Jewish friend who was terribly upset when her son in Israel did not circumcise her new grandson last year. I observe that it is trendy now in some progressive communities in Israel not to circumcise baby boys.

The article you cited provides some rationalizations for those people, but it is based on dubious historical claims.

Ten Tips for a Better Seder - with Trump Tips Added

It's a great performance. A dramatic Off-Broadway revue.

I have always had fun directing the reading of the Haggadah at the Seder. I learned this dramatic art as a child by watching my father (Rabbi Zev Zahavy) masterfully conduct the performance of the communal synagogue Seders as the rabbi of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. He did it right and authentic and dramatic.

So in the spirit of the season of rebirth and freedom, let me offer you ten tips for your seder extravaganza - this year we must add Trump Tips.

The Theological Cosmology of Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy

I published my dad's book for Kindle, "Whence and Wherefore" a major work of theological cosmology by Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy, of blessed memory.

Here is the final chapter of the book:

THE PLIGHT OF THE PARTICULAR

A very sagacious cocoon for emergent life was spun on Planet Earth by Mother Nature. However, her main concern seems to be the fostering of species, and ensuring their perpetuation. Nature patently ignores the trials and tribulations of the particular. Nature is clement toward her family, but obdurate toward its individual members. Small wonder, then, that an analysis of the human situation reveals wholesale anguish and anxiety as the forerunners of despair and hopelessness.

Such forlorn attitudes are quite prevalent in contemporary society. The atheist-existentialist, for example, moans about the vacuity of human existence. There is no logical explanation for the inanity of man’s being. In fact, it appears that nature played a cruel hoax on its supreme product, man. It endowed man with an intellect, with which he was enabled to perceive the utter futility of his own essence.

It is not easy to suffer the awareness of a meaningless existence. No organic specimen, other than man, has been inflicted with such a prepotent imposition. It hardly inspires a zest for life when one observes nature smiling broadly upon the species as an entity, and favoring the biologically superior product, while brusquely turning her back upon the tortured human psyche. Why was man chastised by being granted a brain that may apprehend all this?

Has man’s superior mental apparatus brought him greater security or happiness? An ego-awareness faculty, such as man possesses, becomes a hollow mockery in face of the emotional torment it causes him to endure. His intellect weighs upon him like a burdensome albatross. It would have been a far better thing for man to have been deprived of such a keen, discerning thinking-equipage, because as a simple biological creature, he would never have comprehended the sordid plight of mortal existence. If man were nothing more than a menial biped, he would have been spared the voluminous psychological stress and emotional sorrow to which he is presently subject.

Video: Ohab Zedek’s Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy and His Era

Tuesday, May 13 at Congregation Ohab Zedek, 118 W. 95th St.

TNLP Presented my brother Professor Reuvain Zahavy on,

"OZ's Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy and His Era"

My dad's second yahrzeit was Friday May 9, 2014

What is Kaddish?

We said Kaddish for our dad this past year. Some writers responded to their year of saying Kaddish by writing books about it. Four good ones are shown above.

We published a popular book about prayer a in July 2011, so we don't feel the need to go ahead and write another one about our Kaddish year.

In fact in that book, we resolved our main understanding of the meaning of the Kaddish. We have not changed our mind. Here is some of what we said in "God's Favorite Prayers" as explained by our archetypal mystic, Hannah, on pages 59-61:

Hannah invites us to examine next the well-known and practiced Kaddish prayer, a second case of the entry level mystic’s prayers.

There are several varieties of Kaddish recited in the synagogue, enough to confuse the beginner. One of them, called the Half (chatzi) Kaddish, because a few sentences are left off of it, is recited by the leader of the services as a framing mechanism to mark the end of each major section of the liturgy. And, coincidentally, the term ‘half’ (chatzi) relates to the Hebrew word for a dividing or framing action.

The second Kaddish variety, called the complete one (shalem), marks the very end of the services proper.

The best-known Kaddish in the synagogue though is the mourner’s Kaddish (yatom), the one that is employed as a mourner’s doxology (i.e., a praise of God). The practice of associating this prayer with a mourner first appears in the thirteenth century. The synagogue authorities endorsed the custom that mourners during the first eleven months after losing a close relative ought to rise and recite a Kaddish on their own. In the case of this Kaddish Yatom, the mourner rises in his place in the synagogue and recites the doxology at a few appointed times in the daily, Sabbath, and festival services.

I ask Hannah, What is it that the prayer tells us? And, in particular, what makes the prayer an apt mystical enactment for the mourner who recites it? She explains that the substance of the prayer is not at all philosophical or deep. It is a litany, as a mystical prayer is wont to be, of the right words of praise of God in the correct order. She shows us the mystical component of the Kaddish, those lines that cite for us the adoration that is recited by the angels in heaven.

Hannah explains then that reciting the Kaddish provides an appropriate vicarious association for the mourner—to stand and recite a prayer on behalf of the departed souls of the dead:

Magnified and sanctified may his great name be in the world he created by his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel, swiftly and soon—and say: Amen.
May his great name be blessed forever and all time.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted,
raised and honored, uplifted and lauded
be the name of the Holy One, blessed be he,
beyond any blessing, song, praise and consolation
uttered in the world—and say: Amen
May there be great peace from heaven,
and life for us and for all Israel—and say: Amen.
May he who makes peace in his high places,
make peace for us and for all Israel—and say: Amen.
(Koren Siddur, p. 178)

This lilting and poetic passage does have a certain unique cadence, yet it seems to us in its words to be no more than a standard glorification of God, nothing about death or dying or the deceased. I ask again, why then is this prayer especially apropos for a mourner? Hannah proposes that it is because reciting this heavenly angelic Aramaic praise is the epitome of a mystic’s liturgy. It is a stand-in enactment by the mourner on behalf of the departed loved one. The mourner stands in place in the synagogue and recites the words.

But acting in the mode of the mystic archetype, the mourner advances to the next level of mystical prayer. She is not just addressing God with the outpourings of her personal anxiety and vexation, but imagining that she is standing aloft in heaven, representing the soul of her beloved departed, knocking on heaven’s door to seek entry for that spirit into a secure, eternal place close to the divine light and near the warmth of God. 

I pressed Hannah on this matter. I asked her to clarify to us what is going on when she recites the Kaddish. Is she addressing God from her pew, using the words authorized by the angels on behalf of the deceased? Or is she imagining her ascent to heaven to plead there for the soul of the departed?

Hannah did not know the origins of the Kaddish as a mystic’s prayer on behalf of the soul. Alan Mintz explained that this association began in the Middle Ages (Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature

In the generations immediately following the First Crusade the ceremony of remembering the dead began to be practiced not only in the case of renowned rabbinical martyrs of public persecution but also simply for all who died natural deaths, entirely irrespective of the conditions of persecution. A bereaved son would recite the Kaddish, an Aramaic doxology, for the memory of his recently departed father or mother, in the conviction that such recitation had the power to save the deceased’s soul from tortures beyond the grave. The practice gained headway in the thirteenth century and by the fifteenth a new custom emerged: the Yorzeit, the recitation of the Kaddish on the anniversary of the death of a relative. And soon there was further established the Yizkor or Hazkarat Neshamot, the Kaddish together with various supplications for the souls of the departed, recited on the Day of Atonement and the last days of the Pilgrimage Festivals. Taken together, this amounts of a kind of cult of the dead that began in medieval Ashkenaz and later spread to all of world Jewry.

Mintz commented further about the deep personal attachment that Jews have to this prayer:

The astounding tenacity of this outlook is observable in the simple sociological fact, known to all, that in the process of secularization, and especially in the acculturation of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to America, the recitation of the mourner’s Kaddish with its attendant rites is the very last particle of tradition to be given up.

Without knowing anything about the historical development of the Kaddish, the entry-level mystic in the synagogue does engage in some prayer, emulating the angels and sending praises and petitions heavenward. She also may practice an intermediate form of mystical prayer, an imagined ascent to stand in another realm and importune her case before the angels and before God....

Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

Happy Father's Day? Celebrate the Life of Your Dad

How can you be happy on Father's day when your dad just passed away a few weeks before?

I guess you celebrate his life and his achievements.

Here is an excerpt from the Kindle Edition which I published in honor of Zev Zahavy's recent sheloshim, thirty days after his passing. This book was originally published by my dad in 1978.

Whence and Wherefore by Zev Zahavy
The Cosmological Destiny of Man Scientifically and Philosophically Considered. An Analysis Relating to "In the Centre of Immensities" by Sir Bernard Lovell

Wherefore

1 A COURAGEOUS QUESTION

One wonders how many of the distinguished scholars who listened to the significant presidential address delivered by Sir Bernard Lovell on that singular summer day in August 1975 recognized immediately its extensive ramifications. The subject of the paper at the time of its presentation was pointedly designated, “In the Centre of Immensities.” Its title relates to the classic work Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Carlyle, which first appeared in Fraser’s Magazine in 1833-34, at about the time when England’s leading men of science were advancing the cause of their newly formed organization, the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Among others, Carlyle boldly addressed science and expressed his concern for man’s basic existentialist identity and destiny. He was prompted by a desire to develop meaningful relationships between man and the mysterious universe of extensive expanse.

It is my estimation that the purposeful selection of a quotation from Carlyle before a body representing the distinguished scientific establishment conveys more than merely a setting for cosmological analysis. I believe that it contains a hint of majestic proportions insofar as amending the current materialistic outlook and philosophy of science. It points the way for the assumption of a new posture by men of science in their encounter with problems of existentialist overtones, and this is somewhat implied by placing before them for serious consideration, Carlyle’s inquiry, wherein he says of man, “Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in the conflux of Eternities?”

The New York Times deserves a measure of credit for exhibiting an alertness to the full significance of Professor Lovell’s presentation. It was published with some slight revisions as the lead cover-article in the Sunday magazine section on November 16, 1975, where it was endowed with the simple, but extremely provocative title, “Whence,” to which was further appended a rather enigmatic, philosophical subtitle, “We Are What We Know About Where We Came From.”

Quite appropriately, then, “Whence” may portray a milestone in the maturing of modern scientific thought. The essence of “Whence” signals to the contemporary scientist the explicit fact that other questions besides the normal “how” of the laboratory should come to the awareness of the researching mind. Perhaps this may come as a surprise to the current scientific generation, who, for the most part, are steeped in a materialistic attitude toward life and toward the tasks in their demanding discipline. Most of them, since their early freshman years, were indoctrinated with a scientific spirit that stressed the virtue of committing all investigations to the arena of “how.” Now, thanks to the courage of a leading scientist in the British Association, the staid rank and file are suddenly confronted with the challenge “whence.”

The Introduction to Zev Zahavy's book, "Whence and Wherefore: The Cosmological Destiny of Man Scientifically and Philosophically Considered"

Here is the introduction to the Kindle Edition in honor of Zev Zahavy's recent sheloshim, thirty days since his passing. This book was originally published by my dad in 1978.

Whence and Wherefore by Zev Zahavy
The Cosmological Destiny of Man Scientifically and Philosophically Considered. An Analysis Relating to "In the Centre of Immensities" by Sir Bernard Lovell

Now that man is a bona fide space traveler, it appears to be a propitious time to call for a new chapter in the enduring search for ultimate truths.

The technological record of human progress from the ancient period of a Sumerian bronze age to the current era of complex, multinational, computerized societies is a magnificent tribute to the impressive ingenuity of the human intellect. Man may justifiably take pride in his vast array of technological triumphs.

Certainly, the human specimen has traversed a long, rugged road since the early days of the ox-drawn plow and that prosaic lethargic era when simple mathematics were inscribed in fundamental ideograms upon cuneiform tablets. Today, man spans oceans and continents in a few short hours; communicates with the speed of light; harnesses the nuclear might of the unseen atom; prepares to visit neighboring planets; and charts the course of stellar phenomena at distant outposts of his universe.

Rabbi Zev Zahavy z"l (update)

I regret to inform you of the passing of my dad.

Rabbi Zev Zahavy z"l

Beloved husband of the late Edith Zahavy z"l; father of Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy '72R, Professor Reuvain Zahavy and Professor Miryam Wahrman; grandfather and great-grandfather, brother of May Chait and of the late Rabbi Noah Goldstein '51R z"l and Selma Guedalia z"l.

Rabbi Zev Zahavy was a wonderful son, husband, parent, grandparent, and great-grandparent. He served sincerely as a synagogue rabbi and worked diligently as a Judaic scholar and college professor. He was upright and honest in all his dealings. He loved his family and friends and his religion. He told wonderful stories and jokes and was an accomplished photographer and cartoonist. He enjoyed swimming and his summers at his home in Atlantic Beach. He cherished the State of Israel and his homes in Jerusalem which he visited with pride and enthusiasm.

He served as Rabbi in New York City at the West Side Institutional Synagogue, Congregation Ohab Zedek and as Senior rabbi at the Park East Synagogue. He worked as an esteemed Professor at the City University of New York. He was the author of books on cosmology and on kabbalah. More than 200 of his synagogue sermons were reported in the New York Times. He always inspired his family, his congregations and his classes with his unbridled idealism, optimism and good cheer.

The funeral took place at 10am, Wednesday, at the Park East Synagogue 163 E. 67 Street New York, NY. Additional eulogies and interment took place on Thursday at Har Hamenuchot in Jerusalem, (Gush Yud, Chelka Bet, Shura Tet) at 3:30 PM. Shiva started Thursday afternoon in Jerusalem at the Leonardo Inn Hotel. Shiva continued in New Jersey from Friday morning (5-4) through Wednesday morning (5-9) at Rabbi Tzvee Zahavy's home, in Teaneck.

200 of My Dad's Sermons Reported in the New York Times

Collected news reports of some 200+ of the sermons of Rabbi Dr. Zev Zahavy from the Times.

My Non-Spiritual Beginnings

I guess I just am not that much into myself, he said half-seriously. I pontificate quite frequently here but hardly ever wax autobiographical.

To compensate a bit for that, here is a short selection about my "Non-Spiritual Beginnings" extracted from a draft of my next book...

I was born Jewish and grew up in an Orthodox family, but not an entirely stereotypical one. My mother grew up as an American-born Reform Jew in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. She went to New York City public schools and then to Hunter College. My father grew up in an American-Orthodox family. Both of his parents were born in the US. He too went to New York City public schools, then to a yeshiva for high school and to Yeshiva University for college and for his rabbinic ordination.

New Film: Jews and Baseball

The relationship between Jews and baseball is strong.

Anecdote:

When my dad was a rabbi in New York City in the fifties he was surprised when a congregant came up to him on the bimah early on Yom Kippur morning with a problem. "Rabbi, I need an earlier honor," he declared.

The man had been asked to open the ark late in the morning during the Musaf service.

My dad asssured him he would try to get him a recognition at another time slot. But he politely asked why the gentleman needed to switch.

He told my dad proudly and without any hesitation, "I'm a big Yankees fan and I have tickets to the World Series at Yankee stadium where the game starts at 1:00 PM."

New Film:

"Jews and Baseball: an American Love Story," is a new film out making the rounds at screenings and festivals.

From the wonderful trailer we expect it will be an informative and moving film for any Jew who loves sports.

Hat tip to Yitz.

Times 1952: Rabbi Zev Zahavy Named Rabbi of Zichron Ephraim (Park East) Synagogue

About 57 years ago, the Times published this news about my father's appointment as rabbi at Zichron Ephraim, now called the Park East Synagogue.

Over the next few years The Times went went on to publish accounts of about 200 of my dad's sermons.

He spoke out frequently and eloquently on how he thought the world ought to confront contemporary issues of his day from a progressive Biblical and Jewish point of view.

I collected the Times' reports. You can read them online here.

Pope Visits Congregation Zichron Ephraim

Today the Pope visits Congregation Zichron Ephraim. The synagogue building was built in 1890. Of late it has been called Park East Synagogue.

When my father became the rabbi in 1952 it was called Zichron Ephraim.

We celebrated the bar mitzvahs of both my sons at the synagogue (1987 and 1990).