Richard J. Israel

Richard James Israel was born in Chicago in 1929 and educated in the city's public schools.[1] He earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1950.[1] He then pursued rabbinic studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati, where he was ordained in 1957.[1][2]

During his studies at HUC-JIR, Israel spent the academic year 1954–1955 in Israel, studying at the Hebrew University and at a yeshiva in Yavneh.[1] His early rabbinic experience also included a period as rabbi of the Bene Israel Congregation in Bombay, India, under the auspices of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.[1][2] His studies in Israel and service in Bombay gave his rabbinic training an international dimension.

After his ordination, Israel joined the UCLA Hillel Council as associate director, a post he held until 1959.[1] He then became Hillel director at Yale University, a role he would fill for twelve years, from 1959 to 1971.[2] At Yale, Israel taught and counseled students, officiated at religious services and lifecycle events, and led a major capital campaign that enabled the purchase and renovation of Hillel's facilities.[1] He also played a significant role in eliminating restrictions on Jewish admissions to the university — an institutional achievement that extended his impact well beyond campus religious programming.[1]

In 1971, Israel became executive director of the Hillel Council of Greater Boston, where he supervised planning, programming, and funding for a regional network serving approximately 38,000 Jewish students.[1] He held that post for fourteen years.[2] A 1973 United Synagogue of America convention program lists him as director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation in Greater Boston.[3]

Israel served for two years as president of the National Association of Hillel Directors and also served as president of the Yale Religious Ministry.[1][2] During the 1990s, he returned to campus work as interim Hillel director at Brandeis and Princeton universities.[1] He additionally taught a Hillel leadership course at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.[1]

After leaving his Boston Hillel post in 1985, Israel became director of Central Services and Judaica for the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston, overseeing day camps and community programming; he received a national award for this work.[1] He later directed the Alperin-Schecter Day School in Boston and worked for the Bureau of Jewish Education of Rhode Island.[1] In the later years of his career, he taught in the Jewish communal service program at Brandeis University and directed a Judaica program for a group of Jewish community centers.[2]

Israel's civic activism extended beyond Jewish communal circles. In 1962, the American Jewish Congress awarded him a special citation for civil-rights activities following his participation in a clergy-led protest against segregation in Georgia.[1] In 1974, he traveled to the Soviet Union to establish contacts with Refuseniks — Jews denied permission to emigrate — as part of his advocacy on behalf of Soviet Jewry.[1] In 1982, HUC-JIR conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.[1]

Israel wrote on Jewish living and education for publications including Moment, Commentary, and Sh'ma, and contributed to The Jewish Catalogue series.[1][2] His 1994 book The Kosher Pig and Other Curiosities of Modern Life is a collection of essays addressing the challenges of living in the contemporary world as a fully committed Jew, written with humor while engaging seriously with its subjects.[2]

His other published works include Jewish Identity Games: A How-To-Do-It Book (1978), The Jewish Mission to the Jews: The Context and Practice of Outreach (1985), and The Promised Land of Milk and Date and Jam: The Problems of Bee-ing in the Bible and Talmud (1972).[2] On Jewish prayer, Israel wrote: "It is in the tension between privacy and community," he wrote, "that Jewish prayer is located."[2]

Israel's practical approach also appeared in an essay on kashrut, in which he described dietary observance as valuable partly because it repeatedly raises questions about human responsibility, eating as a devotional act, and the place of divine command in everyday choices.[4] He was listed in Who's Who in Religion, Who's Who in American Jewry, and Who's Who in World Jewry.[1]

Outside his professional life, Israel was an ultra-marathon runner and a beekeeper for three decades.[1][2] His hives provided the honey he needed for Rosh Hashanah.[2] He died in 2000 while hiking with his son Joshua.[1] He was survived by his wife, Dr. Sherry Israel, and four children: Alisa, Rachel, David, and Joshua.[1]

The Richard J. Israel Papers — Manuscript Collection No. 722 at the Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives — preserve his legacy across ten linear feet of materials spanning 1946 to 2000.[1] Donated by Dr. Sherry Israel in August 2004, the collection includes sermons, writings, correspondence, Hillel materials, educational resources, and records of his civil-rights and Soviet Jewry advocacy. The papers are open to researchers, except for Box 23, Folder 2, which is restricted.[1]