Archive Committee Looks Back: 
Rabbi Sirner on the Seventies

In searching Beth El’s records for our Centennial project, the Archive Committee has had the pleasure of reading the monthly columns that the then Assistant Rabbi Sirner wrote for the Beth El Bulletin during his early years at Beth El Synagogue. Many of the columns contain Rabbi Sirner’s commentary on the major political, cultural, and social events of the time. In addition to a brief biography of Rabbi Sirner, who is celebrating his double chai (36th) year at Beth El this month, we review some of his perspectives on the events and issues of the early 1970s.

A native of Chicago, Rabbi Sirner came to Beth El Synagogue as an assistant rabbi to Rabbi Golovensky in September 1972. After earning his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1966, Rabbi Sirner began studies for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary. At the seminary, he was a co-winner of the Alexander Lamport prize in Talmud and the Rabbi Israel H. Levinthal Award in Homiletics, and he was awarded the degree of Master of Hebrew Literature in 1970. Rabbi Sirner spent the 1970-71 academic year in Jerusalem studying at both the Israeli branch of the seminary and at the Graduate Department of Judaica of the Hebrew University. He received his rabbinic ordination in 1972.

As a college and seminary student, Rabbi Sirner taught and led youth groups at several synagogues in the New York area. For eleven summers, he worked at Camp Ramah as a counselor, division supervisor, and then advisor and teacher in the Mador, the National Leadership Training Institute of the Ramah Movement. Before assuming his position at Beth El Synagogue, Rabbi Sirner spent a year assisting the director of Ramah in New England.

In one of his earliest Beth El Bulletin essays, published in February 1973, Rabbi Sirner discussed the official statement issued by Pope Paul VI in the wake of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s famous visit to the Vatican during the preceding month. While the official Papal statement acknowledged the history and suffering of the Jewish people, it stated that the Pope had consented to see Prime Minister Meir because he deemed it his duty to act for peace and “for the defense of the religious interests of all, and especially for aid to weak and defenseless people, first of all the Palestinian refugees.” Rabbi Sirner noted that the plight of the Palestinian refugees was of concern to all people of good will, but he faulted the Vatican for not acknowledging either the Jordanian government’s failure to take steps to alleviate the Palestinian refugee problem or “the thousands of Jewish refugees who have found a creative and productive life in Israel—refugees from the Nazi Holocaust, from Arab persecution, and most recently, from Soviet oppression.”

The following month, as the Vietnam War seemed to be drawing to a close, Rabbi Sirner tackled the controversial subject of amnesty for draft resisters. Commenting on the emotional homecomings given to American prisoners-of-war, he wondered “if the President and the American people ought not consider bringing another group of boys home—those resisters who fled the country, either before or after being inducted into the Armed Forces.” Recognizing that there were “strong feelings on both sides of the issue,” Rabbi Sirner endorsed the views of American historian Henry Steele Commager that “we should be ready to pay any reasonable price to restore harmony, to win . . . the confidence of the American people in the wisdom and generosity of their government. . . I do not think granting amnesty . . . however unfair it may seem to some, is too high a price to pay.”

Eight months later, in November 1973, Rabbi Sirner focused on the devastating impact of the previous month’s Yom Kippur War, when Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel. The rabbi reported that, after two weeks of fighting, the “cost in human life and casualties far exceed[ed] those incurred during the Six Day War, but six short years ago.” He reflected upon the shock of learning of the invasion while in synagogue on Yom Kippur, and the “remarkable unity of the Jewish people displayed in recent weeks.” In the same essay, Rabbi Sirner related a then-recent event at the synagogue that “shed light and hope on an otherwise beclouded celebration of Simchat Torah”—the joyful participation of recent Russian émigrés, relatives of Beth El members Mr. and Mrs. Adalbert Smook, in the Torah procession. Rabbi Sirner poignantly described the thrill that our congregation experienced in “welcom[ing] them to freedom, and to a community where Jews can and do identify proudly with their tradition and people.”

In January 1974, Rabbi Sirner’s column paid tribute to David Ben-Gurion, forefather of Zionism, who had died the preceding November at the age of 87. He recalled Ben-Gurion’s declaration that the future of Israel as a Jewish homeland depended upon “Aliyah; populating and developing Israel’s wasteland; and establishing a viable peace with the Arabs” and observed that, while great progress had been made on the first two fronts, “the third problem remain[ed] elusive,” as it still does today. Noting that Ben Gurion’s life had spanned the entire Zionist epoch, the Rabbi recounted Ben Gurion’s central role in creating and building the Jewish State, having served as the secretary-general of the Histadrut, chairman of the Jewish Agency, one of the chief architects of the Haganah, co-founder and leader of the Mapai party, and both the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of the State of Israel. The rabbi concluded his tribute by likening Ben-Gurion to a “small David, who faced many Goliaths, [and] will undoubtedly be remembered and treasured by Jews everywhere.”

In future months, the Archive Committee will review some of Rabbi Sirner’s essays from the 1980s and 1990s.