Rabbi Ben Zion Gold passed away on April 18, age 93. I got
to hear him deliver Yom Kippur sermons at Harvard Hillel when he presided over
its Conservative Minyan, chat with him when we crossed paths at the Cambridge
Public Library (yes, for all the resources available at Harvard he liked being
local), and interview him in the course of writing about his spare and eloquent
memoir, "Life of Jews
in Poland before the Holocaust," a book I can't recommend too
highly.
"What you're essentially saying to me now," he
replied in a near whisper, "is that you're learning about the variety of
Jewish life."
Yes, much of
the book is in that near whisper. And yes, I learned from him, not about
the Holocaust, which he put outside the bounds of this book, but about the
variety of Jewish life
You won't often find me mourning rabbis — well, maybe Allen
Ginsberg, who I liked to think of as my rabbi, though that's admittedly
eccentric. However, I do miss and mourn Rabbi Gold.
http://www.harveyblume.com/2016/04/rabbi-ben-zion-gold-life-of-jews-in.html
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