Introductory Note: Rabbi Stanley Davids z’l died on Motzei Shabbat, March 22. He will be interred in the cemetery in Ma’aleh HaChamishah, Israel. A Memorial celebration of his life was conducted at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles on Monday, March 31. Stan’s son, Rabbi Ronn David and I eulogized Stan. The following is the text of my eulogy that I offer in loving memory of my/our Rabbi, teacher, leader, and cherished friend.
When I received a text from Stan’s daughter Aviva the night that her dad died, I thought of the words of grief spoken by the young David following the death of his beloved friend Jonathan in the 2nd Book of Samuel: “Eich naflu hagiborim – How the mighty have fallen.” If anyone was a mamash gibor in American Jewish and Zionist life, it was Rabbi Stanley Davids.
Last August, I sat with Stan at our favorite lunch diner in Santa Monica and he told me that his end was fast approaching. I was stunned and disbelieving because Stan was like a cat with 9 lives. He had overcome so many serious health trials over the past thirty years, and I assumed he would surmount yet again whatever medical challenge he was now confronting.
After telling me more about his current illness, Stan asked me to offer a eulogy at his memorial service. Actually, Stan didn’t ask me; he told me that he and his family had made a decision that I was to speak, and as so often was the case, I couldn’t refuse whatever Stan asked of me not only because I loved and respected him, but because I knew he loved me too and he wouldn’t ask me to do something unless it was very important to him. I know this was the case for so many of us.
And so, I replied – “Yes, I’d be honored to speak;” but I wondered how I could possibly do so adequately enough. Stan was, after all, one of our g’dolei dor – great ones of our generation, a formidable Jewish and Zionist leader, an American and Israeli Rabbi of significant accomplishments, a veritable force of nature, graced with a keen intellect, a huge heart, forceful passions and opinions, indefatigable energy, and great humor, wit, and charm.
Whenever I have thought of Stan over the many years we’ve been close friends, I’ve also thought of Resa, because they were joined at the hip for more than 61 years. I believe that Stan likely surmounted his many health challenges on account of having two advantages – great medical care on the one hand (my brother was one of his physicians – a hematologist and oncologist) and Resa on the other, who stood with him, loving and supporting him along with their children Ronn and Nicolle, Shoshana, Aviva and Jason, and their 8 grandchildren – Beth, Hannah, James, Joshua, Gabriel, Zeke, Mya, and Cole about whom Stan and Resa have been so proud.
I first met Stan 38 years ago when I brought one hundred 15 year-old Confirmation students from the Washington Hebrew Congregation in D.C., where I was serving, to tour Jewish New York. One of our annual destinations was the magnificent sanctuary of Central Synagogue. When we arrived by pre-arrangement before Kabbalat Shabbat services, Stan greeted us with his customary grace and warmth. With his radiating smile, high energy and open heart Stan welcomed us as he led us on a tour of Central’s historic synagogue building and then with his community in Shabbat prayer.
Over the years, and especially when he served as ARZA President, he and I became closer friends. In time, he and Resa along with then ARZA Chair Rabbi Bennett Miller persuaded me to assume the chairmanship of ARZA. It was a great honor to be so considered, but I was reticent to take on that responsibility because I had a demanding congregational position here in LA as Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel of Hollywood, but Stan persuaded me. He said that by assuming this position I would be at the center of action of the United States Reform Zionist movement and that I would have an experience that would change me, as it had changed him long before.
He promised me that he would help guide me to understand and manage the confusing and complex interplay of the 3 national institutions of the Jewish people and their leaders (some of whom could be quite challenging) on the boards of which I would have a seat, the WZO, the Sochnut, and the Jewish National Fund. He fulfilled that promise and so much more, and he was right, the experience changed me.
As I have learned over the years, Stan mentored so many of us. He inspired many of his students growing up in his congregations to become rabbis, and he befriended countless other rabbis and lay leaders in North America and Israel.
Stan was a born leader who honed his skills over a lifetime of exceptional service. He loved to lead, to be in the limelight of consequential organizational decision-making. He relished thinking deeply about the great challenges facing modern Judaism and the Jewish people, and he used every position he ever held to enhance the quality, depth and breadth of reach of his Jewish and Zionist visions for those communities that he served.
Stan graduated with a Bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As a college student, he served as the president of his university’s Alpha Epsilon Pi chapter eventually rising to serve as the international Supreme Master of AEPi, the membership of which includes more than 100,000 living alumni with chapters on more than 150 college campuses in four countries, making it the world’s largest and leading Jewish college fraternity. Hanging over his home computer is his framed “AEPi Lion of Judah Award” about which he was so very proud.
Stan was ordained from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1965. Then he served as a Chaplain in the U.S. Army, followed by service as an assistant rabbi in a Milwaukee Reform synagogue, and then as the Senior Rabbi of congregations in Longmeadow and Worcester, Massachusetts, New York City, and Atlanta. His reach, however, extended far beyond the Jewish community, and as a sign of his prominence in interfaith work, he was honored by the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
Within the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Stan chaired the National Youth Committee, the Israel Committee and was on the CCAR’s National Executive Committee. As a lover of the Hebrew language and Israel from his youth, he was the “Father” of ARZA’s Reform Zionist Think Tank that eventually led to the CCAR’s Reform Zionist Platform that embraced for the first time Aliyah as a Reform Mitzvah.
If all that was not enough, as a skilled fundraiser for the Jewish people, Stan also was appointed as Honorary Chairman of the State of Israel Bonds National Rabbinic Cabinet.
When Stan became a candidate for the presidency of ARZA in the early 2000s, he told Resa that if he were to be fortunate enough to be elected they would have to make Aliyah because he believed that Israel must be their home-base. As soon as he was chosen, on that very day, Resa quietly went to work, without Stan knowing. She made all the complicated plans to make Aliyah. Stan came home the day the details finally had been worked out and Resa handed him a pen and told him to sign some papers and then to inform his Atlanta synagogue leadership that he was retiring and they were moving to Israel.
He served proudly as President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA – the largest American Zionist movement representing 1.5 million Reform Jews) between 2003 and 2008, and he rose in stature to serve on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Executive Committee of the World Zionist Organization. Later on he was named an Honorary Fellow of the WZO.
In Jerusalem, he was invited to be a member of the Board of Overseers of the Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew Union College where he served for eight years, and then upon coming to Los Angeles he was invited to serve on the Advisory Board of the HUC/LA campus.
Resa and Stan loved those 10 years in Jerusalem. In May 2016, as he retired from all his positions in the WZO, Sochnut, and K’Kal, the Israel Movement for Reform Judaism honored him. After all the praise expressed to him by a number of our Israel movement leadership, Stan said simply: “The best part of being engaged here for so long are the people – all of you whom I love.”
As their health concerns intensified, Stan and Resa decided they wanted to spend their final years close to their family in Los Angeles. They found an apartment on the 7th floor of a high rise at the Santa Monica beach looking northwest over the wide sands, watching sunsets, walking the boardwalk and swimming, and they wasted no time in renewing old friendships and creating new friends. Stan began teaching at University Synagogue and Wilshire Blvd Synagogue, mentoring rabbinic students at HUC, serving on the HUC/LA Advisory Council, coming to know well most of the Israel Consul Generals stationed here, and becoming a part of Los Angeles Jewish life – and Stan and Resa did all that from their mid-70s.
Stan was a deep thinker and a superb writer, and never one to rest on his laurels. In the last six years he inspired, co-edited and wrote the introductions and a chapter in each of three books published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis Press. The first was The Fragile Dialogue – New Voices of Liberal Zionism that he co-edited with his friend and Canadian Zionist leader Rabbi Larry Englander. The second was called Deepening the Dialogue: Jewish-Americans and Israelis Envisioning the Jewish-Democratic State, written in Hebrew and English, a first by the CCAR Press. I had the honor of co-editing that volume with Stan. And the third he called Re-forming Judaism: Moments of Disruption in Jewish Thought that he co-edited with HUC/LA Professor of Jewish Thought Leah Hochman. Stan had plans for a fourth book that he called Confronting Evil – Jewish Responses to be co-edited with HUC Bible Professor Tamara Eskenazi and JTS Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Dr. Alan Mittleman. However, his final illness took control of his life and he was unable to move forward with it.
Two-plus years ago, Stan and Tamara Eskenazi became B’nai Mitzvah together at the age of 83. I sat in the sanctuary at Leo Baeck Temple along with their two families, colleagues and friends and witnessed their joyful ‘coming of age.’ What a great accomplishment and example Stan and Tamara offered to all of us younger Jews. After that day, Stan told me that partnering with his brilliant friend was a highlight of his older years as a Jewish thinker and leader.
After Stan told me that he and his family wanted me to deliver this eulogy, he said that I should ask him whatever I needed to know. I asked him first what, if anything, he regretted in his life. He paused for effect, looked me in the eye, and said: “I wish I were Prime Minister of Israel. Actually, I’d like to be Prime Minister of anything.” Beyond that, he said only that he wasn’t done with this life, that he loved Resa, his kids and grandkids, his friends and being part of the Jewish and worldwide liberal Zionist family too deeply to leave us.
I also asked Stan if he had any significant worries; and he did. He worried about the increasingly illiberal State of Israel, the well-being of the remaining hostages and the families of so many young Israeli soldiers who died in defense of the State in this war, and about prospects for real peace. And he worried about the gallop towards autocracy in the United States.
Most recently, he and Resa worried deeply as they watched from their 7th floor apartment window the rapid spreading of the Malibu fire and feared having to be evacuated. Thankfully, the ferocious Santa Ana winds died down and the fire-fighters heroically stopped the fires from spreading towards their home.
Stan worried mostly about Resa, about leaving her alone and wanting to be certain that their family and friends continued to stay close to her after he was gone. I reassured him that Resa, though sure to miss him dearly every day for the rest of her life, was a force of nature all her own, that she would not only be cared for by their kids and grandkids, but by her many close friends.
Finally, Stan said that another great worry was that his children and grandchildren would not really know his full story. I asked what part of his story they didn’t already know. He explained that, of course, they know him, but he wanted them to know about his life’s work and his service to the Jewish people and to the well-being of the State of Israel. He asked me to tell that story here.
Though I have noted some of the highlights in his life, it’s impossible to tell all that he did over so long a period of time. I suggested to Resa that each of us might write to her our stories about Stan and what he meant to us, and that she, or one of her children, compile those stories filled with photographs and documents into a volume to share with their family.
One of Stan’s greatest wishes was to cast his vote in the 2025 World Zionist Congress elections for the Reform Zionist Slate. Two months ago, he told Rabbi Josh Weinberg (the Union for Reform Judaism’s Vice-President for Israel and Reform Zionism and President of ARZA): “Nothing would bring me more honor, and I hope to do so, but…” – he trailed off. Stan didn’t know if he would survive to March 10th when voting began. However, on that day Stan did indeed cast his vote.
Josh wrote in his tribute for Stan a letter to the tens of thousands of ARZA members: “Voting was Stan’s final act to support and fight for the Movement and the people he loved so dearly. He voted for all those whom he had mentored and taught, for whom he had fought, and who had learned from his example. He was indeed one of a kind, and his memory and legacy will live on. We will continue our work to cherish his legacy and honor his memory.”
Stan was born 85 years-ago on October 6, 1939 in the week the Jewish world then read Parashat Bereishit, and he died as we read Parashat Pekudei, the concluding portion in the Book of Exodus.
Bereishit describes the creation of the world and the beginnings of our history three and a half millennia ago as a people when many of our people’s moral values were taking form.
And Pekudei describes a later period during which the design and building of the sacred Mishkan, Menorah and Ner Tamid are described in detail.
Every member of the ancient Israelite community was called upon to contribute to the building of Tabernacle and its accoutrements. Their design reflected their highest artistic, religious, and moral vision.
Stan took to heart his birth parashah, its myths and moral principles, and he spent his life with Resa and their family and the many communities that Stan served creating new and old structures to bring God’s presence and our people’s moral values into the world. In doing so, he fulfilled the command, “Asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham – Make for me a sanctuary that I – the Eternal One – might dwell amongst the people of Israel.”
There was no one like Rabbi Stanley Davids – he was sui generis. His heart was large, his mind ever-percolating, sharp and seeking knowledge and understanding, his soul striving always to make meaningful connections with everyone he encountered, his passions strong for his family and community, for our people and all peoples, his humor, wit, sarcasm, and charm drawing people in, the works of his hands, heart, mind, and soul integrated thereby seeking to create new worlds and confirm the teachings of the old – just as did the early Zionists who created a new/old world order for the Jewish people in our ancient Homeland.
In thinking about all that Stan was and did, the words from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” feel like a most fitting farewell tribute:
“His life was gentle and the elements / So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up / And say to all the world, “This was a man.”
To Stan’s family, may you find comfort in the love that Stan felt so deeply for each one of you, and may we all find comfort as we mourn Stan with all others who have suffered the loss of dear ones in Zion and Jerusalem.
זכרונו לברכה– May the memory of Rabbi Stanley Davids, הרב שמריה בן חיים צבי וצפורה be a blessing. Amen!
[Below is a link to photographs of Rabbi Stanley Davids at the 2015 World Zionist Congress in Jerusalem where Stanley conducted numerous seminars and was omnipresent throughout the Congress; at ARZA’s 40th Anniversary Reception at the 2017 Union for Reform Judaism Biennial Convention in Boston, Massachusetts; and photos from the 2017 Fried Leadership Conference (WRJ) in Nashville, Tennessee. All photos were taken by Dale Lazar – Photographer, World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ) – Director of Photography, Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ)
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjC6Ycw ]
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