Art Green wrote on June 24, 2024:
Dear Hevrah,
I'm writing to let you all know about the passing of our dear member of the original Havurah, and my friend over these many years, Rabbi Burt Jacobson. Burt had been suffering from pancreatic cancer for the past several months. He died this past shabbat.
Burt and I were fellow rabbinical students at JTS. For a couple of years, we occupied the only two dorm rooms on the 6th floor, which was mostly offices. That was what threw us together at first. Burt was from San Antonio, from a very American Jewish family, and had discovered Judaism on his own. We developed quite a close friendship. In trying to take his newly acquired religious practice seriously, he had fallen into a kind of compulsive pattern of strict observance, accompanied by lots of guilt (encouraged by some of our teachers). I had been there/done that already as an adolescent, so. I was able to help Burt out of it, a process of redemption that was important to both of us. The discovery I was making of a very different approach to religion became vital to him as well, and we shared much of it.
Burt came to Boston in 1967 and began working as educational director at Temple Emunah in Lexington. He was highly creative as an educator and he mentored several of our haverim who taught for him there. He also taught at the Havurah itself.
In the early '70's, Burt moved to the Berkeley area. There he founded a new experimental congregation called Kehilla. It was committed to spiritual quest and social justice. Highly successful, due to Burt's indefatigable spirit, today it has about 500 members. Burt's widow Diane Eliot is the rabbi.
Part of Burt's and my relationship was a shared fascination with early Hasidism. Burt focused specifically on the figure of the Ba'al Shem Tov. He's been writing a book about him for decades, a highly personal book about his encounter with the BeSHT's teachings and how they transformed his life. He completed the book (some 800 pages, I gather) shortly before his final illness and it is now being prepared for publication - with a foreward by our haver Joel Rosenberg.
יהי זכרו ברוך.
I'm writing to let you all know about the passing of our dear member of the original Havurah, and my friend over these many years, Rabbi Burt Jacobson. Burt had been suffering from pancreatic cancer for the past several months. He died this past shabbat.
Burt and I were fellow rabbinical students at JTS. For a couple of years, we occupied the only two dorm rooms on the 6th floor, which was mostly offices. That was what threw us together at first. Burt was from San Antonio, from a very American Jewish family, and had discovered Judaism on his own. We developed quite a close friendship. In trying to take his newly acquired religious practice seriously, he had fallen into a kind of compulsive pattern of strict observance, accompanied by lots of guilt (encouraged by some of our teachers). I had been there/done that already as an adolescent, so. I was able to help Burt out of it, a process of redemption that was important to both of us. The discovery I was making of a very different approach to religion became vital to him as well, and we shared much of it.
Burt came to Boston in 1967 and began working as educational director at Temple Emunah in Lexington. He was highly creative as an educator and he mentored several of our haverim who taught for him there. He also taught at the Havurah itself.
In the early '70's, Burt moved to the Berkeley area. There he founded a new experimental congregation called Kehilla. It was committed to spiritual quest and social justice. Highly successful, due to Burt's indefatigable spirit, today it has about 500 members. Burt's widow Diane Eliot is the rabbi.
Part of Burt's and my relationship was a shared fascination with early Hasidism. Burt focused specifically on the figure of the Ba'al Shem Tov. He's been writing a book about him for decades, a highly personal book about his encounter with the BeSHT's teachings and how they transformed his life. He completed the book (some 800 pages, I gather) shortly before his final illness and it is now being prepared for publication - with a foreward by our haver Joel Rosenberg.
יהי זכרו ברוך.