Rich siegel, z"l
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Remarks by Barry Holtz
Richard Siegel passed away in Los Angeles, after two years fighting cancer, just two weeks before his 71st birthday. Rich joined the Havurah in its second year, after graduating from Brandeis. He received a Masters degree in the program then known as Contemporary Jewish Studies (later it became the Hornstein Program). It was there that under the supervision of Professor Joseph Lukinsky, z”l, (one of the founders of Havurat Shalom) he and fellow Havurah member George Savran wrote a joint Masters thesis called “A Proposal for a Jewish Whole Earth Catalog.” Shortly afterward Rich, Michael Strassfeld and Sharon Strassfeld realized this proposal by turning it into the best-selling and iconic book of the Jewish “Counter Culture” of the ‘60s and 70s,The Jewish Catalog.
Later on Rich led the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York for many years, as it supported both Jewish scholarship and the arts. He was one of the founding members of Minyan Maat, a truly innovative thinker about Jewish life and Jewish culture, a gifted shaliah tzibbur, a friend to many of us. Rich died surrounded by his wife Rabbi Laura Geller and his two (grown) children Andy and Ruthie. When Rich married Laura he left New York and moved to Los Angeles where she was the rabbi of a congregation. After a while he was asked to become the head of Hebrew Union College’s School of Jewish Non Profit Management which he did with great success, culminating in helping to secure a naming donation for the School.
During the past year Rich and his wife Laura were working on a fascinating project in Los Angeles about creating communities that dealt in creative ways with an aging Jewish population. Their book about this work was close to completion and will no doubt appear within the next short while. As ill as Rich was, it mattered greatly to him to attend the 50th anniversary reunion of Havurat Shalom, and with a great show of willpower despite being in considerable pain, he was able to be with us over Memorial Day weekend 2018 and to speak at the panel on aging. It was in essence a chance for him to say good-bye, though none of us expected that his end was so near. Yehi zikhro varukh.
Later on Rich led the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York for many years, as it supported both Jewish scholarship and the arts. He was one of the founding members of Minyan Maat, a truly innovative thinker about Jewish life and Jewish culture, a gifted shaliah tzibbur, a friend to many of us. Rich died surrounded by his wife Rabbi Laura Geller and his two (grown) children Andy and Ruthie. When Rich married Laura he left New York and moved to Los Angeles where she was the rabbi of a congregation. After a while he was asked to become the head of Hebrew Union College’s School of Jewish Non Profit Management which he did with great success, culminating in helping to secure a naming donation for the School.
During the past year Rich and his wife Laura were working on a fascinating project in Los Angeles about creating communities that dealt in creative ways with an aging Jewish population. Their book about this work was close to completion and will no doubt appear within the next short while. As ill as Rich was, it mattered greatly to him to attend the 50th anniversary reunion of Havurat Shalom, and with a great show of willpower despite being in considerable pain, he was able to be with us over Memorial Day weekend 2018 and to speak at the panel on aging. It was in essence a chance for him to say good-bye, though none of us expected that his end was so near. Yehi zikhro varukh.
Shaul Magid's article about Rich Seigel in Tablet
Rich coauthored Getting Good at Getting Older and edited The First Jewish Catalog.
DEAR RICHIE
Or: Counterculture Prose-Poem 2.0
by Joel Rosenberg
1. The name
To me, dear Rich will always be dear Richie,
just as our Bauhaus of the Jewish avant-garde
has long been known as “Havurat Shalom.”
Both house and Richie, both man and haverim,
are one—and at one inexorably with THE ONE.
What emanates from there still animates
the world, our innovation ever continues,
no small thanks to him. Branches, leaves,
rivers, and garments are some of the names
we use to spell diversity within the One,
and our dear Richie was a maestro of the art
of unifying past with future, and Oneness
with the variegated richness (or is it Richieness?)
of human Experience and the World.
2. The photo
A Brownie-camera photo (now lost) I took
of Richie on a sunny, springtime morning back
in 1971 (the day I flew to Santa Cruz for grad school),
shows him in the backyard at 113 College Ave.,
cradling in his arms the critter we called
Krishna Kat (whom I preferred to call,
The Kid), now famous to the world
amid the dedication of a then still-nascent book
I would eventually call The Jewish Cat. Here
in the snapshot, Krishna’s tail drapes down
from Richie’s arms, exactly parallel to him,
pointing directly to the ground, to the Whole
Earth ground that Richie tilled and shared
worldwide. And here was Richie:
tall, thin, and handsome—wearing then,
as I recall it, long hair and beard—suggesting,
in his bearing, traits I’d always associate
with him: calmness, dignity, unflappability,
rationality, compassion, a union of the
head and heart, an elegance of personhood
ideally suited to the nurturing of peoplehood.
3. The spirit of the era
I’m writing my reflections on Tisha b’Av,
to me the ideal day to register a sense
of loss and mark the irretrievable. I’m
sitting in a villa near the Dordogne, in France.
Carol and I arrived here from Portugal
and Catalonia, where stories abound
about the Spanish Inquisition and, among
us Jews, the “third Tisha b’Av”—that of
the Jews’ Expulsion.
The authoritarian mind
was rampant there, and it persisted later
in the fascism of Salazar and Franco.
These days, however, on balconies
in Catalonia are draped the flags
proclaiming independence: red-and-
yellow-striped, with a white star on
a triangle of blue, and on the walls,
the mottoes in Catalan: “Libertat!”
and “Democracia!”
In America, from 1932 till 1968,
we had the blessings of an open society:
narrowing the gap between the wealthy
and the poor. Republicans who sometimes
acted like Democrats. A gradual loosening
of social taboos. The Age of Aquarius
and what we then had called Free Love.
And so, both men and women, but
especially we men, had often jumped
with ease (or, arguably, too much ease)
from bed to bed. And in that spirit,
and wholly lacking any ill-intent,
Richie and I—some once or twice, though
not at the same time—were blessed with
the same woman’s love, or short liaison. They’ve
remained for me, back then, today, and always,
salt of the earth, a source of wisdom and
humanity, as is, today for 18 years, my own
beloved one. Berukhah ha-XX chromosome!
Without it in my life, and without her,
I would have been long gone.
And so the year 1968 poured forth
its hopes into what soon became a far
less gentle Age. Among the Jewish
counterculture, there was still much
to keep us occupied—prayer, and poetry,
and meditation, Hebrew calligraphy,
divrey Torah, and other Jewish arts.
Works of imagination and academic
scholarship. The music of Carlebach
and Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones,
the sounds of zemirot and niggunim.
Life leavened by cannabis and psychedelics.
And later, in the tents of prayer, egalitarian
minyans, some with neutrally or androgynously
gendered siddurim. Movements for social change,
and racial justice: for end of war in Southeast Asia,
for peace between the Jews and Arabs at
the juncture of three continents. Some
500,000 of us (including much of Havurat
Shalom) had turned out in Washington. D. C.,
in November, 1969, attempting to persuade
Dick Nixon not to bomb the millions.
in Vietnam and its surrounding nations,
just for the sake of staying in office.
But conscience no longer ruled our
leadership. The Tree of Life was turned
into the Tree of Knowledge.
Shekhinah still had far to travel,
as, e’er further-on-steroids, is still
the case today.
But Jewish counterculture still throve
and thrives. And Richie was the fount of much
that happened. He turned “Counterculture”
into Culture, and “National Foundation”
into Foundation. Calmness and dignity,
innovation, hope, and aspiration
were still the lodestone for what by then
had now become a Havurah diaspora.
And, as it were, “havuratility” still grows
throughout the global Jewish realm.
And What Surrounds and Fills all Worlds
dwells in our hearts and guides our steps.
4. Dear Richie
And so, “dear Richie,” in an adjectival sense,
will now become “Dear Richie,” as a letter sent
from me to you. I want to pour into it all
my gratitude for a friendship that, however much
it mostly had extended over short visits between
Cambridge and Port Washington, between
Somerville and Manhattan’s Upper West Side,
for me was ever a source of nourishment and
validation. And while we never quite were
soulmates, you always made me feel included
as a friend and artistic collaborator, if only in
our being among the eldest generation
that came in, in ‘sixty-eight and ‘sixty-nine,
and I gave back to you the writing you encouraged:
my first piece for The Jewish Catalog, and in my
year of unemployment between Wesleyan
and Tufts, you hired me to write entries
for The Jewish Almanac. Those tasks were fun,
and in my article on the Hebrew alphabet
I set forth a theory I have always hoped
to reshape into scholarship—arguing,
namely, that in the earliest Semitic alphabets
(resembling our Latin alphabet) were diagrams
of lips, mouth, teeth, tongue, and throat,
and flows of breath, which uttered all the
sounds of speech. It liberated writing
from hieroglyphs and cuneiform, from
its monopoly by priests and scribes.
One of the greatest human revolutions,
thus democratizing writing and fostering
literacy, and the plea for it, embodied
in our Torah and Tanakh.
There’s more—a host
of Jewish arts events that you created,
out in Stony Brook and in Manhattan,
yielding writing revenue for me, and lore
that I could celebrate. You almost introduced
me to the great Bashevis Singer, had rush-
hour Triborough traffic not impeded me from
heading out to you upon Long Island. (I later
met him in the company of Dovid R.)
In all the things
that you’ve conceived and run, you put Jewish arts,
and avant-garde, and quiet, humming revolution
on the map of Jewish life.
5. My grief, which we all share
I grieve for you, my friend,
not just because you’ve left us, nor just
because of things I never got to say,
but because, in your departure, you passed
through so much grievous suffering. Would that
every pang or stab of pain, or nausea,
or false certainty and rude awakening,
or sense of a divine abandonment
had been instead the sure and steady
motions of a sound and permanent
remission. And I pray that in
whatever afterlife we all, sooner or
later, might have yet to undergo,
you are enjoying the blisses
of Gan Eden, and are
sheltered in the wings
of the Shekhinah.
May all that I have said,
and each of us, in all
our separate elegies for you,
combine into a single and
eternal Love.
Begun on Tisha b’Av 5778,
and completed on
Tu b’Av, 5778
Or: Counterculture Prose-Poem 2.0
by Joel Rosenberg
1. The name
To me, dear Rich will always be dear Richie,
just as our Bauhaus of the Jewish avant-garde
has long been known as “Havurat Shalom.”
Both house and Richie, both man and haverim,
are one—and at one inexorably with THE ONE.
What emanates from there still animates
the world, our innovation ever continues,
no small thanks to him. Branches, leaves,
rivers, and garments are some of the names
we use to spell diversity within the One,
and our dear Richie was a maestro of the art
of unifying past with future, and Oneness
with the variegated richness (or is it Richieness?)
of human Experience and the World.
2. The photo
A Brownie-camera photo (now lost) I took
of Richie on a sunny, springtime morning back
in 1971 (the day I flew to Santa Cruz for grad school),
shows him in the backyard at 113 College Ave.,
cradling in his arms the critter we called
Krishna Kat (whom I preferred to call,
The Kid), now famous to the world
amid the dedication of a then still-nascent book
I would eventually call The Jewish Cat. Here
in the snapshot, Krishna’s tail drapes down
from Richie’s arms, exactly parallel to him,
pointing directly to the ground, to the Whole
Earth ground that Richie tilled and shared
worldwide. And here was Richie:
tall, thin, and handsome—wearing then,
as I recall it, long hair and beard—suggesting,
in his bearing, traits I’d always associate
with him: calmness, dignity, unflappability,
rationality, compassion, a union of the
head and heart, an elegance of personhood
ideally suited to the nurturing of peoplehood.
3. The spirit of the era
I’m writing my reflections on Tisha b’Av,
to me the ideal day to register a sense
of loss and mark the irretrievable. I’m
sitting in a villa near the Dordogne, in France.
Carol and I arrived here from Portugal
and Catalonia, where stories abound
about the Spanish Inquisition and, among
us Jews, the “third Tisha b’Av”—that of
the Jews’ Expulsion.
The authoritarian mind
was rampant there, and it persisted later
in the fascism of Salazar and Franco.
These days, however, on balconies
in Catalonia are draped the flags
proclaiming independence: red-and-
yellow-striped, with a white star on
a triangle of blue, and on the walls,
the mottoes in Catalan: “Libertat!”
and “Democracia!”
In America, from 1932 till 1968,
we had the blessings of an open society:
narrowing the gap between the wealthy
and the poor. Republicans who sometimes
acted like Democrats. A gradual loosening
of social taboos. The Age of Aquarius
and what we then had called Free Love.
And so, both men and women, but
especially we men, had often jumped
with ease (or, arguably, too much ease)
from bed to bed. And in that spirit,
and wholly lacking any ill-intent,
Richie and I—some once or twice, though
not at the same time—were blessed with
the same woman’s love, or short liaison. They’ve
remained for me, back then, today, and always,
salt of the earth, a source of wisdom and
humanity, as is, today for 18 years, my own
beloved one. Berukhah ha-XX chromosome!
Without it in my life, and without her,
I would have been long gone.
And so the year 1968 poured forth
its hopes into what soon became a far
less gentle Age. Among the Jewish
counterculture, there was still much
to keep us occupied—prayer, and poetry,
and meditation, Hebrew calligraphy,
divrey Torah, and other Jewish arts.
Works of imagination and academic
scholarship. The music of Carlebach
and Dylan, the Beatles and the Stones,
the sounds of zemirot and niggunim.
Life leavened by cannabis and psychedelics.
And later, in the tents of prayer, egalitarian
minyans, some with neutrally or androgynously
gendered siddurim. Movements for social change,
and racial justice: for end of war in Southeast Asia,
for peace between the Jews and Arabs at
the juncture of three continents. Some
500,000 of us (including much of Havurat
Shalom) had turned out in Washington. D. C.,
in November, 1969, attempting to persuade
Dick Nixon not to bomb the millions.
in Vietnam and its surrounding nations,
just for the sake of staying in office.
But conscience no longer ruled our
leadership. The Tree of Life was turned
into the Tree of Knowledge.
Shekhinah still had far to travel,
as, e’er further-on-steroids, is still
the case today.
But Jewish counterculture still throve
and thrives. And Richie was the fount of much
that happened. He turned “Counterculture”
into Culture, and “National Foundation”
into Foundation. Calmness and dignity,
innovation, hope, and aspiration
were still the lodestone for what by then
had now become a Havurah diaspora.
And, as it were, “havuratility” still grows
throughout the global Jewish realm.
And What Surrounds and Fills all Worlds
dwells in our hearts and guides our steps.
4. Dear Richie
And so, “dear Richie,” in an adjectival sense,
will now become “Dear Richie,” as a letter sent
from me to you. I want to pour into it all
my gratitude for a friendship that, however much
it mostly had extended over short visits between
Cambridge and Port Washington, between
Somerville and Manhattan’s Upper West Side,
for me was ever a source of nourishment and
validation. And while we never quite were
soulmates, you always made me feel included
as a friend and artistic collaborator, if only in
our being among the eldest generation
that came in, in ‘sixty-eight and ‘sixty-nine,
and I gave back to you the writing you encouraged:
my first piece for The Jewish Catalog, and in my
year of unemployment between Wesleyan
and Tufts, you hired me to write entries
for The Jewish Almanac. Those tasks were fun,
and in my article on the Hebrew alphabet
I set forth a theory I have always hoped
to reshape into scholarship—arguing,
namely, that in the earliest Semitic alphabets
(resembling our Latin alphabet) were diagrams
of lips, mouth, teeth, tongue, and throat,
and flows of breath, which uttered all the
sounds of speech. It liberated writing
from hieroglyphs and cuneiform, from
its monopoly by priests and scribes.
One of the greatest human revolutions,
thus democratizing writing and fostering
literacy, and the plea for it, embodied
in our Torah and Tanakh.
There’s more—a host
of Jewish arts events that you created,
out in Stony Brook and in Manhattan,
yielding writing revenue for me, and lore
that I could celebrate. You almost introduced
me to the great Bashevis Singer, had rush-
hour Triborough traffic not impeded me from
heading out to you upon Long Island. (I later
met him in the company of Dovid R.)
In all the things
that you’ve conceived and run, you put Jewish arts,
and avant-garde, and quiet, humming revolution
on the map of Jewish life.
5. My grief, which we all share
I grieve for you, my friend,
not just because you’ve left us, nor just
because of things I never got to say,
but because, in your departure, you passed
through so much grievous suffering. Would that
every pang or stab of pain, or nausea,
or false certainty and rude awakening,
or sense of a divine abandonment
had been instead the sure and steady
motions of a sound and permanent
remission. And I pray that in
whatever afterlife we all, sooner or
later, might have yet to undergo,
you are enjoying the blisses
of Gan Eden, and are
sheltered in the wings
of the Shekhinah.
May all that I have said,
and each of us, in all
our separate elegies for you,
combine into a single and
eternal Love.
Begun on Tisha b’Av 5778,
and completed on
Tu b’Av, 5778