by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

January 1, 2009

When Rabbi Barry H. Greene, senior rabbi emeritus at Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, died suddenly at his South Orange home on Dec. 26, he left a legacy that extended well beyond the Reform movement and his long-time congregation. He was 78.

Greene, who became a rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun in 1959 when it was still located in Newark, was one of a generation of Essex County Jewish leaders who helped preserve a sense of community as the Jewish population moved from the city to the suburbs.

“There is a piece of Barry Greene’s rabbinate that is very much a role model for mine,” said Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz, who succeeded Greene as B’nai Jeshurun’s senior rabbi in 2005. “It is about how one builds a community, how one breeds leadership, how one gets members involved. That was his mastery. He was the ultimate community builder.”

Linda Levi of Livingston, a longtime friend of Greene’s and former president of the congregation, said the rabbi “made sure his temple was a family — all 1,200 of us. I’ve been to many smaller shuls, and I did not feel as warm and welcome as people do at B’nai Jeshurun.”

Greene’s sense of Jewish obligation extended beyond his congregation, from his longtime commitment to the United States Navy Chaplain Corps, to his tenure, from 1985 to 1988, as president of the board of trustees of the New Jersey Jewish News (see sidebar).

“In my father’s heart and soul was a love of the Jewish community,” said his daughter, Lisa Greene, who is now a rabbi at North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Ill.

“He was to his core a Reform Jew, raised in the movement. At the same time, he worked for klal Yisrael and he worked to build bridges among faiths. After our family, Temple B’nai Jeshurun was what he spent all of his time with.”

Born and raised in New York, Greene graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, then New York University. He was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

After becoming a rabbi he served for two years as a chaplain in the First Marine Division and, following active duty, held a reserve commission in the United States Navy.

“He was very involved in military chaplaincy and the rights of Jewish servicemen, and he spent a lot of time” doing battle against anti-Semitic incidents that Jews experienced in the armed forces, Levi said.

Greene first served as associate rabbi at B’nai Jeshurun, working closely with its esteemed senior rabbi, Ely Pilchik, when it opened its Short Hills building in 1968. When Pilchik retired in 1981, Greene became senior rabbi. Pilchik, a former president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and a civil rights activist, died in 2003.

His widow, Harriet Perlmutter-Pilchik, said she remained close with Greene through all their years of connection with the temple.

“We became great friends,” she told NJ Jewish News. “He was always there for me. I knew I could lean on him if it was ever necessary. If I needed something I could always call on Barry and depend upon his wise advice.”

Levi said her family “has been part of the B’nai Jeshurun community our whole lives,” largely because of Greene’s influence. “He bar mitzva’d all of our children. He was there for every life-cycle event, happy and sad. After our son Richard died of cancer in 1990 at age 23, Barry kept our family whole.”

Greene had a deep influence on his own family members as well.

“To be a rabbi and a rabbi’s kid is a gift beyond words,” said Lisa Greene. “When I decided to become a rabbi he was my first and foremost supporter. My father and I had this amazing dialogue of ideas and homiletics and e-mails and editing. He read every sermon I’ve ever given.”

As she grew up in South Orange, Lisa Greene saw her father as “a proud private man who lived as a public figure. But my dad wasn’t ‘Rabbi’ at home,” she said. “He was ‘Dad.’”

Yet even as he stepped off the pulpit, Greene remained dedicated to the congregation, offering it his time and his spirit.

“He was in the building three or four days a week, doing everything from picking up the mail to saying hello to the staff to being around for the kids,” said Gewirtz.

“He came to services every Friday night but did not feel it was appropriate to appear on the pulpit because he wanted me to feel that it became mine. But he always participated in Ne’ila,” the final prayer service on Yom Kippur. “He would always be available for life-cycle help. He had 1,200 families, and many of them had deep connections with him.”

As he assessed Greene’s legacy, Gewirtz said that “quietly, without fuss or attention, he helped a huge amount of people in finding jobs, in finding a way to get their kid into a certain university or their parent into an seniors’ community. He even helped people find their spouses. His hand was extraordinarily strong. His name was never in front, but his hand was all over the program.”

In addition to his daughter, Lisa, Greene is survived by his wife, Betty; his daughter Jacqueline Greene; sons-in-law Jonathan Polish and Joshua Orenstein; and grandchildren, Noa, David, and Talia Polish and Alexandra and Jacob Orenstein

---

From pulpit to publishing

AMONG HIS OTHER responsibilities, Rabbi Barry Greene was a long-term member of the NJ Jewish News board of trustees and served as its president.

“He provided wise guidance through difficult times,” said the board’s current president, Steve Newmark.

Greene was president from 1985 to 1988. In a 2007 interview on the occasion of the paper’s 60th anniversary, he recalled a time of financial crisis — which he helped stanch by applying lessons he had learned on the pulpit and in the United States Navy about delegating authority to experts in budgeting, marketing, and accounting.

Greene also advocated for the newspaper’s ability to report news without interference from community power brokers.

“We were often approached by people who said, ‘You didn’t give enough space to this person….,’” he recalled in the interview. “But that’s up to the editors, who have the support of the Jewish News board.”

To Newmark, Greene’s “kindness, intelligence, and unique leadership abilities made him a truly valued member of our board. I shall miss him and my conversations with him, in which he reached out to offer his counsel and support.”

— ROBERT WIENER

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--