Hundreds remember lasting legacy of Rutgers Hillel’s founding rabbi

by Norm Oshrin
Special to NJ Jewish News

Rabbi Julius Funk, who served as director of Rutgers Hillel from its founding in 1943 until 1982, died June 20 at the age of 92.

At his funeral, held June 22 at the Highland Park Conservative Temple and attended by more than 200 mourners, nearly all remembered Funk as a man who “single-handedly” built Rutgers Hillel and inspired generations of Jewish students with his passion for learning and community.

“He really made the campus one of the most outstanding Jewish communities in the country,” said Rabbi Yakov Hilsenrath, rabbi emeritus of the synagogue, who labeled Funk “the community rabbi.”

Active in Hillel and the area’s Jewish community even after his retirement, Funk was still interested in the affairs of the Jewish student group even as he lay ill, bedridden from a series of strokes.

Richard Corman, president of Hillel’s board of directors, visited Funk at his Highland Park home several weeks ago. “He would smile and doze in and out, but yet he recognized me and we were able to talk and speak about Hillel,” said Corman.

Corman said he told Funk “how special it was to speak at the Safam concert with your son,” a reference to Danny Funk, the leader of the popular Jewish musical group Safam, which performed its annual concert for Rutgers Hillel March 26.

“Clearly, you didn’t have anyone more passionate, more committed to working on behalf of Hillel,” said Corman.

“He was single-handedly responsible for creating what we have today” at Hillel, said HPCT’s Rabbi Eliot Malomet, who officiated at the service. “This is a grieving moment for the entire community,” he told the mourners. “His real legacy is the thousands of lives he touched....”

Mourners from near and far attested to that legacy, forged by Funk and his late wife, Pearl, who passed away in 2004.

According to Andrew Getraer, Rutgers Hillel executive director, “Rabbi Funk and his wife provided a home away from home for literally thousands of Rutgers students.”

Malomet noted that Funk had conducted the weddings of so many in the community — a memory noted from the bima by Funk’s son Joel. Looking out over the sanctuary, he quipped: “He married more people than King Solomon.”

Julius Funk was born in Poland in 1914, the son of Abraham and Yetta Funk. His family settled in New York City in 1921. Funk graduated cum laude from Brooklyn College and later attended the Jewish Teachers’ Institute in Manhattan. He was ordained in 1944 from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion — from which, in 1969, he earned a master’s degree in Hebrew letters.

Funk married Pearl Wiseman on June 14, 1942; the couple moved to New Brunswick in 1943 and then to Highland Park in 1955. At Rutgers, Funk also served as chaplain to the Army Specialized Training program and, in 1948, began teaching Hebrew at the College of Arts and Sciences.

He was a member of the Rutgers Campus Ministerial Association, a life member of the Assembly of the Jewish Federation of Greater Middlesex County — where he also was a longtime member of the Jewish Community Relations Council — and Raritan Valley chair of the 1954 Tricentennial Celebration of Jewish Life in the United States.

Among his honors was his receipt of the Rutgers Medal in 1963 for service to the university and, in 1977, an honorary doctor of divinity degree at the academic convocation of the Rabbinical Assembly of America.

A member of HPCT and the Orthodox Congregation Ahavas Achim in Highland Park, Funk was the cantor at HPTC from 1976 to 1992 for parallel High Holy Day services.

The rabbi is survived by his sons and daughters-in-law: Joel and Melody Funk, Rumney, NH; Daniel and Marcia Funk, Newton Center, Mass; and Jonathan Funk, San Francisco; five grandchildren, Rachel, Jeremy, Shoshana, Joshua, and Aaron Funk; and his great-granddaughter, Chloe Funk.

Interment was at Shalom Cemetery, New Brunswick.