Rabbi retires after 36 years: `It’s time to be the zayde’

Friday, September 11, 1998 | by

LESLIE KATZ

How many people can remember in detail a sermon they heard years back?

Dr. Marvin Lipton can. For that matter, he remembers more than a few sermons delivered by his rabbi, Herbert Morris of San Francisco's Congregation Beth Israel-Judea.

Morris' sermons, said Lipton, will be among the rabbi's greatest legacies when he retires at the end of October after 36 years at the Reform-Conservative synagogue on Brotherhood Way. Morris said he is leaving to spend more time with his wife, children and 10 grandchildren.

"It's time to be the zayde," said the 68-year-old rabbi.

However, his effect on congregants—some of whom have known him for three decades—will remain.

"He made religion and morality and thoughtfulness current to the world we live in today," Lipton said. "I always left [his sermons] regenerated, just uplifted and ready to go on with life."

In particular, Lipton recalls a sermon that included a poem written by a woman in a nursing home. In it, she spoke of the complex roles she had played in life—daughter, sister, wife, mother—and implored the reader not to diminish her simply to a woman in a wheelchair.

"He read that poem and there was just silence throughout the congregation because it applied to everyone," Lipton said. "God willing we're all going to get older. You realize the people around you…each of them has a story, a hope and aspiration."

Morris "was able to touch people," Lipton added. "He wasn't just standing up there pontificating. He was someone you could communicate with."

Communication has always been the cornerstone of Morris' rabbinate.

"I've held an awful lot of hands and dried a lot of tears in all these years," said the rabbi, a native of Trenton, N.J., and a graduate of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. "I've been able to enter into the lives of people, hopefully in a good and assuring way."

Beth Israel-Judea represents a merger of the Reform Temple Judea, founded in 1958, and the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel, founded in 1968. The congregations joined in 1969.

When Morris arrived at Temple Judea in 1962 after spending three years as rabbi of the Ventura County Jewish Council, he found a young congregation with a few hundred members.

Four rabbis had stood at the Temple Judea pulpit in eight years. Morris insisted on a three-year contract "that would break the two-year cycle" of previous rabbis.

It worked.

"What kept me here was taking care of the people," he said. That and "the beauty that is Judaism. I happen to love it with a deep passion."

Over the years, Morris wrote a special High Holy Day prayer book that combines Reform and Conservative liturgy. It contains modern language and pictures of nature to connect congregants "to the Divine."

And he saw to it that Friday evening services were Reform oriented and Saturday mornings Conservative.

Morris, who characterizes his relationship to Israel as "strong as ever, perhaps even stronger," has led six congregational trips to the Jewish state and will lead another in mid-October before retiring.

Congregant Ronda Fast, 37, will take the two-week trip with her mother and husband David. "This is my way of holding onto [the rabbi] just a little longer," she said.

Fast, who grew up as a member of Beth Israel-Judea, drives from Mountain View to be part of the congregation. She particularly appreciates the way Morris makes people of all ages and backgrounds feel at home.

"My husband is not Jewish and he's actually started talking about possibly converting," Fast said. "I think part of that is because of the rabbi. He's made him feel so welcome.

"He does that with everyone," she added. "During services, he'll come down off the pulpit, talk to people, ask where you're from. It makes you feel like you are really welcome there."

Morris will be honored by the congregation at celebrations in November. Rabbi Evan Goodman, currently of Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo, has been hired to take his place.

Fast is anticipating Morris' departure with a degree of sadness. "It's going to be hard for the congregants to let him go."