Our Rabbi EMERITI

WE ARE BEYOND GRATEFUL for the many talents, boundless energy and limitless heart that our rabbi emeriti, RABBI ANDREW F. KLEIN and RABBI JAMES B. ROSENBERG have brought to our community. Yasher koach and todah rabah, Andy and Jim, you are our blessing.

IN SHEPHERDING OUR COMMUNITY for twelve wonderful years, Rabbi Klein has embodied the very essence of spiritual leadership. Wrapping us in Shabbat, festivals and holidays, celebrating our simchas and comforting our souls, he has continually brought light to us and the world. Mensch, mentor and friend, we are eternally grateful for how he has connected us to each other, to Torah and to our innermost selves.

HERE ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITE PHOTOS taken over the last twelve years. Please enjoy looking through the galleries below, and know we will create many more wonderful memories in the year to come.

—Andy

TEMPLE HABONIM GREW UP with Rabbi Jim Rosenberg. For 33 years, from 1974 to 2007, Jim led the congregation with his scholarship, wisdom, poetry, guitar and baritone voice, from its small home in the house on County Road (across from where the fire station used to be) to its current home on New Meadow Road. For many years, Jim held every position at Temple Habonim – rabbi, teacher, school administrator, head maintenance superintendent. The congregation and leadership of Temple Habonim were blessed by our many years of sacred partnership with Rabbi Rosenberg.

DURING MY 33 YEARS at Temple Habonim and my ensuing years of retirement, I have continued to refine my vision of what it has meant for me to be a rabbi: my deepest sense of rabbinical authenticity derives from my ongoing engagement with Jewish texts.

It is true that throughout my adult life I have continued to wrestle with such classics of Western literature as Shakespeare’s King Lear, Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Melville’s Moby Dick. Nevertheless, as I journey through the final stage of my life, I find myself being drawn more and more to works in the Hebrew language. While I have continued to be enriched by such poets of modern Hebrew as Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) and Yehudah Amichai (1924-2000), it is the ancient Hebrew texts, especially the Psalms and the Book of Job, that most tell me who I am, from whence I have come, and whither I am going; they ground me in what has been called the textline – as opposed to the bloodline – of Jewish tradition.

Speaking most personally, I can only hope that my small contribution to our people’s textline will be a lasting legacy.

I WAS BORN ON June 28, 1944, in Elizabeth, NJ. After attending the Pingry School in Hillside, NJ from grades 1-12, I entered Columbia College, graduating with a BA in 1966. The following autumn I began my studies at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York School, where I earned a Master of Hebrew Letters (with honors) along with my rabbinical ordination in June, 1971. I received an Honorary Doctor of Divinity from the school in March, 1996.

My first pulpit, from the fall of 1968 through May, 1971, was as a student rabbi at Temple Beth Or of the Deaf in Manhattan; learning American sign language was an integral part of that congregational experience. Following my ordination, I moved to Boston’s Temple Israel, where for three years I was one of two assistant rabbis. For 33 years, the vast majority of my professional life, I was the rabbi here at Temple Habonim, where my wife and I have continued to be involved since my retirement.

During my rabbinical career, I had the opportunity to teach courses in Jewish studies at Tufts University – September 1973-May 1974 – and Connecticut College, New London, September 1980-May 1988.

Over the course of years, I have received my share of the recognition that often comes with public life, but I consider two of those honors of special significance: On May 15, 2012, Rhode Island for Community and Justice presented me with the Michael P. Metcalf Journalism Award, for my “Religious Diversity Columns” in The Jewish Voice & Herald for “Excellence in fostering diversity and goodwill.” On October 30, 2014, I received the Heroes of Faith, Rev. Hebert Bolles Life Achievement Award from the Rhode Island State Council of Churches.

I have been writing for publication ever since my Temple Israel days. My one book, UNTIL THE BLUE KINGDOM COMES (Ex Libris, 2011), is a collection of 121 of my poems. In addition, I have written numerous book reviews, opinion pieces, and translations of Hebrew poetry in a variety of national Jewish magazines. I have been a columnist for the Barrington Times since April, 1998, and for Jewish Rhode Island since the fall of 2008; occasional op-ed columns of mine have appeared in The Providence Journal. Three of my autobiographical essays have appeared in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 volumes of Rhode Island Jewish Historical Notes.

On December 24, 1967, I married Sandra Gail Mattison, after knowing her for less than a year; we have been together ever since. As Providence residents, we are fortunate that our children, Karen and David, along with our grandchildren, Lucy, Clara, Isaac, Charlotte, and Joey, all live within the Boston metropolitan area.