Rabbi Ben Zion and Kalliah Bokser
An Appreciation
Shabbat Shekalim 5770
February 13, 2010
This past Monday, the 24th day of Shvat, marked the Shloshim- the 30th day after burial- for Kallia Bokser, z”l, the devoted wife of our late Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser. And Wednesday, the 26th day of Shvat, marked Rabbi Bokser’s 26th yahrzeit. That these significant markers of memory for the two of them fall in such close proximity to each other would come as no surprise to anyone who knew them. Their lives were so closely intertwined for such a long time that even after death, they are never far apart…
I have long been aware of the importance of Ben Zion’s and Kallia’s memories remaining a vital part of this congregation’s legacy. The challenge that I face is two-fold.
First, the generation that grew into maturity with Rabbi Bokser as their rabbi still, to this day, feels his loss and now Kallia’s. The Forest Hills Jewish Center is still the Forest Hills Jewish Center, but like any living organism, it continues to evolve with the passing years, and memories of what was are harder for them to sustain.
The other challenge- in its own way more severe- is that there is a whole generation and then some in this synagogue today who never really knew Rabbi Bokser, or Kallia. He died twenty-six years ago, and she moved away from Forest Hills not long after his death. How do you keep alive the memory of a man and woman whom so many, including some of today’s synagogue leaders, never knew?
If ever there were a moment in time to devote a precious few minutes to contemplating the legacy of Ben Zion and Kallia Bokser, then this Shabbat, when his yahrzeit and her shloshim fall so close to each other for the first time, is surely it. And the only way to do so is to begin with a word of Torah, which Rabbi Bokser, the master teacher of homiletics in whose illustrious path I humbly followed, would surely have appreciated. Those of you who knew them will appreciate its appropriateness.
The opening verse of this morning’s Torah reading states V’Eleh hamishpatim asher tasim lifneihem; And these are the laws that you shall place before them. Commenting on the words mishpatim, laws, and lifneihem, before them, the great Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Pshischa, a renowned Polish Hassidic master, said that it is altogether fitting that the mishpatim- the laws governing interpersonal relations- come lifneihem- before the laws governing how humans conduct themselves before God. Derech Eretz kadmah l‘Torah, he proclaimed. Being a mentsch must always take precedence over piety.
Rabbi Bokser was a pious Jew who, in his personal life, was meticulous in his observance of the law. Kallia was no less so, coming from a strictly observant home. But though I knew him and worked closely with him for only two-and-a half years, he taught me a most significant and life-changing lesson: piety must never stand in the way of menschlichkeit.
By the time I met Rabbi Bokser in 1981, he was 73. He was in frail health, and the upheaval in the congregation that had preceded my arrival- an interesting story, but not for today- had taken a tremendous toll on him. With whatever energy and time he had left, which turned out not to be much, he devoted himself passionately and single-mindedly to working on a second volume on the works of the great Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, former chief rabbi of the State of Israel. His first book on Rav Kook, which he affectionately called his “Kook book,” was published by the Paulist Press in their Classics of Western Spirituality series, and was a major contribution to the world of Jewish scholarship.
(And speaking of Rabbi Bokser’s sense of humor… he had one, to be sure, but it was usually his decision as to when something was funny or not.
The very first weekend I came out here to audition, in May of 1981, I came to the late Friday night service which happened to be the bat-mitzvah of Jodi Krasilovsky, and also Jewish music month. I remember well a woman who led a responsive reading of the psalm for the Sabbath in Kabbalat Shabbat, right after L’cha Dodi. She had the very heavy accent of a Queens native, and when she read the concluding lines of the psalm, it sounded a lot like “…to tell that the Lord is perfect, there is no floor in him (instead of flaw).
So being a young, irreverent rabbi, I leaned over to Rabbi Bokser and said “And no ceiling either!” I thought it was funny, but Rabbi Bokser turned and looked at me as if I was from another planet. Lesson learned, especially for a rookie. Let the senior rabbi make the jokes, especially when you’re auditioning…)
Rabbi Bokser loved and revered Rav Kook for the same reason that he loved and revered the legendary Tannah of the Mishnah Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus- Rav Kook, like Rabbi Eliezer, was an iconoclast. He bucked the rabbinic establishment of his time by reaching out with love and understanding to the secular Zionists who were the backbone of the fledgling State of Israel, and seeking to find a way to build a society together. My oh my, could we use a rabbi like him today! Rather than use Jewish Law- piety, if you will- as a cudgel, Rav Kook used it as an instrument of Kiruv, of outreach. It was he who famously said Mutav she’ikashel me’ahavat hinam me’asher mi’sin’at hinam… Better I should fail because of senseless love than because of senseless hatred.
The only people I ever saw Rabbi Bokser openly display contempt for were those who self-righteously wore their piety like a robe, and became so enamored of Jewish ritual that they forgot it was but an instrument to sensitize the Jew to the presence of a loving God in each and everything he/she does. Ritual, he would regularly say to me, is a means to an end, and not an end in itself. He would open the High Holiday machzor to the Haftarah for Yom Kippur in which Isaiah scolds the Israelites for thinking that God actually cares about the blood of animals or rivers of oil on an altar. It frustrated him enormously that religion was being so misinterpreted…. It frustrated him, and made him the impassioned, iconoclastic religious liberal that he was.
Rabbi Bokser was not a back-slapper, and I think it fair to say that he was, in general, shy. He was more of a Platonic philosopher king than a hands-on pulpit rabbi- very much the model of his generation- but the very best of it. And if you were privileged to know him, and to feel the warmth of his caring, you felt blessed.
I have told this story many times, but this morning it bears telling just once more, because to me it represents the quintessence of who the man was.
Most of you know that my family has had a dog since our very earliest days in Forest Hills. We’re actually on our third dog. The first one was a wild thing that we adopted from the North Shore Animal League and named Vashti, partly in tribute to a woman we considered to be the first true feminist in the Bible, and partly because she never came when we called.
Well- one morning I came into shul looking kind of glum, and Rabbi Bokser asked me what was wrong. I told him that Vashti was sick, and in the hospital, and Robin and I were worried about her. He asked me to remind him of her name, and then asked Robin’s Hebrew name. I didn’t know why- I wasn’t thinking too clearly, I guess- but I found out. When the time came for the Mishebeirach for those who are sick- back when we were still reciting the names aloud- he included Vashti bat Tziporah. I think the only other person who immediately noticed it besides me was Jack Leibler, who was co-chair of the Ritual Committee at the time. The look on his face was, as they say, priceless.
When Rabbi Bokser sat down, I looked at him, stunned, and said “I can’t believe you just did that.” And with a totally straight face and not an ounce of disingenuousness, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “Gerry, is God not rofeh kol basar umafli la’asot? The healer of all flesh and doer of wondrous things? And then he turned his attention back to the siddur.
The truth is, I don’t know why I was so surprised that he, a vegetarian and spiritual master par excellence, saw a dog as a life like any other, worthy of prayer. The same man who had that sensitivity for a dog also raged against the Vietnam War, fought a principled and very, very costly and bitter battle in favor of what was then called the Forest Hills Housing project, designed to bring low-income housing into a very lily-white neighborhood… and all this while he served two separate terms as the Chair of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards and wrote fourteen books! He was a most unusual and remarkable man.
And as for Kallia… it has become common these days, mostly because of Bette Midler’s lovely song, for a woman playing a supporting role in someone else’s life to be referred to as the “wind beneath his or her wings.” I don’t think it does Kallia’s role in that epic marriage justice to call her the wind beneath Rabi Bokser’s wings. She was more like the tropical storm beneath his wings. He could be a luftmensch; she was very much of this world. He liked to project himself as calm and measured; Kallia was a firebrand, whose Isaiah-like liberal leanings pushed and prodded him to see the world through her eyes. I am completely convinced that he could never have achieved the greatness that he did without her to balance his quietness with her fire. She loved him with a great tenderness and grieved for him powerfully when he died, but she was never intimidated by his reputation or by the reverence that so many had for him. She was often like his Rashi- he would talk, and then she would say what he really meant- as she wanted it to be understood. And she surely wasn’t scared to differ with him.
Long before it was common, particularly in rabbinic families, Kallia was a career woman, achieving a position of prominence and importance in the New York City Housing Authority. She played a critical role in the creation of affordable housing for low and middle-income families here in New York, and was a respected figure in that often rough and tumble world. She worked full-time, and managed nonetheless to involve herself in the life of the congregation- as she saw fit, creating a wonderful role model for Robin and others of our generation to follow.
Before writing this tribute to the Boksers, I went back and re-read the eulogy for Rabbi Bokser that I wrote for his funeral in 1984. (I’m so grateful to Barbara Klibanoff, the editor of The Message, our synagogue bulletin, for publishing at the time a special issue of The Message containing large sections of the numerous, wonderful eulogies from the funeral. Those were pre-computer days, and if it weren’t for that issue, I would have no written record of what I wrote). Among other things, I said that The Forest Hills Jewish Center of those days had another name- it was “Bokser’s shul.” Saying “Bokser’s shul” was the way people referred to The Forest Hills Jewish Center, and everyone knew what they were referring to, much like saying Eine Kleine Nacht Musik… you don’t have to say Mozart; everyone knows.
It’s been twenty-six years since Rabbi Bokser died, and just a month since Kallia left us. I’ve been a rabbi here since 1981, and the senior rabbi here since 1984, sometimes with an assistant, sometimes without. I would imagine that, by this point, there are some people who might refer to this place as “Skolnik’s shul,” and that’s a great honor, one that I share with the remarkable lay leaders with whom it’s been my pleasure and honor to work. In my heart of hearts, I no longer think of it as “Bokser’s shul;” I’ve given it twenty-eight of the best years of my life. But I do continue to think of this shul as “the shul that Bokser built.” Or, more to the point, the shul that the Boksers built.” How fortunate Forest Hills was to call Ben Zion and Kallia their own!
