Rabbi Albert S. Axelrad, a Reform rabbi, neighborhood chief and political activist who headed Brandeis College’s Hillel Basis for 34 years, died on Sept. 18. He was 87.
Beginning in 1965, Axelrad sought to make sure that college students and college from all Jewish streams obtained the logistical help and sources wanted to reside the fullest of Jewish lives at Brandeis, the one nonsectarian, Jewish-sponsored school or college in the US.
“Al didn’t simply preach pluralism. He lived pluralism,” mentioned Rabbi Peretz Rodman, who first met Axelrad as an undergraduate and later joined his Hillel workers whereas a graduate scholar. “For instance, there hadn’t been a lot of an Orthodox presence on campus till the mid-Nineteen Seventies, when he employed an Orthodox rabbi and supplied house for that minyan.”
Though devoted to egalitarian prayer that gives equal roles for women and men, Axelrad typically attended Orthodox and different non-egalitarian providers, Rodman mentioned. “He would quip that he davened in an egalitarian minyan earlier than praying with the Orthodox minyan, so he’d be ‘yotzei’” — having fulfilled his personal spiritual necessities as a liberal Jew.
Axelrad’s dedication to egalitarian prayer led him to cofound the non-denominational Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts. A lay-led, unbiased congregation that drew on points of the counterculture, it served as a mannequin of egalitarianism for what grew to become often known as the havurah motion.
A local Brooklynite, Axelrad attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush and earned a bachelor’s diploma in sociology from Columbia College. In 1965 he obtained rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union Faculty-Jewish Institute of Faith. Quickly afterward, he moved to Massachusetts to turn into the Hillel director and chaplain at Brandeis.
His first years at Brandeis coincided with the motion opposing the struggle in Vietnam, and Axelrad, a member of the Jewish Peace Fellowship, endorsed college students who had been weighing whether or not to turn into conscientious objectors. He additionally advocated for divesting from South Africa as a way to finish apartheid.
However Israel and Jews remained on the heart of Axelrad’s activism. He was an early supporter of the “two-state answer” via Breira, the primary nationwide Jewish group to advocate for an unbiased Palestinian state, and passionate in regards to the battle of Jews locked past the Iron Curtain and punished for working towards Judaism.
He ensured that activism to free Soviet Jews was a central a part of Jewish life at Brandeis, and traveled to the Soviet Union on two events to fulfill Jewish refuseniks. His 1985 guide “Refusenik: Voices of Wrestle and Hope” chronicles his first go to. In 1984 he wrote “Meditations of a Maverick Rabbi,” wherein he defined, amongst different issues, why he carried out interfaith marriages.
Axelrad is credited with creating, within the Nineteen Seventies, the primary bar- and bat-mitzvah coaching applications for Jewish adults who missed out on the ceremony of their youth. These applications grew to become a mainstay in lots of American synagogues. The annual Jewish Arts Competition he launched was adopted by different Hillels.
Axelrad grew to become the founding director of the Middle for Non secular Life and adjunct professor of faith at Emerson Faculty in Boston after retiring from Brandeis in 1999.
Upon studying of Axelrad’s dying, a whole bunch of former Brandeis college students — lots of them now rabbis themselves — took to social media to recall Axelrad’s pluralistic, the-door-is-always-open model of management and the impact he had on their lives. Many referred to as him a bridge-builder and a “mensch.”
Rabbi Bob Carroll, who labored carefully with Axelrad as a scholar board member of Brandeis Hillel and, later, as its president whereas an undergraduate, mentioned he owed Axelrad “an enormous debt of gratitude.
“In all probability greater than anybody else in my life, once I waver over whether or not I ought to have the braveness to talk out about one thing demanding ethical braveness or sacrifice, to threat my very own place or repute, it’s his instance and reminiscence that I see in my thoughts’s eye,” mentioned Carroll, an Orthodox rabbi.
“I haven’t all the time lived as much as his normal. However due to him I at the least knew what I ought to have had the center to do, or to say. And I used to be a greater human being and a greater Jew due to him. Even when our paths diverged.”
Rabbah Riqi Kosovske, the rabbi of the Beit Ahavah Reform synagogue in Northampton, Massachusetts, mentioned Axelrad had a “large impression” on her life from the second she grew to become a Brandeis undergraduate.
“Considered one of my earliest recollections was singing within the scholar circle with him at 12:15 p.m. day by day on the each day vigil when he was on the starvation strike for divestment [from South Africa], and I might cry watching him as I apprehensive and cared a lot for him and was so impressed by him,” she mentioned. “I’m grateful for his kindness and the impression he had on me.”
Rabbi Ron Kronish was a sophomore when Axelrad started his place at Brandeis. Kronish, who grew to become the coed head of Hillel throughout his senior yr, described Axelrad as “an important listener. He would look you within the eye. He was totally current.”
Kronish, who later grew to become a Reform rabbi and an interfaith activist in the US and Israel, mentioned Axelrad all the time checked out life via a Jewish lens and that his opposition to the Vietnam struggle and his involvement in civil rights “got here out of his understanding of what it means to be Jewish.”
Larry Sternberg referred to as Axelrad “a consummate mensch — type, light, caring — listener, a powerful allyand a principled chief.” He first met Axelrad in 1973, when he started his graduate work at Brandeis. Sternberg later served on the college at Brandeis and as government director of the college’s Hillel from 2004-2013.
“He acted on his passions and beliefs, reflecting a dedication to rabbinic activism. At instances I discovered him infuriating,” Sternberg mentioned, “however that by no means resulted in pressure between us. Our bond was sturdy as a result of Al knew that disagreeing didn’t diminish our respect for each other. Whereas many rabbis aspire to encourage others, Al was the actual deal.”
Axelrad is survived by 4 youngsters and several other grandchildren. Berta Axelrad, his spouse of 63 years, died in December 2024.
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