Rabbi Walter Jacob (center) ordained three rabbis at a ceremony at the Pestalozzi Strasse Synagogue in Berlin on November 4, 2010. (Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

(JTA) — PITTSBURGH — Rabbi Walter Jacob, who returned 60 years after leaving Germany as a refugee to help revitalize the Liberal Jewish community, died Oct. 20 at his home in Pittsburgh. He was 94 years old.

Jacob, the longtime rabbi of Congregation Rodef Shalom, a Reform synagogue in Pittsburgh, came from a line of rabbis dating back 400 years in Germany. To honor this legacy in 1999 Abraham Geiger College at the University of Potsdam, the first Liberal or Reform rabbinical seminary to open in continental Europe since the Holocaust.

Jacob, then president of Geiger College, said in 2006: “Germany is rebuilding a really solid Jewish life, and that’s a pretty good start.” While the seminary was about to appoint first-rate Liberal rabbis in Germany since 1942. “My ancestors were rabbis in Germany and Central Europe for 16 generations. “I am happy that a new generation of rabbis will be trained,” he said.

To oppose the Orthodox establishment, which is reluctant to recognize non-Orthodox congregations in Germany, As well as internal divisions within liberal communitiesJacob helped grow the membership community of Germany’s Reformation movement from just a handful to over 30 by 2023.

“I had the privilege of knowing Walter not only as an extraordinary leader of our movement, but also as a warm and compassionate rabbi who was deeply committed to passing on his love of Judaism to others.” Rabbi Lea Mühlstein, President of the European Union for Progressive Judaism, said in a statement:. “He was a deep thinker, always had some important thoughts to share, but most of all, he was a true mentor who enjoyed seeing other people succeed.”

Jacob served as rabbi in the Pittsburgh congregation for 42 years and as rabbi emeritus for the past 27 years. He served as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, an organization of Reform rabbis, from 1992 to 1994. Vice president of the World Association for Progressive Judaism from 1990-94.

A prolific writer, he edited the three-volume Reform responsa (Rabbinic guidance on the practical applications of Jewish law and theory) for CCAR Press.

Jacob was born in 1930 in Augsburg, Germany, to Annette Loewenberg Jacob and Rabbi Ernst Jacob. According to the biography “The Seventeenth Generation: The Life of Rabbi Walter Jacob,” commissioned by his synagogue in 2018, Jacob was the grandson of Rabbi Benno Jacob (1862-1945), the well-known Bible commentator whose works Jacob translated into English.

The family fled Nazi Germany in 1939 to London and then to Missouri, where his father worked as a rabbi from 1943. Walter Jacob earned a bachelor’s degree from Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, in 1950 and received ordination and master’s degrees from Reformation. In 1955 he attended Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He received his doctorate from the same institution in 1961.

Jacob and Irene Loewenthal were married in 1958. The two were cousins; The family from Hamburg managed to escape to London in 1938. The couple’s eldest daughter, Claire, was born with a disability, and the Jacobs family He founded a facility for children like himself called Horizon Home, which is now part of Mainstay Life Services in Pittsburgh..

Irene Jacob died in 2012. He was predeceased by his children Claire, Kenneth and Daniel.

Jacob was hired at Rodef Shalom in 1955 by Rabbi Solomon Freehof and served as a chaplain in the United States Air Force in the Philippines from 1955 to 1957, returning to Pittsburgh to work at Rodef.

In 1986, Jacob and his wife Bible Botanical Garden In Rodef Shalom, a project that has attracted national and international attention. Jacob did interfaith work; His 43 books include “Christianity through Jewish Eyes: The Search for Common Ground” (1984). He taught at Chatham College and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and served as president of the American Association for Religious Education from 1981-85.

In 1996, Jacob returned to Germany and served as honorary rabbi of the Liberal Jewish congregation Beth Shalom in Munich. Noting that the country did not have its own seminary for Liberal rabbis, he vowed to establish one and named it after the 19th-century German rabbi considered the father of Reform Judaism.

The college he founded in 2015 presented the Abraham Geiger Award to then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “What a gift it is to have a diverse and rich Jewish life in Germany once again,” Merkel said in her speech. Its founding rector was among the speakers at Jacob’s funeral in Rodef Shalom on 22 October.

Among the honors Jacob received in Germany were the Grand Cross of the Order of the Federal Republic of Germany and a professorship from the State of Brandenburg. Also Pope John II. He was made Commander of the Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great by John Paul II.

At his funeral, Rabbi Deborah Pine, Hillel International’s director of campus support, described Jacob as a mentor who knew what was most important. Pine said that during their last visit, two weeks before his death, she asked him the following question: “What can I do to help you?” What do you want?” as he left.

Jacob’s devotion to science was one of the main themes of those who spoke at his funeral. Rabbi Danny Schiff, Gefsky Community Fellow for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, told JTA that when he first met Jacob at the World Association for Progressive Judaism in Jerusalem, his older colleague’s first question was “What are you reading?” He said it was.

Schiff said Jacob’s interest in responsa “is that it produces real-world results,” adding: “Responsa is the intellectual side of Judaism that appeals most to Jewish people.”

Rabbi Andrew Busch of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, who served as Jacob’s assistant at Rodef Shalom, quoted Jacob in his speech at the funeral from a 1995 article written for the Solomon Freehof Progressive Halacha Institute, which Jacob founded.

“Judaism has always been an extremely optimistic religion, with a love of life that permeates every aspect,” Jacob wrote. “Our love for life should lead to the desire to continue it, and therefore every person should do his best to pass it on to future generations.”