January 17, 2003/Shevat 14 5763, Vol. 55, No. 21
Travels with TutnauerBeth El rabbi makes the world his congregation
BARRY COHEN
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 Rabbi Moshe Tutnauer celebrates during a wedding in the Ukraine in 1998, one of the nine nations he has visited to promote Conservative Judaism. Photo courtesy of Moshe Tutnauer |
It was his first visit to the Communist nation.
"They said they wanted to check my luggage," says Tutnauer, who is both former and current rabbi at Beth El Congregation in Phoenix.
"When I asked why, they responded, 'You've spoken to unidentified Soviet citizens,' " he recalls.
"So I responded, 'Everybody on the street is unidentified. What does that mean?' "
Tutnauer allowed security to check his bags - as if he had any real choice, he says.
He felt fortunate they did not search his bags when he arrived and went through Soviet customs. He was smuggling in Israeli visas to distribute to refuseniks.
"He's lucky he didn't go to jail," says Rabbi Albert Plotkin, rabbi emeritus of Temple Beth Israel in Scottsdale. "But when he decided to help Soviet Jewry, he couldn't do it by telephone."
Tutnauer has devoted a lifetime to acting on his convictions.
"In my mind, leadership meant taking positions," he says. "Remember that I'm a '60s rabbi. ... You change the world by changing the nature of the way people live."
Tutnauer's rabbinate - a testimony to living by example - has led him from Valley interfaith worship with farm worker union organizer Cesar Chavez, to civil rights marches in Alabama, to making aliyah, to helping Ethiopian women settle in Jerusalem, to maintaining a friendship with the mayor of a neighboring Arab village during the height of the Intifada.
His pursuit of social justice and tikkun olam (repair of the world), have taken him and his wife Margie to nine countries in more than 15 years and now, temporarily, back to the Valley.
Community rabbinate
Tutnauer was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1960. He worked as assistant rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in San Francisco before moving to Phoenix in 1962 to serve as rabbi of Beth El Congregation.
"He was a titan in his congregation." says Rabbi B. Charles Herring of Temple Kol Ami of Scottsdale, who met Tutnauer after coming to Phoenix to become associate rabbi of Temple Beth Israel.
Herring recalls attending worship services at Beth El on the second day of Rosh Hashana just to hear Tutnauer, who would give deeper meaning to individual prayers or add mystical interpretations, says Herring.
"At the same time, if during kriyat HaTorah (the reading of the Torah) somebody got up and started walking out, he would ask them from the pulpit where they were going," Herring adds.
During worship, he often would step down from the bema to walk up and down the aisles, close to the congregants.
"He liked to get right in the middle ... (of) the people, direct," says Plotkin. "He has a tremendous capacity to communicate."
Tutnauer also chose to communicate his Jewish ideals by connecting with the Valley's general community.
Herring recalls the first time he met Tutnauer.
"I received a request by local farm workers (seeking improved working conditions) to lead sunrise services at the (state) Capitol ... because no priest would accept the invitation," says Herring. "I went, but there was another rabbi there, and it was (Tutnauer)."
Herring says on another occasion he saw Tutnauer at a mass organized by supporters of Cesar Chavez, who was fasting to draw attention to the plight of migrant grape workers. Herring agreed to help pass baskets of bread during Communion in a room filled with 5,000 participants.
"I'm walking down the aisle with my basket, and I bump into somebody and turn to say, 'excuse me,' and it's Tutnauer," he recalls.
"He was the ultimate activist. He was forever doing those things that needed to be done to better the world in which he lived," he adds.
In 1964, Tutnauer's efforts to improve society led him from Phoenix to a civil rights march in Montgomery, Ala.
"The '60s rabbinate did not talk a lot about spirituality. It talked about doing, and the spirituality came from helping black people get the right to vote," he explains. "That was doing God's work."
Tutnauer is a man of uncompromising integrity, says Plotkin, about his decision to take part in the demonstration in Alabama. "He didn't care about being intimidated. ... Sometimes, I wish I were that courageous," he notes.
Plotkin says Tutnauer expressed his principled integrity again when, in 1972, he decided to make aliyah. The decision to depart from Beth El with his wife and two young sons was a logical extension of his Zionist ideology, Plotkin explains.
"Moshe was a man of action. When he became a Zionist, he said, 'If I'm a Zionist, then I'm making aliyah.' "
Before concluding his 10-year tenure at Beth El to make aliyah, he and his family had experienced Israel during a sabbatical in 1969-70.
"We had a pretty good idea what Israel was all about," he says.
Margie remarks that when they arrived in Jerusalem, she did not consider their family as pioneers - American-born Conservative Jews trying to make a living in Israel.
"We had a comfortable, nicely furnished brand-new apartment and a Volvo," she says in an e-mail. Their sons attended Hebrew University High School. She and Moshe had teaching positions waiting for them, she adds, allowing her to put into practice the master's degree in education she earned at Arizona State University.
"We had a supportive group of friends from Camp Ramah and JTS. We were all bringing Conservative Judaism to Israel," she adds.
Building a life in the Promised Land
In Israel, Moshe Tutnauer served as dean of students and chairman of the Judaic Studies Department at David Yellin Hebrew Teachers' College from 1972 to 1984.
Before his arrival, the college taught a predominantly Orthodox Jewish curriculum, he says. He helped restructure the curriculum to be more open to the marketplace of ideas, he says.
He served concurrently as executive director of the Masorti (Conservative) Movement in Israel.
And he continued his pursuit of religious equality and civil rights - an arc linking migrant farm workers in the Southwest and civil rights in Alabama to providing support for two Ethiopian women seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity in Israel.
The Tutnauer family reached out to Inani Yishayahu and Edna Azuzali in 1985, helping them get university educations and later find jobs.
Edna is now married, and both women are leading successful lives, says Tutnauer.
In the face of the ongoing Intifada, he has continued to foster a relationship with a family in an Arab town near the family's home in Jerusalem.
"We live in French Hill, in the northeast corner of Jerusalem, 200 yards from an Arab village," he says. "My wife and I are very friendly with the mayor of that village."
Through the years, they have visited with the Darwishe family, attended their children's weddings and celebrated wedding anniversaries together, he explains.
He says he refuses to allow the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to destroy the relationship.
Expanded congregation
Tutnauer has not only helped introduce Conservative Judaism to the modern state of Israel but, through the World Union of Progressive Judaism, he and Margie have joined efforts to expand Judaism to nearly nine countries. Their travels include:
- 1983-84: teaching at the Seminario Rabinico Latino Americano in Buenos Aires, Argentina; leading High Holiday services in Lima, Peru
- 1988: traveling to Nairobi, Kenya
- 1990: visiting Belmonte, Portugal
- 1991: serving as first Conservative rabbi of the Hineni Congregation in Moscow; teaching in Kiev, Chernovitz, Odessa, Cherkassi, Korson, Tablisi and Irkutsk; helping found a Conservative Jewish day school in Chernovitz and religious schools in Moscow, Odessa and Berditchev
- 1995: working with the Jewish community in Sarajevo and directing Camp Ramah in the Ukraine
- 1997-2000: helping communities in Vilna and Kovno in Lithuania
Transition rabbi
Beginning in the mid-'80s, Moshe and Margie Tutnauer returned periodically to the United States to help congregations struggling with rabbinical transitions. They offered assistance to these congregations not officially through the Conservative movement, but through their own initiative, he says.
The congregations have included Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, 1984-1986; Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Mich., 1996-1997; Temple Beth El in Rochester, N.Y., 1997-1998; Congregation Ahavath Shalom in Fort Worth, Texas, 1998-1999; and Har Zion Temple in Narberth, Penn., 1999-2001.
His experience with Har Zion has been documented in the recent book "The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader" by Stephen Fried (Bantam Books, $25.05 hardcover), a firsthand account of the congregation's struggle to find a replacement for Rabbi Gerold Wolpe, who had served for 30 years. One chapter, "King Tut," covers Tutnauer's tenure as associate rabbi there.
Their work to help struggling congregations led Moshe and Margie back to the Valley last year, to work with the congregation struggling with rabbinic transition that they served for 10 years.
Return to Beth El
Rabbi Rick Sherwin served Beth El Congregation from 1992 to 2000. Rabbi Michael Wasserman and Rabbi Elana Kanter succeeded him and then left after less than two years to lead The New Shul in Scottsdale.
Nearly 30 years after he had made aliyah, Tutnauer returned to Beth El, intending to help the congregation not only find a long-term rabbi but also to address the shrinking membership.
"This is the hardest job of all of them," Tutnauer says. "Usually, the advantage of being an interim rabbi is that you're above the pressure. You have to absorb a lot of the anger that exists in the congregation ... so that the person who succeeds you can come in on a clean slate. This position is very different and much more complicated because of the close relationship that (Margie and I) have with a lot of the congregants."
The Tutnauers have kept in touch with a number of Beth El members since moving to Israel, he says. They received several invitations to return to Phoenix for weddings, and in Jerusalem, their doors are always open to congregants visiting the Jewish state, he adds.
The Tutnauers will be leaving Beth El Congregation for the second time in April.
"I almost always only do one year because doing one year puts the pressure on the congregation (to find a permanent rabbi)," he says. "In this particular case, I am not constitutionally capable (of continuing). I'm 68 years old. ... This is a hard job here."
The Tutnauers will return to their French Hill home in Jerusalem, near their two sons, Nahum, 43, and Roni, 42, their sabra daughters-in-law and their six grandchildren.
Margie says she has no regrets about how Moshe's career has taken them to so many different places and countries.
"He is a very warm and caring person with an exciting, challenging personality. My life with Moshe has been 45 years of adventure with no boring days."
Contact the writer at barry_cohen@jewishaz.com.
Look for future coverage of Beth El Congregation's challenges with rabbinic transition and membership in Jewish News.