A Moment in JTS History: Remembering Professor Israel Friedlander (zz”l)
Dr. Benjamin Sommer, JTS Professor of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages, was recently in Israel where he attended conferences and gave keynote lectures at Bar Ilan University and Hebrew University. While in the park just below the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew U, he came across a tiny cemetery of about fifteen or twenty graves. Venturing in, he immediately noticed a grave with a familiar JTS symbol. Upon looking closer, he discovered it belonged to Dr. Rabbi Israel Friedlander (zz”l), JTS Professor of Biblical Literature and Exegesis Professor, who was killed in 1920 during a relief mission to the Jewish communities in Ukraine.
Born in Włodaw, Poland in 1876, Rabbi Friedlander received his PhD from the University of Strasbourg in 1901. In October 1903, he moved to New York to teach at JTS, where he would remain until his death. Along with his fellow JTS professor Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, Rabbi Friedlander founded the Young Israel movement. In January 1920, he traveled to Poland along with three other members of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to distribute $35 million to starving Jews in Poland and Ukraine. During this time, Ukrainian Jews were being slaughtered by various factions during the civil war taking place there, and on July 5, 1920, Friedlander and Rabbi Bernard Cantor were murdered by soldiers of the Red Cavalry near Kamenetz-Podolsk, Ukraine.
After his death, JTS students made a donation through the Jewish National Fund to plant trees in his honor. Originally buried in Ukraine, Rabbi Friedlander was moved to Mount Scopus in 2001. His granddaughter, who died in 2013, is also buried there.
Dr. Sommer first heard about Rabbi Friedlander from his own JTS teacher Dr. Baila Shargel (z”l), who served as Assistant Dean of the Graduate School. In 1985, JTS published her biography, Practical Dreamer: Israel Friedlander and the Shaping of American Judaism. Dr. Sommer’s unexpected discovery brought three generations of JTS faculty—Rabbi Friedlander, Dr. Shargel, and Dr. Sommer—together. Dr. Sommer put a stone on Rabbi Friedlander’s grave and recited an אל מלא, honoring his fellow member of the JTS Tanakh faculty.
