More than two decades after he left his post, former students who had attended events at Hillel at the University of Washington still stopped in to ask how Rabbi J, as people knew him, was doing. That’s the impact Arthur Jacobovitz had on the Seattle Jewish community, said Rabbi Will Berkovitz, Hillel at the UW’s current executive director.
“He was tremendously giving,” Berkovitz said. “To this day, I still get calls from his old students asking me if I know where he is or what he’s up to.”
Rabbi Arthur Jacobovitz died Tues., Nov. 3 at the age of 79. He had been in ill health for the past several years.
Though it was more than 20 years since he retired, Rabbi J would still come to events, most recently for a meal in the Hillel sukkah, as well as to the annual Passover luncheon he originally created.
When he arrived in Seattle in 1959, he was a young Orthodox rabbi sent by the national Hillel Foundation to rescue an organization in disarray, having been through five directors in 10 years. He indeed brought stability to Hillel — he served in his position for nearly 30 years. He also worked with Jewish students and the community to make Hillel a magnet for the area’s Jewish students, regardless of belief or affiliation.
“He had a lot of struggles as an Orthodox rabbi coming to this town and to this university and making this place a Jewish center for all students,” said Rabbi Dan Bridge, who was not only Jacobovitz’s successor, but a student active in Rabbi J’s Hillel. “He did it. If you look back to the years in the ’60s, the ’70s, the ’80s, there were Jews from every Jewish walk of life.”
Jacobovitz was well-read and relished intellectual conversations with his students and community members. Rob Spitzer, whose involvement in Seattle’s Jewish community for nearly his entire adult life can be attributed to Jacobovitz, agreed.
“He was an extremely learned and devout and pious Jew, and at the same time, he had an openness and kind of a wonder about the world,” Spitzer said. “It was just a combination I’d never seen before.”
It was that openness that Spitzer said made Jacobovitz so successful in his position. Each week, Rabbi J would hold court at Clark’s, a now-shuttered restaurant near campus, for heated discussions that would go late into the night.
“During the radical times, there were people from all political backgrounds, all religious backgrounds, all Jewish religious backgrounds coming to debate, to talk,” Bridge said. “Everything he really built was to help students grow, to kind of be prickly, to push them to grow. Hopefully that’s something we’ve continued.”
Yet as open as he was, he was also opinionated and always seeking to teach others. That part of his personality would sometimes create friction in his relationships.
“He stood up for what he believed, and he got into a lot of conflicts with people because of that,” Bridge said, “but he also spoke, in the vernacular today, his truth.”
The Hillel that exists today is largely built upon much of what Jacobovitz created. That includes the kosher Passover lunches that bring Jews together from across the religious spectrum, weekly campus discussions for anyone — not just Jews — over bagels, and Grads Plus, the precursor to Hillel’s popular Jconnect program for young adults ages 22-32.
“We stand on the shoulders of those who came ahead of us,” Berkovitz told a class of students he teaches when word came of Jacobovitz’s death.
One of his disappointments during his tenure was his inability to get a Hebrew language program started in the Arab Studies dept., prior to the creation of the Jewish Studies Program. He ended up teaching Hebrew at Seattle University instead.
Upon his retirement, Jacobovitz approached community member Herb Pruzan to help him establish and manage the Jacobovitz Institute. The philanthropic foundation gave a major gift to rebuild the Karen Mayers Gamoran Family Center for Jewish Life, Hillel’s center that opened in 2004, and still funds organizations that further the cause of appreciation for Judaism.
“He was seeking to dispel anti-Semitism and its evils through an enhanced image of the Jewish people,” Pruzan said. “This was what he felt was important. He felt Jewish people had been maligned throughout history.”
Though he retired from his job, Rabbi J never really left Hillel. Until the new building opened, Jacobovitz served as mashgiach, ensuring the facility kept up its kosher standards, and provided advice on Jewish law to both of his successors.
One of the downsides to being so involved with the organization and the students was that he never settled down with a family of his own.
“He was a great people person and he always had relationships,” Spitzer said. “I think the great tragedy in his life was that, in a way, Hillel always came first, so that kept him from having his own family.”
Students from the ’60s said Jacobovitz always expressed interest in their dating lives and overlooked what may have been considered unseemly behavior at the time — as long as the partner was Jewish.
In many ways, the people he met at Hillel and stayed in touch with throughout the years were his family. Even as his health grew more fragile, a group of women who had maintained a following over the years would bring him groceries and help him get to doctor appointments, Bridge said.
Jacobovitz left behind a niece and some cousins. He was buried in Israel.
— Joel Magalnick