Mensch

            Manfred Swarsensky was there for me from the beginning as he was for so many.  He spoke movingly at my installation as pastor of the First Unitarian Society in 1952.  He occupies a very special place in the lives of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic.  A recognized scholar and leader of the Berlin Jewish community while still a young man in Germany, he managed to escape the Nazi terror at the very last moment.  He soon settled as founding Rabbi of what was then a modest Reform congregation in Madison, and quickly became one of the city’s most valuable citizens.  For decades he was a central figure not only in Temple Beth El but also in the Madison community and the State of Wisconsin. 

            He was recognized as an outstanding ecumenical figure in the Christian-Jewish dialogue.  No one in Madison’s history has received such universal recognition, as did Manfred Swarsensky.  Yet it is not the recognition that really counts; it is the up-beat, ecumenical, intelligent and always reassuring presence that Rabbi Swarsensky brought to every occasion and every group in which he participated.  He was small in physical stature, but a giant in his influence on this remarkable city that was privileged to be his home for so many years. 

            It is most appropriate, I believe, to retrieve an excerpt from a radio talk I gave on November 21, 1981, soon after Rabbi’s death, as a befitting introduction. 

In the course of any given year many human lives come to end, some peacefully in the fullness of time, others violently and prematurely.  In the ultimate economy of the universe each life counts; none is finally and completely in vain.  The reason—if any be needed—why I have singled out the life of Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky as the subject of my talk has nothing to do with the scope of his contributions, which were enormous, or the range of his talents, which were many, or the dramatic quality of his life experience, which was certainly unusual if not quite unique.  It is, rather, completely personal; it is because he meant so much to me personally that I want to give voice in some small way to my own gratitude for having known him well over many years, and to my sense of loss at his departure from us. 

            It was one of Manfred Swarsensky’s rare gifts that he managed—as one of our colleagues put it the other day—to make almost everyone feel very special in his presence.  One always had the sense that somehow one’s own relationship to him was something unique, something to be treasured. 

            I know it was so with me.  He was already a veteran of a dozen years as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth El when I arrived in Madison many years ago, and there were far more than personal reasons for my regarding him as my closest professional colleague from that day to this.  For one thing, when he came here in 1940 as the first rabbi to serve Madison’s then newly organized Reform Jewish congregation, they met for some time in the old Unitarian Church located just off the Square on the site now occupied by Manchester’s pigeon-hole parking.  In a way, this represented repayment of an old debt; for our First Unitarian Society, from the time of its organization in 1879, met for several years in what was then called the Madison Hebrew Synagogue, the building now known as the “Gates of Heaven” in its new location in James Madison Park. 

            Manfred Swarsensky had a long and rich ministry not only to Congregation Beth El but also to this whole community.  He has been called a “bridge builder”—between Jew and Christian, between town and gown, between old and young—indeed, between all the varied segments of what he called “the wonderful City of Madison with its symphony of nature and culture.”

            He was profoundly Jewish, deeply committed to the central loyalties and values of that great heritage.  Yet the heart of that heritage itself, as he understood it and exemplified it, was an inclusiveness that reached out to all and left no one out.  He was profoundly and authentically Jewish, too, in his marvelous combination of realism about the frailty of our human nature with a wonderful humor that enabled him to accept it all without despairing.  How many times we emerged together from a meeting where foolish or parochial or even insidious ideas had been voiced!  Manfred would say, “I tell you, Max, I don’t know what the world is coming to.”  Then he would laugh and take my arm.