Memories of a living piece of history, of a unique holy soul, carry us forward.
Rabbi Israel Rosenfeld died 70 years, minus one day, from the date of his liberation from Auschwitz, about which he never ceased speaking. He wore his pain on his tattooed arm and on his sleeve; he never got over the fact that he had gone through so much with his father in Auschwitz, only to see him sent to his death near Birkenau just before the end of the war. The Holocaust haunted Rabbi Rosenfeld. He cried easily. He did not hide his emotions or his thoughts, did not keep them bottled up inside. Just the opposite.
The strange thing is, whenever one left Rabbi Rosenfeld after he had shared his pain, seemingly as sharp as the day it was inflicted, one left not depressed, not defeated, not “down.” One left moved by the example of a person who had overcome.
Here was a person who, after liberation, was but a teenager, 16 years old, very ill, alone. Yet, he came back. He did not let his personal losses and his life in hell defeat him. He married his beloved Tova and, with her, raised a family. He became a leading and indeed a pioneering educator in his generation, and in a foreign culture, no less. He mastered English. He rose to the position of teacher and then principal of Hillel Academy, positions he filled for a quarter of a century. His restless mind was always searching for new and better ways to reach students, and this led him to write textbooks — over 15 textbooks! — used around the country to this day. And so, even when he shared his anguish, the example of what he had become left one . . . uplifted.
It is impossible to calculate the number of children he touched over the course of his long career. He inspired. He connected. He had that elusive, intangible quality that separates the average or even the good teacher from the truly exceptional one. And it was more than the children, as if that were not enough. He became a pedagogic expert. He became sought after as far away as Israel to teach teachers. It was not only the number of children he reached directly, but all the other students that the teachers he taught have reached, and continue to reach.
Amazingly, melded into his intensity was gentleness and friendliness. With people he had a light touch. It was not just that this victim of Auschwitz did not play the victim. It was not just that he went on to accomplish what so many talk about, and so few actually do: transmit the tradition to the next generation. It was so much more. People remember Rabbi Rosenfeld for the good feeling they left with after each encounter with him. Friends and former students inevitably found much to admire in the way he wore his learning lightly; the way he made each person he came into contact with feel important. For all of the weight of his personal history, he consistently came across as gentle, sensitive, kind, vulnerable.
Rabbi Israel Rosenfeld graced this community for some 50 years. Some associate “charisma” with a powerful physique, a riveting voice, or an entertaining mystique. Rabbi Rosenfeld had a quiet charisma that attracted students, whether children or adults. He had the capacity to listen, to accept, and the capacity to convey, to teach. He was concerned for people. Rabbi Rosenfeld’s charisma — warmth, clarity, reaching out —left an ineradicable impact.
And not just on students in the elementary school classroom. He taught Talmud for adults on Shabbos afternoon for decades. He advised schools near and far. He taught in many other venues, formal and informal. He had that precious, proprietary sense of the genuine teacher: Once you were his student, you were his student forever. He left a permanent impact. Certainly the outpouring at his funeral was a sign of this, but an incomplete one at that. Countless students of his live elsewhere, and as widespread as the grief is in Denver over his passing, it is but a part of the grief felt around the world.
Humility prevented Rabbi Rosenfeld from holding but the slightest vision of how deep an imprint he left. The many who were privileged to know him, and to have been taught by him, are blessed. He was not only a teacher. He was a role model. A presence.
A living example of the brutal hate and harm wreaked on the Jewish people in the 20th century, he seemed to need no special effort or occasion to communicate what he had gone through, what it meant. Even so, there was always something elusive about Rabbi Rosenfeld. On the one side he had seen things that no human being should ever see. On the other side he had seen teachers of Torah of a caliber no one sees any longer. As much as he taught, perhaps what he taught above all is to keep probing the Jewish tradition for its secrets, for neither he nor anyone else could convey them in all their depth. Whenever Rabbi Rosenfeld reflected on Jewish history, it seemed that he knew more than he was ever able to relate.
Our prayers are with him as the Holy One, Blessed be He, Whom he served with such faith and devotion, and whose actions in history left him so perplexed, ushers his precious soul into eternity. His loss is heavy. Our memories, heavy indeed, are also light: buoyed by the gentle touch, the twinkle in the eye, the reservoir of knowledge, the sweet song of our precious Rabbi Israel Rosenfeld — the unlikely immigrant from Chust, Czechoslovakia, who changed the trajectory of Denver Jewry.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
