RABBI Leonard Helman was a close friend and a mystery. The Rabbi Different, he was called.
Indeed he was.
I felt a sense of personal loss when I learned of his death last week. He of Santa Fes Reform Temple Beth Shalom and I an Orthodox rabbi worked together in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for five years, 1986-1991.
Our relationship was full of paradoxes.
It was he who thought it was just fine that a group of his congregants decided they wanted to be traditional. The word tolerate did not exist in his vocabulary. He did not tolerate this unusual development; he welcomed it.
On May 20, 1986, when the Orthodox group formally became a community (Torah Bamidbar, Torah in the Desert), he said: Im joining. Not as rabbi, but as a member.
It was I who nurtured this group from within Temple Beth Shalom, and who found an affirmative relationship between my students/teachers, who grew in halachic observance by leaps and bounds, and between many others in Temple Beth Shalom.
For a few shining years, the great divide between Reform Judaism and Orthodox Judaism was transcended by human relationships and a focus on spirituality, not ideology.
Read the complete IJN obituary for Rabbi Leonard Helman
Leonard was, yes, a leader, but also just one of the kaleidoscopic circle of seekers. How much he contributed depends on how one measures, but one thing is certain: He could have shut down the entire enterprise, or at least caused it trouble.
He was no more interested in that than he was in shutting down his other side. Just as he pushed the envelope in the traditional direction, he pushed it in the other. Leonard liked to sing and dance, and he, a Reform rabbi, was known to show up in night clubs to do his impromptu performances. Leonard was Leonard. The Rabbi Different.
In Temple Beth Shalom, sometimes the relationship between the Reform and Orthodox constituencies was strained, but not because of anything he said or did. His view seemed to be this: In a world in which Jewish assimilation and apathy reign, any Jewish growth is welcome. If its not my kind, so what? We need every enthusiastic Jew we can get.
Then there was his declaration, I dont do cremations.
And the time the Orthodox group defended him against his detractors within the temple.
But I get ahead of myself.
IN April, 1986, in shul, I said hello to a stranger, who turned out to be from Santa Fe. He told me about the incipient traditional group there. We talked. I invited his group to come up to Denver for a shabbaton whose guest speaker, Rabbi Rafael Grossman, then of Memphis, was invited by Gilbert Jacobson.
The Santa Fe group was impressed, and we all settled on another shabbaton, this time in Santa Fe. It took place in the La Fonda Hotel. Rabbi Grossman, who was introduced by Rabbi Helman, was inspirational, and the traditional group in Temple Beth Shalom became an Orthodox one.
I went to Santa Fe many times over the next five years, and asked many other teachers of Torah to do the same. Like me and Rabbi Grossman, they all went without remuneration.
In 1988, I introduced Torah Bamidbar to Rabbi Shlomo Goldberg, and he was hired as the Orthodox communitys rabbi.
His first day there, Rabbi Helman, who was not threatened by Rabbi Goldberg, offered to show him around, and took him to the mortuary. A bereaved Jewish family was there. Rabbi Helman went in, then came out five minutes later. They want a cremation, and I dont do cremations. Talk to them, he said to Rabbi Goldberg, if you want.
He did, and the cremation was avoided.
Over time, it was insufficient to grow in Judaism personally. Parents wanted a full time Hebrew day school quite a trick, inasmuch as there would need to be some 10 children spread across most of the elementary grades. Somehow, it worked.
Today, some of the graduates of that school are Talmudic scholars.
Every journey was individual, and as is the case when serious spiritual seekers desire the truth, there can be rough edges within the community. Overall, the community grew, hosted many guests, thirsted for the teachings and practices of the Torah, and thrilled at the new vistas of Torah they became exposed to.
Even before Torah Bamidbar was formed, the informal traditional group built a mikveh with their own hands because one person wanted it. Thats how it was. One person was attracted to one mitzvah; another person, to another mitzvah. It was an exciting time.
RABBI Leonard Helman mostly stayed in the background, but I have what I have since come to learn is a controversial theory: When something in an institution is working, its leadership is responsible.
I kept up with Leonard over the years even after our joint project moved on. He left Temple Shalom. Many members of Torah Bamidbar moved to larger Jewish communities.
I kept up with Leonard because he was a friend, and because I wanted him to know that even after the glory days were over I still appreciated what he had done.
Then I kept up with him because he came down with Parkinsons, and his voice became progressively quieter and more tremulous each time I spoke to him.
Leonard had a number of qualities that usually do not harmonize. He was very sensitive, yet very abrupt. Very open, yet didnt talk about himself at length; a minute, no more. Very proud of being a rabbi, yet closed-mouth about his rabbinate before he came to Santa Fe.
A bit of that I found out from Wally Halper. Dont ask me how we got to talking one day about Leonard, or about Santa Fe, but Wally said to me that Leonard had comforted him when he had lost a toddler decades earlier, on the West Coast.
And this week, when I mentioned to Wally that Leonard has passed on, Wally simply took me over to the yahrzeit plaques and pointed to the one for his child.
Leonard was like that. He let his actions speak. As it turns out, the IJN 100th anniversary magazine (due out June 24) contains a long story I wrote in 1987 about Rabbi Helman and the Orthodox community in Temple Beth Shalom. The story provides more facts, more immediacy.
Now, all thats left is a piece of history. Yet, something about Leonard, either because of or despite his idiosyncrasies, made people remember him.
Some who will not remember him are many Jewish children born around the world, living observant lives, who owe something of their destiny to a Reform rabbi who never married, and saw something different that he said OK to in his temple, down in the Land of Enchantment.
Copyright © 2013 by the Intermountain Jewish News
