A Tribute to My Teacher

When I began 12th grade in Religious School, a new Educator came to my temple. Dr. Dorothy Axelroth was the first female Jewish educator I had ever heard of, and had she known what she was in for, I probably never would have heard of her.

The year was 1970, and the spirit of protest was alive and well not only in the streets and on college campuses, but also in the halls of the Religious School of Temple Sinai of Roslyn Heights, NY. Hardly a week went by when the post-Confirmation students were not in Dr. Axelroth’s office, telling her what a terrible school she ran. (Of course, as 16 and 17 year-olds, we knew everything¬about what was wrong!) We truly made her life miserable that year.

Five years later, as a new student rabbi, I wrote to my rabbi to ask if there was a teaching position available at Temple Sinai. He said he would love to have me on the faculty, but I had to write to… Dr.-Axelroth.

Writing to her, I hoped she did not remember how I had behaved a few years earlier. She wrote back to welcome me to the teaching staff, and said I would be teaching fourth and seventh grades: “The fourth grade is your reward, and the seventh grade is your punishment.” She remembered.

That summer, I met with her to go over my lesson plans. When she finished with the business at hand, she asked me what I planned on having the students call me. My answer, of course, was “Don”; after all, I wanted to be their friend.

“No,” she said firmly, “they are going to call you Mr. Weber.” I protested, recalling all the terrible things we thought about her in 12th grade, and thinking that most of them were, obviously, true. Then she said something which I have never forgotten, and which helped me to close my mouth and open my mind. She said, “Don, your students have enough friends. What they need is a teacher who cares about them. Don’t be their friend, be their teacher, and then care about them as if they were your best friends.”

That was the beginning of more than 25 years of learning from Dorothy.

To this day, I do not know what motivated her to give up two to four hours every week to sit and talk with me before my classes began. Only years later, when I came to understand how much work she left sitting on her desk while we talked, did I truly appreciate this gift she gave me. But what I did appreciate at the time was her wisdom, her insight, her (dry) sense of humor and her accomplishments, which she never spoke of, but which slowly came to light as I learned from her and about her.

Dorothy had not been allowed to read from the Torah as a teenager, but her rabbi was smart enough to make her the tutor for all the boys her age, as they¬prepared for Bar Mitzvah. When she was 16, she petitioned the temple Board of Trustees to overturn that rule, and she became the first girl in her temple’s history to read Torah during a service. Later, her love of language brought her to a Doctorate in Ancient Semitic Languages — at a time when many women did not even attend college. Dorothy spoke languages I have barely heard of, and which no one has spoken in thousands of years. She was asked to write scholarly reviews of books in Arabic — a rare invitation for a Jew! For many years she tape recorded books for the blind, and over time she became known as the one to ask when a professor or scholar needed to hear a tape of an ancient text. She often joked that she recorded books that only one other person would ever read, and she hoped that person would be less bored with them than she was. (She was not shy about offering her opinion; I did not learn that from her, but it is a quality we share.)

Once I was ordained, we ended our weekly meetings and began a sporadic but intense correspondence. Two or three times a year we would write multi-page letters, bringing each other up to date on family, on professional accomplishments and on our overall impression of the state of the world. Of all the topics she covered, her favorite — and the one she wrote about with the greatest passion — was her recent studies. Dorothy was an insatiable learner, and when she found a new interpretation of a Biblical text, or a new way of looking at something that everyone had overlooked, she was ecstatic. Sharing that with her through her letters, I again felt like a student rabbi sitting in her office, being amazed and instructed by her wealth of knowledge.

I guess Dorothy was born a generation too early. Had she been born later, she would not have had to struggle for every accomplishment because she was a woman. Instead of being one of the first female Jewish educators, I think she would have been a university professor or a world-class Jewish scholar. But, selfishly, I am glad she was born when she was, because she taught me more about teaching than anyone before or since.

Many years ago, Dorothy’s teacher gave her a gift: a small, silver desk piece which says, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its cunning.” When he died at a very advanced age, Dorothy wrote that his death was “sad, but not bad,” and she kept that gift to remember him.

Recently, Dorothy gave that desk piece to me, just a few months before she died. I polished it up and I keep it on the desk in my office. I am looking at it as I write these words. Her death, at the end of a long illness, was also sad, but not bad, and she died knowing she will never be forgotten. Zichrona livracha — whenever I teach, whatever I teach, she is teaching alongside me, and her presence is, truly, a blessing to me.

Shalom,
Rabbi Don Weber