Part I: So Long to the Old Pueblo
Part II: Return to the City of Angels
Part III: Here, O Israel: "Surely God is in this place. . ."

Chapter One: Shalom, rav: Bidding Rabbi Gutman good-bye

A simple, wooden casket, stained an olive brown, but otherwise unvarnished and unadorned, lay at rest beneath the elevated edge of the sanctuary stage. The coffin's occupant, some forty years earlier, had raised the pulpit, the pews, the stained glass windows depicting the cycle of the Hebrew calendar---and built the entire synagogue complex without a mortgage. A major human fixture of religious and civic life in the Old Pueblo of Pima, Arizona for over half a century, Rabbi Alfred Gutman was making his final appearance on the bimah of Temple Beth El, the oldest Jewish congregation in the state.

Few of the congregants and guests who had assembled to pay their last respects to the rabbi emeritus could personally recall that sweltering August afternoon in July of 1947 when Rabbi and Bernice Gutman had arrived, with their infant daughter in tow, to the compact Jewish community of Southern Arizona. Now a matron, decidedly older than her late mother had been when the Gutman family first moved to Pima, Judy Gutman-Schwartz sat in grief-stricken dignity between her accountant husband, their teenage son and daughter. Her brother, Leon, a middle-aged silhouette of his late father, beheld the proceedings with a grim taciturnity. Although somewhat jet-lagged from the cross-country plane trip, the deceased's older child listened raptly to the heartfelt eulogies and paeans offered by her father's colleagues in the clergy and from the University.

Rabbi Harold Minsky, the soon-to-retire spiritual leader of Conservative Congregation Anshei Kesef, approached the podium to pay tribute to his erstwhile friend, mentor and rabbinic comrade: "rabotai u'gevirotai (ladies and gentlemen), we gather here in this temple which Al Gutman graced for more than a generation with his scholarship, kindness and goodwill. . . " Tears coursed down the cheeks of many of the older people slumped in their seats; the late rabbi emeritus was invariably respected as a figure of unfailing decency among Pima Jews.

Minsky continued in the genial, self-effacing style cultivated by the ordainees of the Jewish Theological Seminary during the post-war era; he spoke with genuine warmth of his elder colleague, "Al Gutman was a builder in every sense of the word. In partnership with my own emeritus at Anshei Kesef, the late Max Buxbaum, of blessed memory, Rabbi Gutman established the Judaic Studies program at the University of Arizona, both rabbis contributing their substantial collections of Jewish books to the holdings of the college library.

Rustling in the middle pews they had occupied over the course of five decades, the Pima chapter of the Order of True Sisters began to stir. Adele Davis muttered to her neighbor and long-time friend, Lillian Honig, "That's right. Rabbi Gutman, the g-r-e-a-t scholar. Maybe if he'd spent less time teaching at the University and more time studying the congregation, we wouldn't have been saddled with Weissman for twenty years."

"That's the history of this congregation," Lillian concurred. "From bad to worse with each placement."

As Rabbi Minsky wound up the opening eulogy, his cantorial colleague strode to the precentor's stand. A polished tenor, boasting an operatic command of East European musical tradition, Cantor Neville Rosenberg intoned the el malei rahamim ("O God, full of compassion") in plaintive strains which transported the congregation to pre-Holocaust sanctuaries of Vilna, the one-time "Jerusalem of Lithuania."

The deceased's children offered plain, heartfelt tributes to their dad. Next, Rabbi James Weissman, who had undergone a somewhat testy relationship with his predecessor, read a psalm. The Rev. William Thompson reflected on the early days when the liberal clergy of Pima struggled for civil rights on behalf of native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans and, yes, Jewish Americans. Dr. Glenn Shire, past president of the University of Arizona, reminisced with gentle humor on the unstinting efforts of Rabbi Gutman to found one of the first Judaic Studies programs in U.S. academe. "Al first came to teach Biblical studies in the Humanities Department. As president of the college,

I eventually distinguished two types of faculty: the first go about their work of teaching and research. The others are trouble when you see them coming. Al was in the latter group." The old-timers in the audience chuckled with recognition.

Lest the funeral service drag on beyond the severe limits imposed by Jewish tradition, Rabbi Gutman's most recent, star-crossed successor, George Stein, stepped forward to render due homage to the senior colleague who had mentored and befriended him during the turbulent three years of his rabbinate in Pima, Arizona. Lillian nudged Adele and smirked, "Heh! This oughta be good."

Her companion mocked in turn, "No doubt the learned rabbi will deliver his remarks in some foreign language, like Hebrew."

Instead, they were simple and spontaneous vernacular sentences which the pulpit's incumbent chose to burnish the fading memory of the rabbi emeritus. "Friends, we gather in this sacred place, at this appointed hour, to pay tribute to the life as well as to honor the rabbinical career of our teacher and pastor, Rabbi Alfred Gutman.

"For over half a century, Rabbi Gutman taught and ministered to the families and guests of Temple Beth El through deed and word. From the moment he and Bernice arrived to the Old Pueblo in the summer of 1947, they were a constant and caring presence in this town. Bernice busied herself with the Temple Sisterhood, raising funds for the religious school and the congregational library. Rabbi Gutman swiftly immersed himself in the affairs of the community. Within two years, Sahuaro County schools had been desegregated and non-Christians could join the Arizona Club."

In the preaching style which had become the trademark of his pulpit, Rabbi Stein stepped to center stage and addressed the congregation directly from behind Rabbi Gutman's bier. "For Al Gutman, Reform Judaism translated as prophetic Judaism, the Torah a road map to social justice. And, like our prophetic forebears during the First Temple---Amos, Hosea and Jeremiah---Al's preaching came to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. With Isaiah, this son of the Second Aliyah came to these shores to remind Jews that, 'Out of Zion shall go forth the Teaching, and the word of the Eternal from Jerusalem.'"

Now the eulogist had found the voice to match his convictions; even the sneering sorority had fallen silent, "Al, my teacher and my friend. You entered our world in the year this congregation was founded, the first synagogue to house a Holy Ark in the Arizona Territory of 1910. Today, all of us here are your students as well as heirs to your wonderful legacy; each of us has been blessed, some families for several generations, by your learning and your deep humanity." Tears welled up in the eyes of David Bloom, whose great-great-grandmother had ridden over the Rockies and across the Sonora desert into the little pueblo of Pima on a covered wagon in 1869; the Polish Torah Scroll she had carried with her still rested in the lately rededicated "old temple" on Rock Avenue downtown.

(An ironic fact not lost on the deceased's loved ones. With much civic and Jewish community fanfare, the Rock Avenue Temple had been recently renamed after the rabbi emeritus who moved Beth El to their new home on Country Club near Broadway, the "Alfred Gutman Sanctuary." Meanwhile, the synagogue campus Rabbi Gutman had completed was still waiting to be 'christened' by some million-dollar honoree.)

Rabbi Stein was reaching the consolation/conclusion phase of his funeral sermon. He cast his eyes, first to the coffin, and then into the moistened faces of the mourners as he spoke to his late friend, "Al, all of us at Temple Beth El owe you a debt of gratitude which we can never really repay. As with Moses the Lawgiver, you built this very sanctuary for God's name to dwell in. Like Moses, the shepherd, you led us for a generation through this desert land, which has become a home of refuge to so many of our folk who had departed from other Egypts. And with Moses, the prophet, you taught us how to be as proud as Moses before pharaoh and as humble as Moses before God.

"How fitting that your earthly pilgrimage has attained its final stage in this splendid space, which you first constructed, then dedicated and then filled with words of prayer and Scripture. As a sojourner in this pulpit, I learned so much from you. I would have loved to learn more. For one thing, I wish I could have learned from your patience.

"In the wake of nine decades of struggle with people and the divine, you have prevailed Rabbi Gutman unto your eternal rest. Your lifelong companion, Bernice, awaits you. United in life, in death you are not parted." The Gutman orphans, Judy and Leon, slowly began to sob. Through the older ranks of the Beth El Sisterhood ran a shudder of sorrow expressed in heavy moans, sighs and weeping.

"shalom, rav, my dear colleague: go to your final repose in peace. After 87 years of blessing this world, you have surely merited an honored place in the yeshivah shel ma'alah, in the "academy on high." May Our-Sages-of-Blessed-Memory welcome you to the delights of perpetual Torah study. Lech baderech mutzlach, may you prosper on your way to the world-to-come."

Much else could have been said to lionize the good man who had embodied and led liberal Judaism in the Old Pueblo for the last half of the twentieth century. Indeed, in anticipation of the likely imminence of the emeritus' passing, the congregational leadership had organized a banquet the year before to honor Rabbi Gutman on his golden anniversary of service in Beth El's pulpit. But Jewish law proscribes lengthy funeral services out of consideration for the emotional toll exacted upon the surviving family; so clergy, family and laity all agreed to strive for concision in the proceedings.

Thus, as Rabbi Stein was winding up his eulogy, pallbearers had queued up along the side aisles near the bimah, preparing to convey Rabbi Gutman's body to the hearse idling outside, thence to Temple Beth El's section of the Pima municipal cemetery. The whispers and murmuring rose to a modulated din as the crowd held for an opportunity to exit. Meanwhile, a tall, thin, balding figure began to wend its way through the knots of mumbling humanity, pausing purposefully next to the ladies of the Order. Alex Guneive a local divorce attorney and Temple treasurer in his mid-fifties, greeted the True Sisters with the knowing expression of a co-conspirator. Adele leaned over and muttered in Guneive's ear, "So, Alex, how goes the war?" A feral grin creased the attorney's jaw, "One or two battles more, ladies, and I predict we will be burying more than one rabbi this spring." A suppressed chortle erupted between the three congregants.

© 2003 Lands of the Covenant Foundation