Rabbi Ephraim Zimand like most, perhaps all American pulpit rabbis, dedicated his life to strengthening the Jewish identity of his congregants and Jewish life in America.\u00a0 It has been a daunting challenge for Traditional rabbis in these generations,\u00a0 Assimilation and trends to the left and the right took American Jews to other places and shrank the size of those dedicated to the UTJ\u2019s motto: \u201c\u05d0\u05de\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4 \u05e6\u05e8\u05d5\u05e4\u05d4 \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8 \u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u201d — \u201cgenuine faith with intellectual integrity.\u201d\u00a0 He served proudly and with significant accomplishment.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Zimand served four congregations in Sarnia, Canada, Toledo, Ohio and Albany and Schenectady, NY before his longest tenure, 26 years, at Traditional Congregation in Creve Coeur \/ St Louis, MO until his retirement nearly 11 years ago.\u00a0 He passed on to olam ha-ba<\/em><\/strong>, the next world, after living more than a decade in Arnona, Yerushalyim.\u00a0 His wife, Esther, was always by his side, and his six children were his blessing.\u00a0 As his successor at Traditional, I offer a few words about some of his work at Traditional, in St Louis, and for the UTJ.<\/p>\n Rabbi Zimand loved to learn and teach.\u00a0 He enriched many in classes and other forums at Traditional Congregation, and in community classes, including in the Melton Curriculum.\u00a0 I inherited several of his classes.\u00a0 The students spoke fondly of him and often learned with him many years.<\/p>\n His favorite source was Pirke Avot, the section of the 1,800 – 2,000-year old Mishnah which primarily gently deals with ethical behavior.\u00a0 Many of his classes continued for years, exploring and applying Pirke Avot to life and the personal lives of his students.\u00a0 In writing he often would aim to connect other elements of Torah and general wisdom to teachings from Pirke Avot.<\/p>\n Another of Rabbi Zimand\u2019s interests was collecting writings for supplemental congregation use.\u00a0 Several years before I arrived, he had, with support from other congregants, collected excerpts and published an in-house supplementary booklet of well more than 100 pages of readings for Rosh HaShanah and Yom ha-Kippurim.\u00a0 Some of these modern readings augmented existing piyyutim<\/em><\/strong> (traditional poems) and others were used in place of those which had less relevance for the worshipper.\u00a0 Similarly, an additional reading was and is still included each Shabbat, as is a brief printed excerpt from general wisdom.\u00a0 Rabbi Zimand also permitted women to assume limited public religious roles that did not violate halachah.<\/p>\n Rabbi Zimand was also active in the St Louis Jewish community.\u00a0 A musmach<\/em><\/strong> (ordainee) of Yeshivah University, he supported non-Orthodox rabbis as a member of the SLRA (St Louis Rabbinic Association), and worked on educational programs.\u00a0 One included a Reform Rabbi coming to Traditional to teach and he going to his congregation for the same; he taught in their community-wide program.<\/p>\n He was a founding member of FTOR (Federation of Traditional Orthodox Rabbis), which felt that more moderate positions were rejected or dismissed by organizational Orthodoxy.\u00a0 FTOR later merged with UTCJ from the Conservative movement, which felt Conservative Judaism had drifted too far left, not adhering to halachah.\u00a0 This new group became the UTJ and eventually its rabbinic group, Morashah.\u00a0 As evident, Rabbi Zimand was not fond of extreme trends, yet he would work broadly with others.<\/p>\n Rabbi Zimand was a proud Zionist, which was punctuated by his retirement in Israel where two of his children and several grandchildren live.\u00a0 He and Esther joined us to celebrate the wedding of one of our sons in Yerushalyim in 2016.<\/p>\n When I interviewed for Traditional, I asked him dozens upon dozens of questions so that I could make an informed decision.\u00a0 He answered them all.\u00a0 In the early years I needed to consult him on a few matters of Traditional\u2019s history — his decisions, issues, and people, and he answered them all.\u00a0 Finally, he adopted a personal custom to write \u201cI\u201d as \u201ci\u201d to emphasize humility.<\/p>\n I close with Pirke Avot 4:21, even as I do not know his commentary on this teaching:<\/p>\n \u201cRabbi Ya\u2019akov\u201d (who offered some particularly bold teachings), \u201ctaught:\u00a0 This world is like a prozdor<\/em><\/strong>, a corridor, before olam ha-ba<\/em><\/strong>, the future world.\u00a0 Prepare yourself in the prozdor<\/em><\/strong> so that you may enter the palace.\u201d\u00a0 As a dedicated rabbi to Torah, its rituals and ethics, to Israel and the the Jewish people, and to his congregants and the American Jewish community, it is evident that Rabbi Ephraim Zimand prepared himself for olam ha-ba<\/em><\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 \u05ea\u05e0\u05e6\u05d1\u05f4\u05d4, may his soul be bound in the bonds of life.<\/p>\n\n Rabbi Ephraim Zimand like most, perhaps all American pulpit rabbis, dedicated his life to strengthening the Jewish identity of his congregants and Jewish life in America. It has been a daunting challenge for Traditional rabbis in these generations, Assimilation and trends to the left and the right took American Jews to other places and shrank the size of those dedicated to the UTJ\u2019s motto: \u201c\u05d0\u05de\u05d5\u05e0\u05d4 \u05e6\u05e8\u05d5\u05e4\u05d4 \u05d5\u05d9\u05e9\u05e8 \u05d3\u05e2\u05ea\u201d — \u201cgenuine faith with intellectual integrity.\u201d He served proudly and with significant accomplishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":1438,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,85],"tags":[],"coauthors":[117],"class_list":["post-1437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-denominations"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1441,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/1441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}