It wasn’t long after his return from Switzerland that Arnie Leff decided to go to the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College, a Reform Rabbinical Seminary, to become a Rabbi. He had been thinking about it for some time and had been attending an orthodox school down the street from his high school during his senior year and having long, in depth conversations with its rabbi Sidney Applebaum. Ironically, it was his time in the Civil Air Patrol that ultimately convinced him of the need to be involved in a profession that helped others and looked at the “big picture” in life.
His family had never been particularly religious, in fact, his father was an atheist. His mother had kept a kosher kitchen for a few years, but his father had said it was too much of a hassle and insisted that she quit the practice. His mother was adamant that their son attend Chader “at least”, while he was in elementary school. Chader is a Hebrew word for a Jewish religious school.
Arnie attended the orthodox Jewish center each afternoon following public school. He says that he wasn’t impressed and got “irritated” at the teachers, who insisted that he not talk with his neighborhood friends, who were Irish and Italian Catholics, about Christmas. It seemed to him that the Jewish religious teachers at that school were just as bigoted towards Christians as some Christians are towards Jews. He also felt rebuffed when he would ask questions that would not be answered or were dismissed altogether. He stopped going once he was in high school and had his Bar Mitzvah (right of passage to community and with God) in a conservative temple. To round out his young Jewish experience and quest for understanding, he attended several orthodox services, including the ones with Rabbi Applebaum in high school. He liked the chants and traditions of orthodoxy better than the songs and secularism of the reform movement, but also felt that a lot of their etiquette (including wearing the Yarmulke – small round covering for men’s heads and the status of women) were outdated and hypocritical.
“It’s quite ironic,” Arnie says, “that it was Rabbi Applebaum who wrote my recommendation for Hebrew Union College. To have an orthodox Rabbi support someone who wanted to attend the dreaded reform college was a radical thing to do in 1958. Rabbi Applebaum would kid me and say I was his juvenile delinquent going to reform school.”
It was at a wedding in upstate New York that a friend of Arnie’s had introduced him to a reform Rabbi who had gone to Hebrew Union. They talked for quite some time and Arnie pumped him for information about his experiences there. He liked what he heard and continued corresponding in the following months. Hebrew Union College had an undergraduate program that continued into a graduate program. The Reform Rabbinate was also the first to allow women to attend. Students lived at the seminary in Cincinnati and went half time to the University of Cincinnati to take college courses. Then they would attend rabbinical courses at Hebrew Union College for the other half.
“I wanted to leave New York and this sounded like the ticket.” Arnie recalls. “It felt like it was a spiritual birth or rebirth of something I’d been searching for. It also involved a bit of getting back at my father, with whom I had a guarded relationship, at best, by pursuing something he didn’t believe in. Even though it didn’t end up giving me all I thought it would, it was a great experience and helped me sort out my priorities. I still have wonderful friends who are Rabbis all across the country.”
Arnie stayed with the rabbinical program for a year and a half until he was turned on to an exciting new world; a world that helped people with practical everyday issues, a world that gave him the tools to not just talk about life and death and “what we are here for”, but to nourish and care for the bodies that give us the opportunity to even ask such philosophical questions.
THE SECOND CALLING
In the 1960’s, the medical profession in America was coming into its own with almost daily technological advances and pharmaceutical drugs. Scientists of the time were putting a lot of faith and money into medicine and saw it as an exciting frontier of innovation and service. Although the intentions didn’t always match the reality of patient’s needs and the profession became increasingly interventionist when it was not necessary, it was the ideal of service and alleviating suffering that drew in the young rabbinical student. It didn’t take long to persuade the aspiring rabbi, Arnie Leff, to switch majors and join his friends in pre-med at the University of Cincinnati.
Sigma Alpha Mu was the largest Jewish fraternity on campus and many of its members were in pre-med. Arnie had joined the fraternity not long after moving to Cincinnati. It was a highly regarded, intellectual group of students and it was the only fraternity at the time that would allow blacks to join. Ten of the top names on the Dean’s list were from Sigma Alpha Mu. The fraternity was designed to maintain high standards and prepared its members for tests, papers and courses. It was a group that valued intelligence and academic excellence. He saw what medical school required and discussed the advantages of being a doctor with his fraternity colleagues. His background in sciences at Brooklyn Technical High School, combined with his religious studies at Hebrew College, were excellent pre-cursers to switching his major to pre-med. When he