Speech
Eulogy for Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein (1979)
I feel woefully inadequate to the task of speaking the eulogy for my teacher, my colleague, and my friend, Rabbi Joseph H. Lookstein. In truth, there is only one person who could do justice to this occasion in honor of Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, and that is – Rabbi Joseph Lookstein. Who else but that master orator could compose the proper farewell for so distinguished a man?Yet, I feel that I must try, both because I want to and because it was his wish that I do so.My own relationship with Rabbi Lookstein began thirty-two years ago, when I took his course in Jewish Sociology at Yeshiva College. I remember how impressed I was by this vital, jovial, articulate, and knowledgeable man. He read my papers carefully, commented upon them incisively with his beautiful penmanship, and encouraged me to further work. A few years later, I was his student in the Homiletics and Practical Rabbinics courses that he gave for many decades at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. What a gifted teacher he was, what a scintillating lecturer! I felt enormously flattered when, towards the end of these courses, he invited me to be his rabbinic assistant at Cong- regation Kehilath Jeshurun and, during the course of that year, to teach at Ramaz School as well. This was an apprenticeship in which he taught me the fundamentals of the art of the rabbinate and that profoundly in- fluenced my following twenty-four years in that profession.During this period, I had the opportunity to spend time in the home of Rabbi and Mrs. Lookstein. There I experienced the dignity, the warmth, the mutual respect, the love and care and concern of Rabbi and Mrs. Lookstein, of their two children Natalie and Haskel, and their two young grandchildren.Subsequently, I became Rabbi Lookstein's colleague in the Man- hattan rabbinate and on the Yeshiva University faculty. During this time, our relationship continued to develop and, if some times our rela- tions were a bit complex, they were always for me a source of enl…
