- Website
- “I Am a Rabbi for Human Rights” – Rabbi Jeffrey Marker – YouTube
- Funeral Service for Rabbi Jeff Marker at PSJC on March 1, 2023 – YouTube
Fabrangener’s Memories
Dear Friends,
When I was a student at Pardes Institute in 1973, at the beginning of the term there was a discussion among students and faculty as to whether women would be counted in the minyan and permitted to take leadership roles in services. Although the comments on both sides of this issue were familiar and predictable, gradually the tone of the comments got heated. Finally, those advocating exclusion of women played their trump card and said something like this: “Halacha prevents me from participating in a minyan in which women are counted or allowed to play leadership roles. Therefore, I will not be able to participate unless those rules are followed.” Although I was a young man, I had already seen this dynamic a number of times, and I anticipated that the discussion would end in favor of the most observant participants.
But then an entirely unexpected event happened. One of the American students, Jeff Marker, quietly but firmly stated something like this: “Three of us here today are from a Jewish community in Washington, DC called Fabrangen, and we also have relevant halacha. Our halacha states that we may not participate in a minyan that does not respect the full equality of women in all aspects.
The resulting silence was stunning! Nobody had heard a statement like this before. Nobody knew what to do. As best I can recall, there was no minyan that day, and these decisions were left for another time. I said to Jeff privately that I’d like to learn more about Fabrangen. It was some years later that I realized that the halacha that Jeff referred to had been written by Esther Ticktin. So I am not only remembering Jeff today, but also Esther and Max.
— John
John Spiegel
Dear chevra,
Jeff Marker, alav hashalom, and I have been – do I need to say had been? – friends since the early days of Fabrangen, the Washington DC havurah.
Shining bright in my memory is Rosh Hashanah, I think 1974, I had been learning my way into Judaism with great excitement since the Freedom Seder in 1969, and Jeff was deeply involved in the “Freedom Seder against the Wall Street Pharaohs” in 1971. By 1974 I had learned enough that the High Holy Days committee invited me to lead the first night of Rosh Hashanah.
Fabrangen was then very experimental, so I asked myself what the deep theme of Tishri is, decided it is water, then asked myself what is the Great American Torah of water, and decided it was the first chapter of Moby-Dick where Melville paeans the love Manhattan folk had for the ocean. The chapter begins, “Call me Ishmael.” I used that line and several paragraphs as a motif for the service.
The next morning, I was sitting quiet in Fabrangen, as we approached the Torah service. The gabbai came to me, asking whether I would like an Aliyah. I said I would be honored to rise to the Torah. He said, “”What’s your name, for me to call you up?”
On the 8th day of my life I had been named Avraham Yitzchak after a grandfather who had been loved by my grandmother and their three kids, and who died of TB in the wake of a deep illness in the great flu epidemic of 1919. As I was about to say that name, I was shaken to remember that the previous night I had said, maybe to God, “Call me Ishmael.” So I said to the gabbai, “Avraham Yitzchak Yishmael. ” He looked at, me almost angry, “Come on, that’s not your name…. <long silence>. OK, I’ll come back in 5 minutes to call you up to Torah. You can tell me your name then.”
For five minutes I shvitzed, in spiritual uncertainty. What did this mean? He came back, I said “Avraham Yitzchak Yishmael.” He sighed, “OK” and called it out.
There was a gigantic guffaw from one throat in the room. I looked up, startled. My friend Jeff Marker was laughing.
For an instant I was furious, enraged. I sweated and shook in a spiritual agony, and he’s laughing!
And then the story swept over me: Avraham and Sarah both laughed when God’s messenger said they would have a baby. When they did have a baby they named him”Yitzchak, Laughter” and Sarah accused Yishmael of “Mitzachek, Playful-Laughter.”
Jeff Marker’s laughter was God’s “OK. You got it right.” Jeff’s laughter sealed the deal. That was my name. Still is, plus “Yam, Ocean,” added to both our names when Phyllis and I got married. Who gave me my name? My dead grandfather, my then-living grandmother, mother, and father, Jeff Marker, and Phyllis. And YHWH, the Breath of Life.
Over the years since then – 50 years! – there were other stories. Many with laughter. Recently, Jeff had been dealing with a time of cancer – plenty of courage spiced with laughter.
The people who name you are your basherts. Jeff Marker was one of my basherts. It is hard to lose him. It is hard to lose by death people I love who were younger than I. I am crying as I write. No laughter in the telling of the story.
Love & shalom, Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Waskow