The Rabbi

Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus believed that “the most important thin in life is integrity.” Throughout his career he spent long hours counseling his students, as well as helping them to find jobs, and even partners. Indeed, Marcus believed that this was part of his rabbinic calling, and he considered it no less important than his scholarship and his teaching. Thus Marcus became the first Hebrew Union College professor since Isaac Mayer Wise to be elected president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. After the death of his wife and daughter Marcus said “the world that meant the most to me is the rabbinical world.” For the last thirty years of his life Marcus referred to the rabbis of he CCAR as his children, referring to them as his “boys” (male and female alike).