By Judy Rose Sensibar, October 2014
Although some locals like to think of Tucson as always having been the lone liberal bastion in a conservative state, it’s only relatively recently that we can make such claim about our uniquely tolerant town. For in the 1940s, Tucson was much like any other small southern town in the United States: segregation was the norm, and the status quo of racism was not questioned. It was not until the war years that Tucson experienced a decade of huge growth, both in population and ideas.
A key leader in facilitating that growth was Temple Emanuel’s former rabbi, Joseph Gumbiner, whose work in Tucson is the subject of the current exhibit at the Jewish History Museum. The exhibit includes a copy of the rabbi’s unpublished autobiography, gifted to the museum by his daughter Abigail, as well as historic photographs of the temple taken by Abigail and her colleagues.
From the start, Rabbi Gumbiner devoted his career to social action. His first pulpit was in Selma, AL, where he was almost forced to resign for speaking up on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman. Later he founded the first Reform congregation in Reno, NV, in 1940. He was wooed to Tucson two years later. During his brief tenure, the congregation grew from 40 families to about 200.
Although some locals like to think of Tucson as always having been the lone liberal bastion in a conservative state, it’s only relatively recently that we can make such claim about our uniquely tolerant town. For in the 1940s, Tucson was much like any other small southern town in the United States: segregation was the norm, and the status quo of racism was not questioned. It was not until the war years that Tucson experienced a decade of huge growth, both in population and ideas.
A key leader in facilitating that growth was Temple Emanuel’s former rabbi, Joseph Gumbiner, whose work in Tucson is the subject of the current exhibit at the Jewish History Museum. The exhibit includes a copy of the rabbi’s unpublished autobiography, gifted to the museum by his daughter Abigail, as well as historic photographs of the temple taken by Abigail and her colleagues. From the start, Rabbi Gumbiner devoted his career to socialaction. His first pulpit was in Selma, AL, where he was almost forced to resign for speaking up on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping a white woman. Later he founded the first Reform congregation in Reno, NV, in 1940. He was wooed to Tucson two years later. During his brief tenure, the congregation grew from 40 families to about 200.
Star, was a strong anti-Zionist. Rabbi Gumbiner described the paper’s front page editorials that condemned the aspirations for a Jewish National Home. “As the concentration camps filled and the Holocaust mounted,” he reported, “my Orthodox colleague, Rabbi Marcus Breger, and I sought to establish a Tucson Zionist District to help prepare a haven for the survivors… . We also succeeded in securing the help of many prominent non-Jews through our American Christian Palestine Committee.
“In addition to his synagogue and community work, Rabbi Gumbiner found time to earn his master’s in philosophy at the University of Arizona, after which he taught an upper division course in ethics. He also presided over the largest confirmation classes in the little temple’s history and established a permanent home for Tucson’s Hillel.
“My work on the campus grew in size and interest from year to year. The Jewish component of the student body increased from 100 to 250 students during my stay in Tucson,” he wrote. He worked to secure the gift of the valuable piece of land at the corner of Mountain and Second Streets where Hillel still exists today. There was controversy over his leadership decisions on this issue, too. Some people in the community wanted to override the wishes of the donor and use the money to build a JCC instead, but the rabbi, always devoted to the youth, prevailed.
Because of his forward-looking ideals, Rabbi Gumbiner lasted just six years in Tucson.
Each year, he had to convince the congregation to keep him as their rabbi. He describes a particularly grueling time in 1946, when at the spring annual meeting a major effort was mounted by the older, more conservative members to refuse to renew his contract.
“Friends in the congregation countered by bringing out the vote,” he reported. “As I arrived that night to deliver my annual message, it proved impossible to find a parking space near the temple. The synagogue was crowded as if it had been Yom Kippur. I concluded my report by requesting a three-year contract and an increase in salary with annual increments.”
But Rabbi Gumbiner barely lasted another year. He had taken the congregation too far out of its comfort zone. In his effort to literally follow the commandment “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” he befriended the first African Methodist Episcopal Church next door to the synagogue. Their gospel choir learned several Shabbat songs under Rabbi Gumbiner’s tutelage, and the two congregations had at least one interracial gathering where the choir performed on Temple Emanuel’s bima. A photograph of the event, dated February 1947, is the only record of the service having taking place.
Rabbi Gumbiner doesn’t mention it in his autobiography, but just months afterward, he arranged for family’s move to California, where he led a congregation in Hollywood. Later he was recruited by Yale and then UC Berkeley to lead the universities’ Jewish Student Hillel programs. In 1964 he marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of Rabbi Gumbiner’s published articles about his activist efforts, as well as numerous photographs, are archives at jewishhistorymuseum.org. The collection of photographs displayed in conjunction with the exhibit on Rabbi Gumbiner was Initially inspired by the rabbi’s tenure in Tucson. His only child, Abigail Gumbiner, who went on to become a professional photographer, returned to Tucson in 1995 on a photo shoot. She was struck by what had happened to her father’s old temple, which by then had been abandoned and was for sale. Over the next decade, she and two friends, Annu Matthew and David H. Wells, took photographs that document the “before and after” of the temple restoration. The photographs, part of the JHM’s permanent collection, are being shown publicly for the first time.
Each picture will be reproduced in a limited edition of 20 prints, signed and numbered by the photographers. Judy Rose Sensibar is executive director of the Jewish History Museum in Tucson.
JEWISH HISTORY MUSEUM EXHIBITSFOR INFO (or catalogue of the photographs): jhmtucson@gmail.com | jewishhistorymuseum.org | 520-670-9073WHAT: Temple of Shadows: Photos of “Stone Avenue Temple”
Rabbi Joseph Gumbiner’s Tenure in Tucson
WHEN: Through Nov. 1WHERE: Jewish History Museum, 564 S Stone Ave., Tucson
