Richard Siegel, educator who co-edited 'The Jewish Catalog,' is dead at 70

NEW YORK (JTA) – Richard Siegel, an educator who advocates for Jewish culture and arts and co-edited the seminal "Jewish Catalog" series of guides to "do-it-yourself" Judaism, died Thursday in Los Angeles.

Barry Holtz, a professor of Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Siegel was the director emeritus of the Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, which trains communal professionals for work in Jewish organizations.

For 28 years he worked at the National Foundation for Jewish Culture (renamed Foundation for Jewish Culture ), and served as its executive director from 1978 to 2006. According to HUC, he created the Jewish Endowment for the Arts and Humanities to provide funding for artists, scholars and cultural institutions, and initiated the Fund fo r Jewish Documentary Filmmaking, the Fund for New Play Commissions in Jewish Theater and the 6-Points Fellowships in the Arts.

In 1973, along with Michael Strbadfeld and Sharon Strbadfeld – fellow members of Havurat Shalom, a lay-led congregation in Somerville, Mbad. – It has become known as "The First Jewish Catalog." It is a "Do-It-Yourself Kit," and it has been offered to protest against Soviet Jewry. Its target audience was young Jews who were interested in the world of their grandparents.

Inspired by the "The Whole Earth Catalog," a source of "tools and ideas" for the hippie generation, Siegel and the Strbadfelds found contributors who, like them, boasted excellent Jewish and even rabbinical educations.

The book became an instant best-seller for the Jewish Publication Society. It is more important that they are credited with empowering young people who believe that they are alienated from synagogue life and popularizing an ethos of pluralism and gender equality. Criticism objected to the fact that its fans considered it strengths that it leaned too heavily on the ethos of the 1960s counterculture and gave too little respect to the major Jewish denominations and institutions.

"We did not have a criticism of American Jewish life, and we are offering some new ideas for its reinvigoration, "Siegel recalled in 2015 in an address to HUC's graduates. "To be clear, we were not just pointing out the Jewish community's faults and admonishing it to change its priorities. As activists, we were working to make the change happen, to 'be the change we wanted to see,' to use a contemporary aphorism. "

As his generation of young activists became part of the Jewish establishment, Siegel turned to (19659003) In his 2015 speech, he said, "Now more than ever, Jewish organizations, whether startups or legacy institutions, need business – savvy, Jewish – educated and visionary professional leaders.

In recent years he worked with his wife, Rabbi Laura Geller, on a forthcoming book titled "Good at Getting Older: A Practical Catalog" "The Jewish Almanac" (1981) and "The Writer in the Jewish Community: An Israel-North Am" (1965) erica Dialogue "(1965).

Siegel also was one of the founding members of Minyan Maat, a lay-led congregation that meets Ansche Chesed, an egalitarian, conservative synagogue on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

" Richard Siegel Jewish identity formation, "the Zelikow School said in a statement announcing his death.

Raised in Pittsburgh, Siegel received a master's degree in contemporary Jewish studies (now the Hornstein Program) at Brandeis University in 1972 and another master's in Jewish history from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1974. His master's thesis at Brandeis was later developed into "The Jewish Catalog."

He was the Hillel director, its first, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1974 to 1978, where he founded the Long Island Jewish Arts Festival.

He is survived by his wife, the senior rabbi emerita of Emanuel Temple of Beverly Hills, and their children, Andy, Ruth, Josh and Elana.