Two people with exemplary careers of achievement have died in recent weeks: Milwaukee attorney Robert H. Friebert on Sept. 5, and Targum expert and former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Hebrew studies teacher Rabbi Bernard Grossfeld, Ph.D., on July 16.
Both of them deserve more than the basic facts obituaries that you will find in the Lifecycle pages of this issue.
Milwaukee native Friebert received an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sept. 6 that celebrated his achievements in the general community, lauded his dedication to the law and to public service — and remarked upon his tenacity. The article quoted Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett as saying, “Anyone who hired him was going to get someone who would fight for them.”
Friebert fought for the Jewish community just as hard, and did so in ways the Journal Sentinel didn’t mention, but at least some of which I want to note here.
Friebert was president of the Milwaukee Jewish Council (the ancestor organization of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council) during the 1980s. During that time, according to a Milwaukee Journal article of July 23, 1986, it was discovered that controversial city of Milwaukee Police Chief Harold Breier (1911-1998) had ordered the department to keep secret surveillance files on Jewish organizations in the city, including the MJC. In fact, according to the article, “a random check of the thousands of files showed that the only religious groups monitored were Jewish.”
Friebert minced no words. This action, he said, “smacks of official anti-Semitism, racism and intimidation,” and the news of it “came as a shock and a horror.” He and the council demanded that the city adopt policies to prevent similar actions in the future; and the police commission apparently did so soon after the Journal article appeared.
In 1987, Friebert became the founding president of the Wisconsin Jewish Conference, the organization that monitors and lobbies the state government and creates linkages between Jewish communities throughout the state. In that position, he — with then State Sen. Mordecai Lee — helped to write and secure passage of the Wisconsin Hate Crimes Law that intensifies penalties for crimes committed out of a motivation of hatred for a group.
When that law was challenged in 1992 in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Friebert was a member of the national committee that drafted a friend of the court brief supporting the law, which in June 1993 the court upheld unanimously.
As reported by the Milwaukee Sentinel on Sept. 29, 1994, Friebert appeared on a Marquette University panel on religion and politics, and again spoke his mind with no waffling.
“I have a very simple view,” he said. “Religion and politics do not mix. … Once God is employed in the debate, the discussion ends…. The ultimate goal of [the religious right] is to radically change the relationship between church and state by overturning the First Amendment.”
Friebert wasn’t involved only in state and national Jewish issues. He fought for the community in the local arena as well.
Several Chronicle issues of 1993 show how he represented his synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun, in its efforts to obtain from the River Hills village government permission to build what became the new building located on Brown Deer Road.
And in 2003, Friebert represented the Milwaukee Jewish Federation in a threatened but ultimately unnecessary lawsuit against the village of Whitefish Bay over approval of changes sought for the Karl Jewish Community Campus.
And I am sure there are more instances than these that I am not aware of.
In contrast to such work in the public eye, Prof. Grossfeld worked in a much quieter fashion. His business was scholarship. Yet his work constitutes no less of a high achievement and also has significance for Jewish life.
I spoke with him in 1985 for an article about his work on the Targumim that appeared in the April 5 Chronicle that year. That interview was one of the more stimulating Jewish educational experiences I’ve had professionally and personally.
The Targumim were Aramaic translations of the Jewish Bible, made during an era when Aramaic was the common language of the Jewish community in the Middle East. They are important to Jewish history for several reasons.
They were made using texts of the Bible that existed before the Masoretic text was codified and made standard around the ninth century C.E. Therefore, they can provide insight into the evolution of the Jewish Bible.
They were made between the time of the closing of the Bible canon and the creation of the later rabbinical literature — the two Talmuds and the Midrash texts. They therefore are “the bridges between the Bible and the rabbinic literature that followed.”
Moreover, the Targumim were often more than simply word-for-word renderings. They reflected how the ancient rabbis understood the texts, and often included interpretations later found in the Talmuds and elsewhere.
For example, Targum Onkelos, the most famous of the set, tried to alter those Bible passages that described God as having human form or emotions. Where Genesis 6:6 says God’s “heart was saddened,” Targum Onkelos says instead “The Lord regretted through his essence…”
But work on the Targumim was not an end in itself for Grossman. “The most important result of my work has been to increase my appreciation of what the Bible says to us,” he told me. “It is a means to understand The Book. That’s the important thing.”
These two realms of legal advocacy and textual scholarship do not appear to have much in common. But these two people who worked in them shared much — passion, dedication and achievement that helped in different ways to build Jewish life and the community. May their memories be a blessing and their lives shining examples.
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