Habermann, Oskar |
Haberman, Joshua O. [Oscar] (1919–2017)

I. Background and Youth in Vienna
Joshua O. Haberman was born in Vienna on April 2,1919, as Oskar Habermann, the son of Berta (Berger) and Isser Alter Haberman. His memory of growing up in Vienna was that of an ugly place where those in school and on the street “never let me forget that I was a Jew.” In later life, he would describe Vienna as “a beautiful city” with “terrible” people. ¹
Haberman’s parents were businesspeople who ran retail stores and a mail order business. Although Oskar grew up with a number of Jewish observances in his home, he described his parents as having relatively little active interest in Judaism. He related that, as a youth, he learned “virtually nothing of Judaism.”²
As he approached the end of his high school studies at a local Gymnasium, the young Haberman was influenced by a visiting uncle (expelled from Germany and on his way to Palestine) who tutored him in Bible and modern Jewish thought. In addition to this deepening knowledge, Oskar was also motivated by the accelerating antisemitism he experienced at school and on the streets. In particular, he was shocked to see a parade of Nazi youth marching in step while singing a song with the line “We shall rejoice when Jewish blood spurts from our knives!” Even as he became convinced that there was no future for Jews in Austria, he became absorbed in the question of why, over thousands of years of persecution, Jews had determined to “hold on to their Judaism” and recalled that such accusations strengthened his desire to learn more as to why Jews remained Jews through the ages despite such allegations.³
Given the grim reality for Viennese Jews in 1937, Haberman’s parents were shocked when their son informed them of his determination to become a rabbi. They thought he needed to see a psychiatrist. Ultimately, they agreed to support his rabbinical and secular studies at the Jüdisch-Theologische Lehranstalt in Wien and the Universität Wien, on the condition that, at the end of his studies, he would agree to go into their still thriving business.

II. From Vienna to Cincinnati: Emigration from Austria and Arrival in the US
Things of course turned out quite differently. Haberman enrolled in both schools in the fall of 1937 (he was the only new enrollee) at the Jüdisch-Theologische Lehranstalt in Wien, but with the Nazi takeover of Austria in March 1938, both his academic and rabbinical studies came to an end. Haberman’s salvation came when he was called in by the Seminary’s Professor Samuel Krauss the head of the seminary, – who offered him a scholarship being proffered by Hebrew Union College that would enable him to continue his studies at their Reform Jewish seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio.  Assisted by affidavits from an aunt in New York, Haberman and his sister both received visas and sailed for the United States in July 1938. With their children already in the United States, Haberman’s parents were able to escape Austria in December 1940. 
Among the German-speaking students already in residence at HUC when he arrived in September 1938, the most prominent were five rabbinical students from Berlin’s Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums who, in 1935, had accepted a similar scholarship to that was offered to Haberman. Two or three others from Germany had also found their way to becoming rabbinical students in Cincinnati under other auspices.⁴
Receiving a warm welcome and support from many American-born students, Haberman found himself adjusting relatively easily to studies at the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College. In his recollection, the HUC training offered him a thorough grounding in basic Judaism, Biblical Hebrew, and public speaking, but “fell short in spiritual guidance that he claimed was most vital to him.⁵
Local newspaper accounts from the time show Haberman – who soon Americanized (and Judaized) his name from Oskar to Joshua O. – being actively involved in Cincinnati Jewish life, particularly as a leader in the local chapter of the Labor Zionist youth group, Habonim, and as secretary of the Plum Street Temple youth group. Through friends at Plum Street Temple, he met and eventually married Maxine Rudin, daughter of the Temple’s chief usher.⁶

III. Professional Life in the United States: Building a Career as Rabbi
Haberman’s professional trajectory accelerated due to the US entry into World War Two. With many active rabbis volunteering to serve as military chaplains, HUC licensed not-yet-ordained students to replace them by taking full-time rabbinical roles while still completing their studies. HUC President Julian Morgenstern asked Haberman if he would move to Mobile, Alabama, to serve as acting rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim. Haberman moved forward his planned wedding to 19-year-old Maxine to August 27, 1944, and they arrived in Mobile four days later. He served there for two years with his official rabbinic ordination taking place in Cincinnati in December 1945.⁷
Haberman, concerned about the racism of the environment and the relative isolation of the pulpit in Mobile, declined the invitation to remain as the congregation’s permanent rabbi. Although he thought he might find a solo leadership role elsewhere, he ended up becoming assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Zion in Buffalo working with its senior rabbi, Joseph Fink – remaining there for five years and gaining experience in every element of the rabbinate.⁸
In 1951, he became rabbi of Har Sinai Congregation in Trenton, New Jersey. Over his 18-year tenure there, the congregation grew from 200 to 800 families and moved from the highly formal and mostly English style of “classical” Reform Judaism to one that embraced more traditional Jewish practices, including teaching Hebrew in the congregation’s religious school. He also became widely known in Trenton as a representative of the Jewish community in innumerable civic forums.⁹
While in Trenton, Haberman deepened his connection to Israel, traveling there for the first time in 1954 and later spending a sabbatical year in Jerusalem with his young children in 1963 to 1964. During that sabbatical he also completed a dissertation in Jewish thought supervised by HUC professor Jakob Petuchowski (who himself had escaped wartime Berlin as a child in the Kindertransport). Over the summer of 1968, he and his wife spent a summer volunteering and harvesting pears on a kibbutz in Galilee.¹⁰
Concerned that Trenton’s Jewish population was increasingly moving toward the suburbs, Haberman grew frustrated by the synagogue board’s reluctance to consider relocating in that direction. Their reluctance made him open to a call to lead the historic Washington Hebrew Congregation (WHC) in the nation’s capital, where he became senior rabbi in 1969.¹¹ 
As had been the case in Trenton, WHC had long defined itself as a “classical” Reform congregation. While the hiring committee had assured him that they expected to see him bring change to the congregation, he was aware that some would see any moves toward tradition as an unwelcome return to “Orthodoxy.” Nonetheless, he persisted in moving the community toward “more traditional observance of festivals, more involvement in the general Jewish community, and strong support for Israel.” He also enrolled his children in Jewish day schools – an unexpected commitment from the clerical leader of the eminent Washington Hebrew Congregation.¹²
Throughout his career, Haberman not only saw himself as a leader within his own community but also as someone in a position to build connections across denominational lines.  In both Trenton and Washington DC, he assisted Orthodox colleagues in strengthening and building their institutions, and he reached out to connect with Christian and Muslim communities. As rabbi of the Washington Hebrew Congregation, he initiated and sustained pulpit exchanges and congregational partnerships with Black Muslim, Catholic, and both Evangelical and Mainline Protestant leaders.¹³
Once in Washington DC, he also had the opportunity to represent Judaism at a national level. He was invited, for instance to deliver the sermon at President Richard Nixon’s 1971 prayer breakfast and numerous opening invocations before Congress. He was also asked to the White House to represent the Jewish community at many bill-signing ceremonies.¹⁴
In 1987, at age 67, Haberman retired from Washington Hebrew Congregation after 18 years as senior rabbi. He took up an active retirement, devoting himself to writing, teaching and traveling. Chief among his activities was leadership of the Foundation for Jewish Studies that he established in 1983 with a million-dollar contribution from an anonymous donor who asked the rabbi to identify a suitable idea that “would be useful to our people,” to make a difference to the Jewish community. Haberman settled upon the problematic lack of Jewish education among American Jews, most of whom cut off their Jewish learning at the age of 13. He determined to create a program “that would provide a sophisticated program of Jewish studies for adults” and would be available to Jews of all backgrounds, establishing the Institute for Jewish Studies. A year after his death, the organization was renamed the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies.¹⁵ 

IV. Legacy and Memory
Even as he got older, Haberman remained an influential voice in the Washington Hebrew Congregation and DC Jewish community. In addition to his on-going engagement with the Institute for Jewish Studies, he delivered yearly over-subscribed Yom Kippur lectures at Washington Hebrew Congregation until the year before his death at age 98 in 2017. There, he would share his thoughts on his career, positive aging, Jewish learning and “What Makes Life Worth Living.”¹⁶
Haberman’s tendencies as a rabbi in the American Reform movement toward more traditional observance, study, and an embrace of Israel was reflected in his own children. Of the Haberman’s four children, three became residents of Israel – his two daughters both married Reform rabbis and one of his sons became an Orthodox rabbi.¹⁷ He and his wife bought an apartment in Jerusalem in 1971 and became Israeli citizens in 1995 – thereafter spending about four months every year in Jerusalem.
Haberman starts his memoir, published in 2012, recalling his reflections on his way to preach at the president’s private prayer service in 1971. He marveled at the contrast between this honor and his arrival in the United States 33 years earlier as “a penniless refugee from Nazi-occupied Vienna.” In his memoir, published in 2012, he only recounts one return visit to Vienna, stopping there at his family’s request on their return from their way back from Israel in 1964. He arranged for a three-day visit – to the home, schools, and institutions of his youth. But he emphasized how he “must have had misgivings about [his] visit” by describing how he managed to cut the trip short by a day by rushing to the airport on the day before their scheduled flight.¹⁸
Like many of the German-speaking rabbinical students brought to HUC in the 1930s, Haberman played a role in nudging his community toward greater embrace of traditional Jewish practices and more serious engagement in Jewish learning. As a public figure, first in the capital of New Jersey, and then in the nation’s capital, he stood up proudly to represent not just himself, but his religion and co-religionists. Embarking on his vocation at a time of great peril for Jews, his career played out through an era of unprecedented stability and privilege for the Jewish communities that he served. Yet, through his lifelong efforts to awaken American Jews to the richness of tradition, connection to Israel, and the promise of Jewish learning, he hoped to help them answer the same question he had asked in his youth – “What was there in Judaism that made so many generations of Jews willing to suffer for its sake? […]. What made Judaism so worthwhile?”

Works Cited

American Israelite, 1939-1942.
Haberman, Joshua O. Three Cities in the Making of a Rabbi: Vienna, Washington, and Jerusalem. Washington, DC: New Publishing Partners, 2012.
Haberman, Joshua. “Ich stamme aus Wien.” Address, given on Nov. 24, 1993, at city hall, Vienna. LBI, ME 932, https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE8507709.
Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies. https://www.habermaninstitute.org/.
Plaut, W. Gunther. Unfinished Business: An Autobiography. Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys Publishers, 1981.
Washington Hebrew Congregations website. https://www.whctemple.org/.

Outstanding Scholarly Works and Digital Resources

American Jewish Archives. The Rabbi Joshua O. Haberman Digital Collection MS-915. https://haberman.americanjewisharchives.org/haberman/.
Joshua O. Haberman Collection; AR 25870, Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History, New York, New York. https://archives.cjh.org/repositories/5/resources/19950.
Haberman, Joshua. “Ich stamme aus Wien.” Address, given on Nov. 24, 1993, at city hall, Vienna. LBI, ME 932, https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE8507709.

Short Bio of the Author: Since 2008, Karla Goldman has served as Sol Drachler Professor of Social Work and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, where she directs the Jewish Communal Leadership Program. She previously served as historian in residence at the Jewish Women’s Archive and associate professor of American Jewish History at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. She is the author of Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism (Harvard University Press, 2000).