Rabbi Dr Tovia Ben-Chorin z'l

Abstract

Rabbi Tovia Ben-Chorin was born on 15 September 1936 in Jerusalem, the son of journalist and religious scholar Schalom Ben-Chorin (formerly Fritz Rosenthal) and artist Gabriella Rosenthal, the couple having moved from Germany to Palestine in 1935. He graduated with a BA in Bible and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and was ordained as a rabbi by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 1964. He served initially as a rabbi in Israel in Ramat Gan, then in Manchester Reform Synagogue, Jackson's Row (1977–81), and from 1981 to 1996 at the Har El congregation in Jerusalem, which he had helped to establish with his father and stepmother, and which became the ‘mother community’ of today's Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ). During this period, he established the Israeli Progressive Youth Movement and guided the ‘garin’ which established the second Reform kibbutz in the Arava, Kibbutz Lotan. He has written that ‘wanderlust’ led him to become the rabbi of Or Chadash congregation in Zurich (1997–2007) and subsequently Berlin's Pestalozzi Strasse Liberal synagogue from 2009 to 2015, and to a small congregation in St Gallen in Switzerland where he served until his death.