Rabbi Joseph Polak

Rabbi Joseph Polak, Chief Justice of the Rabbinic Court of Massachusetts, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Health Law at the Boston University School of Public Health is a child-survivor of the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camps. His memoir, “After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring,” won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award and is used regularly as a text in university and high school curricula. He has published widely in scholarly and popular venues and lectured at hundreds of colleges, synagogues, and high schools throughout the United States, Canada and Israel. In 2013, after 46 years of service as a university chaplain, he retired as Rabbi Emeritus of the Florence and Chafetz Hillel House at Boston University.

 

Current

CHIEF JUSTICE, Rabbinic Court of Massachusetts (Bet Din).

ASSISTANT ADJUNCT PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC HEALTH (HEALTH LAW), Boston University School of Public Health

AUTHOR, “After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring,” (a Holocaust Memoir), Urim Publishers, NY and Jerusalem, 2015. Winner: National Jewish Book Award for Biography and Autobiography, 2016.

 

Past experience

I. Campus Rabbinate and Administration

DIRECTOR, (1970-2013) B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation (later: “The Florence and Chafetz Hillel House”) at Boston University. Served as University Rabbi, ran a campus Hillel center which offered counseling, religious services, social and cultural programs, including up to 35 different Jewish student groups each year, plus a kosher dining center where a thousand meals were served weekly; headed a staff of five full-time and six part-time employees.  Raised and administered what grew into an over-$1 million annual budget. Led the effort to construct and fund a $20 million new Hillel facility (The Florence and Chafetz Hillel House) at Boston University, opening in 2005. Current position: Retired, 2013; Rabbi Emeritus.

DIRECTOR, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation at Ohio University. Served as Rabbi to Jewish community of southeastern Ohio.  Built a new Hillel center—raised funds and oversaw the project. (1967-1970).

 

II. Conferences, Exhibits and Projects

In 2007, in cooperation with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, launched, with and for NY-area BU Jewish alumni, a major photographic exhibit (“And I Still See Their Faces”), located at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York.  Exhibit held over and covered in mainstream media including feature articles in the New York Times and on PBS.

In 2008, launched with Boston’s New Center for Arts and Culture and Paris’ Jewish Museum of Arts and History, an exhibit entitled “Dreyfus: The Power of Prejudice”. Based on the educational value of this program, and to the enthusiastic public response, and the exhibit’s multi-disciplinary directions, BU initiated a course on Dreyfus. University Professor Jeffrey Mehlman, a consultant to the exhibit, taught the course.

In 2002, launched an exhibit called Visas for Life, about twelve consuls in Europe, who risked their lives and forfeited their careers but managed to save 250,000 Jews from extinction in the Holocaust. Co-sponsored with the American Jewish Committee. Several thousand visitors.

In the Fall of 1999, launched the photographic exhibit about pre-War Poland entitled And I Still See Their Faces, that captured the imagination of the media in Boston (two front-page articles in the Boston Globe, heavy exposure on TV and other print media), over 5,000 visitors.

Created and organized (1991) a conference entitled Tainted Greatness: Anti-Semitism, Prejudice, and Cultural Heroes: a gathering of twenty world-class scholars exploring the implications of the bigotry in the writing and art of the greatest heroes of western culture.  One hundred people in attendance; national publicity, including the front page of the Boston Globe and editorials across the country, especially in the Christian Science Monitor and on National Public Radio (NPR). The conference produce d a book of the same title (Temple University Press, 1994) edited by Prof. Nancy Harrowitz.

In 1988 created and organized the conference Why a Jewish Poem? convening twenty of America’s most distinguished poets, examining the Jewishness of their works and lives. (500 people). The conference featured readings and papers and led to the invitation to the former American poet laureate, Robert Pinsky to join the BU faculty –a position which he holds to this day.

In 1982 created and organized Project Liberators Remembered, a permanent oral history project with forty G.I.’s who were present at the liberation of the death camps.  This project resulted in the publication of a volume of poetry, in the production of a film nominated for an Academy Award, and in the winning of the Haber Award for excellence in campus Jewish programming. (1982).

In 1986 created and convened a conference called Judaism and Nuclear War, with 1200 people in attendance, including Elie Wiesel, Carl Sagan and twenty other scholars.

FOUNDER, Hillel Directors East Coast Annual Conference.

FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, National Hillel Eastern Winter Institute, an annual gathering of 300 students for a week of intensive Judaic study. (1975-1983).

DEAN, National Hillel Summer Institute, an annual gathering of 100-300 students. (1978-1982).

 

III. Academic

SCHOLAR-IN-RESIDENCE at hundreds of institutions in the U.S. and Canada.

INSTRUCTOR in Jewish Law and Mysticism at Ohio University, Boston University, and Hebrew College of Boston.

INSTRUCTOR in courses in Jewish Medical Ethics to faculty at University Hospital, Boston.

DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION, (1985-87) Congregation Shirat Hayam, Nantucket, Massachusetts.

 

IV. Publications

“Forward” in Moscovici, Claudia, Holocaust Memories, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019.

Michael A Grodin, Johnathan I Kelly, Erin L Miller, Robert Kirschner, Joseph Polak, Rabbinic Responsa And Spiritual Resistance During The Holocaust: The Life-For-Life Problem, Modern Judaism – A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, kjz012, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjz012

Hildebrandt S, Polak J, Grodin M, Seidelman W. The History of the Vienna Protocol. In New: Studies on Medicine Before, During, and After the Holocaust. Hildebrandt S, Offer M, Grodin M (ed) Berghahn Press 2019.

Yee A, Zubovic E, Yu J, Ray S, Hildebrand S, Seidelman W, Polak J, Grodin M, Coert H, Brown D, Kodner E, Mackinnon S.  Ethical Considerations in the Use of Pernkopf’s Atlas of Anatomy: A Surgical Case Study, Journal of Surgery 165: 860-867. 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2018.07.025.

Polak J, Grodin M: “Nerve Surgeons’ Assessment of the Role of Eduard Pernkopf’s Atlas of Topographic and Applied Human Anatomy in Surgical Practice” Jewish Legal Response. Neurosurgery, 327, https://doi.org/10.1093/neurps/nyy327, 13 July 20180.

The Vienna Protocol, a procedural manual, including its etiology and theoretical bases in Jewish law, for dealing with human remains encountered in post-Holocaust Europe. The essay is already producing resonance from non-Holocaust related findings, including the survivors of Irish orphanages of the early and mid-20thC. President’s Office, The University of Vienna.

After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring,” (memoir), Urim Publications, NY and Jerusalem, 2015, with a foreword by Elie Wiesel. (Winner, National Jewish Book Award for Biography and Autobiography, 2016).

“Forward: Three Kinds of Medical Resistance” in Grodin, M., Jewish Medical Resistance in the Holocaust, Berghahn Books, N.Y. & Oxford, 2014.

“The Last Witness,’ Commentary, July /August 2012.

“Wiesel and Rabbi Akiva,” in Elie Wiesel: Jewish, Literary and Moral Perspectives, Katz, S. and Rosen, A., editors, Indiana University Press, 2013.

“The Appearance of Impropriety: Halakhic Studies on the Subject of Mar’it Ayyin”, Jewish Law Association Studies, 2004.

“On Orthodox Youth,” in Jewish Action, Summer 2003.

“Our Schools, Our Children, Our Future,” in Wellsprings, 50, Summer 2002, reprinted in Character, Fall 2002.

“Exhuming Their Neighbors: A Halakhic Inquiry”, in Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, NY: Winter, 2001.

Interpreting Catastrophe: Insights from the Halachic Literature of the Prague Fire of 1689, in Celebrating Elie Wiesel: Stories, Essays, Reflections, Alan Rosen, Ed., Notre Dame University Press, Notre Dame Indiana, 1998.

Forward in Samson, Shlomo, Between Darkness and Light, Tel Aviv, Rubin Mass, 1997.

“What do American Jews Believe?” Commentary, August 1996.

“The Lost Transport”, Commentary, September 1995.

“Tainted Artists/Tainted Texts: Reflections from the Rabbinic Sources”, in Tainted Greatness: Anti-Semitism, Prejudice, and Cultural Heroes, ed. Nancy Harowitz, Temple University Press, May 1994.

“Afterword”, in idem.

“Ethics of the New Technologies: A Discussion of Case Histories”, in Technology and Infertility: Clinical, Psychosocial, Legal and Ethical Aspects, ed. Machelle M. Seibel, Ann A. Kiessling, Judith Bernstein, and Susan R. Levin, New York: Springer Verlag, 1993.

“Forgiving the Germans: Paradigms and Dialectics from Halacha”, in Paris Conference Volume, ed. Steven Passamaneck, Jewish Law Association Studies, 1993.

“Notes on the Ethics of Peer Influence in Judaism”, in Ethics on the Campus: Ethicists, Academics, Campus Professionals and Students Address a Critical Issue, ed. Ruth Fredman Cernea, The Center for Campus Study, 1991.

“Auschwitz Revisited: Icons, Memories, and Elegies”, Midstream, July 1990.

“Some Societal Implications of the Laws of Witnesses”, Jewish Law Association Studies, IV, Spring, 1990

“Israel, Arms Transfers, and Halacha”, Tradition, spring, 1989.

Sachar Baneshek, Medinat Yisrael, Vehalacha in Dine Yisrael (Hebrew) (Israel Law Yearbook) vol. 17, 1993-94 (translation of above article).

“The Dangers of the Who is a Jew Issue”, Sh’ma, February 1989.

“The Sons of Aaron: A Classical Jewish Response to Tragedy”, in Death of a Student, ed. Samuel Fishman, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, 1986.

“Gratitude”, Boston University Link, November 1985.

“Torah and the Megabombs”, Judaism, summer, 1983.

A Profile of Today’s Student,” (pamphlet) B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation, 1983.

“An Open Letter to Orthodox High School Seniors Busy Selecting a College”, booklet, 1982, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.  Second revised edition, 1991. Reprinted 2002, revised edition, as “Choosing a College: A Guide for Orthodox Students.”

 

V. Honors

NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD, 2015-16 (a literary award) for biography, autobiography and memoir, for book After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring.

SCARLET KEY AWARD, 2002, Boston University, for outstanding professional work with students.

ELIE WIESEL AWARD (to Hillel) for Visas for Life program (see above).

HABER AWARD, 1996, (to Hillel) for Connections to College, an outreach program to minority children and Black-Jewish relations efforts.

BOSTON UNIVERSITY AWARD, 1996, for twenty-five years of outstanding service.

JACOB BURNS ETHICS AWARD, 1995, for imparting Jewish Ethical Values to the greater Boston University community.

DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS, 1995, honoris causa, Boston University.

NATIONAL HILLEL AWARD, 1993, for twenty-five years of outstanding campus service.

HABER AWARD, 1992, (to Hillel) for Conference: Tainted Greatness.

HABER AWARD, 1985, (to Hillel) for Freedom of Music, a program on behalf of the Soviet Jews and South African blacks.

HABER AWARD, 1982, (to Hillel) for outstanding campus programming, Project Liberators Remembered.

DANFORTH UNDERWOOD FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENT, 1974, for study on Jewish Women and Jewish Law.

 

VI. Affiliations

MEMBER, Beth Din (Jewish Court) of Vaad Harabonim of the State of Massachusetts.

MEMBER, Rabbinical Council of America.