While naturally I was disappointed that the Judge Simon H. Rifkind Award Luncheon was cancelled, I supported this decision, without hesitation, given the imperative to protect potential attendees as well as work together as a community to slow down the spread of this pernicious disease. With even houses of worship now experiencing restrictions on services, Rabbi Samuel Thurman’s endorsement of the closure decisions that affected his prominent St. Louis synagogue during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic resonate with us today: “[t]he price we are paying now is commensurately small compared with the gain and good we shall obtain in the end. Let us be patient. Let us hope and pray for a speedy banishment of the dread monster, disease, from our midst, and a happy return to the healthy and normal life of the community.”  There would be better days. Rabbi Thurman, a longtime friend of Harry S. Truman, would go on to influence President Truman’s decision to recognize the State of Israel in 1948.

 

Given the nature of this prestigious award, I had prepared some remarks in anticipation of accepting it rather than rely on an Oscar worthy “who me?” moment. You can read below the remarks that I had planned to deliver.

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Thank you to Rodgin Cohen, Senior Chairman of Sullivan & Cromwell, for that generous and touching introduction. You are one of the deans of the American legal community and a good friend. Your being here enhances the receipt of this award to me. I am truly grateful for the tremendous support I’ve received from so many colleagues, outside legal and other professional advisors and business partners. I want to offer a special thank you to the partners of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, including the current Chairman, Bill Dougherty, and each of the Chairman during my tenure at STB, all of whom who are here today:  Edgar Masinter, Dick Beattie (a prior recipient of this award) and Pete Ruegger. In a few moments, you will also hear from Alan Klein, Co-Head of Simpson’s M&A practice, about Jon Youngwood, Co-Chair of STB’s Litigation Department, with whom I am thrilled to be a Co-Honoree. I’ve worked with Jon for years, both as a partner and as a client, and he’s first class.

 

I would also like to thank the Blackstone professionals who are here including a large number from the Legal & Compliance Group – the team that is the best and hardest working in our business. I’m particularly proud of our group’s industry leading pro bono program. I also want to express my appreciation to current and former members of Blackstone’s senior leadership who are here, including my predecessor Bob Friedman and one of my bosses – Jon Gray, President of Blackstone. As I reflect on my development as a lawyer and business lawyer - - the twin pillars that define me are Simpson Thacher and Blackstone.  I am fortunate to have spent my career with organizations that have an ethos of integrity and excellence.

 

I would like to express my gratitude to my beautiful wife Carol, whom I love; we’ve been married for almost 24 years and she puts up with the parts of John that aren’t always easy to love. And my dear children, Rebecca, Sarah and Ethan, who are with me wherever I go. I also want to thank my brother Bob, who is with us today – a distinguished lawyer in his own right, now happily retired, who on many occasions showed me the path to be a successful practitioner.

 

I want to thank Alan Levine, Chairman of the Board of Jewish Theological Seminary, Chancellor Eisen, who is delivering his closing address today at the end of a hall of fame tenure and JTS for honoring me with this award. Given that the award is named for Judge Rifkind – who was Chairman of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1963-1972 -- and that the prior honorees of this award are so distinguished, I will cherish this award.  Moreover, it will be an impetus to rededicate myself to the high ideals that Judge Rifkind has inspired.

 

This brings me to expressing warm appreciation to the clergy from Park Avenue Synagogue where I am a member. There is a special nexus in receiving this award and having my spiritual leaders Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove and Rabbi Neil Zuckerman, who were each a graduate of JTS, here today. Rabbi Cosgrove sits on the Chancellor’s Cabinet of JTS and Rabbi Zuckerman, prior to coming to Park Avenue Synagogue, served at the synagogue that I attended as a boy in Westchester. They offer great knowledge and wisdom. And to borrow from A Tale of Two Cities, they share with us the best of times and the worst of times.

 

While my experience with Park Avenue Synagogue clearly makes JTS’s rabbinical and cantorial schools top of mind, I am, of course, appreciative that the reach of JTS goes beyond those schools to encompass being a preeminent institution of Jewish higher education, holding the greatest collection of Judaica in the Western Hemisphere and representing the intellectual and spiritual center of conservative Judaism.

As I reflect on the historic role of JTS and my own relationship with clergy, there is one individual who I kept recalling as this day approached.

 

He was born in Austria and came to this country at the age of seven.  He earned his BA from City College in 1929 and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1932.  And in 1946, he married my parents Eve and Emil Finley at the bride’s home. And in 1969, when he was roughly the same age as I am now, he officiated over the bar mitzvah of a young man named John G. Finley. His name was Max Gelb and he was the Senior Rabbi at Temple Israel Center in White Plains between 1939-1972.  He had a spiritual bearing about him and was, from my vantage point as a boy, an impressive figure standing at the pulpit.

In the period after World War II when Jewish life was being rebuilt, more than three million American Jews would, by 1960, be living in the suburbs. Many would choose conservative Judaism because they took comfort in the rituals they had observed as first-generation Americans but were not prepared to accept the lack of adaptability of Orthodoxy. The “vital center” flourished in what some would term the movement’s “golden age.”

 

Rabbi Gelb was reflective of JTS graduates who, while enjoying a multiplying congregation, also dealt with the challenge of the congregants’ secularization and assimilation.  Despite these challenges, Rabbi Gelb, and other Rabbis like him in this era, left an impressive legacy.  In his address, at the first post-war graduation exercises of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Judge Rifkind observed that whereas in Europe the rabbis were the products of the community they served, in America the community is shaped by the rabbis who serve it. They solidified a model that provided a total “Jewish experience” embodying the theological, educational and social. They provided religious education, sisterhoods, brotherhoods, youth groups, Jewish learning and adult education. And Rabbi Gelb showed the breadth of a modern conservative rabbi with preaching, scholarship, ecclesiastical officiating and community and civic activities, including being active in the civil rights struggle and an ardent supporter of Israel. He founded the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester in 1965 and served as Dean of that school until he passed away in 1987. He composed compromise liturgy that moved away from men praising God for not making them women.

 

So, to those of us whose critical faculties may be too acute with respect to our synagogue or Hebrew school experience in the 1950’s through 1970’s, I suggest a bit of revisionism in acclaiming the far-reaching role of the Rabbi Gelbs who influenced the lives of young members of their congregation and were the post-war architects of the conservative Jewish community in America.  While many years ago my ties to organized religion might have frayed, they were strong enough that, as would be the case for many of my generation, they could be made seamless once again. 

 

So, Rabbi Gelb (JTS Class of ’32) might be surprised to learn that roughly 50 years after he officiated at the bar mitzvah of yet another indifferent Scarsdale kid in his Hebrew School, that kid would grow up to remember his contribution to him and Jewish life in America when receiving the Judge Rifkind Award from the Jewish Theological Seminary.