Abraham Shusterman

Rabbi Abraham Shusterman (1907-1995), born in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was a rabbi in the American Reform movement, best known for his ecumenical work. He was a 1929 graduate of the University of Cincinnati and a 1931 graduate of the Hebrew Union College, where he later earned a doctorate. He also did graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University. After his ordination in 1931, he served the congregation Children of Israel in Athens, Georgia and was the first director of the Jewish Student Union at the University of Georgia. He also served at Temple Israel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, before coming to Baltimore. He led Baltimore’s Har Sinai Congregation from 1941 to 1972. From 1955 until 1968, Rabbi Shusterman appeared weekly with a priest and a minister on “To Promote Good Will,” a television discussion program. He had been a volunteer chaplain at Fort Meade and a chaplain aboard cruise ships. From 1977 to 1983, he was the rabbi of Temple Sholom in Naples, Fla., where he spent winters. He was also a former chairman of the advisory council of the Maryland Department of Employment Security, a committee to study possible revisions of the unemployment compensation laws. He was chairman of the Special Committee on Life Preservation, which recommended that the state require each hospital and nursing home to appoint a committee to make ethical judgments on the artificial prolonging of patients’ lives. In addition, he helped start the Maryland Food Committee. Distressed at a 1966 City Council meeting when Cardinal Lawrence Shehan was jeered for advocating open housing for all, he wept publicy, news of which was taken to heart by many. Cardinal Shehan later presented him with the Cardinal Gibbons Medal for his work for brotherhood. He was an adjunct professor of theology at Loyola College and served on the advisory board of St. Mary’s University and Ecumenical Institute. He also had been co-chairman of the Interfaith Council of Metropolitan Baltimore and had served on the board of the National Conference of Christians and Jews. He had also headed the Clergy Brotherhood of Baltimore, the Mid-Atlantic Region of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Mid-Atlantic Association of Reform Rabbis, the Baltimore Council of Reform Rabbis, the National Association of Retired Reform Rabbis and the Baltimore Jewish Council. Rabbi Shusterman also wrote a column for the News American, frequently spoke to organizations and wrote a history of the Har Sinai Congregation, the oldest surviving congregation in the nation that has been continuously affiliated with the Reform branch of Judaism. The history was published in 1967, when Har Sinai celebrated its 125th anniversary.