Morton Mayer Berman

Rabbi Morton Mayer Berman (1899-1986), born in Baltimore, Maryland, was a prominent Reform movement rabbi in the United States and the State of Israel. A graduate of Yale, he was ordained at the Jewish Institute of Religion (JIR) in New York. In 1927-27, he studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem under a Guggenheimer Fellowship, and at the Hochshule fuer die Wissenschaft des Judentums at Berlin in 1927. He served as an assistant rabbi to Dr. Stephen S. Wise at the Free Synagogue in New York and as JIR's director of field activities. In 1937, he came to Chicago's Isaiah Israel synagogue, where he quickly reinstated traditions and ceremonies eliminated by earlier generations of Reform movement rabbis. During WWII he served as a Navy chaplain in the Pacific, landing with Marines at Okinawa. In 1946, he was awared an honorary Doctor of Divinity from JIR. Following his retirement and aliyah to Israel in 1957, he helped raise money for the United Jewish Appeal.