Professor Henry Fischel, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and the pioneer figure on the Indiana University Jewish Studies Program faculty died on Tuesday, March 18 at Meadowood Retirement Community in Bloomington.
Born in Bonn, Germany in 1913, Henry A. Fischel was the son Anna (nee Suessengut) and Adolf Fischel. After completing secondary school in Bonn, he studied philosophy at the University of Berlin, and Judaica at the Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums, a liberal rabbinical seminary in Berlin. He was ordained as rabbi in 1939, after having been detained for several months at a Nazi concentration camp. He continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, and was awarded a Ph.D. in 1945.
In 1941, he came to Canada, where he initially lived in a holding camp, and served as rabbi for other refugees from Germany. For the next half century, he held distinguished rabbinical and academic positions in Canada and in the United States, including professorships at Brandeis University and at Indiana University. He joined the faculty of Indiana University in 1961.
He published numerous books and articles exploring the relationship between Jewish literature and the Hellenistic world, and was a pioneer in this area of research. Among extensive academic honors and offices, he served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in Canada, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
He was a cherished husband and father, and a beloved teacher, colleague, and friend. An accomplished musician, he delighted his many friends and neighbors at Meadowood Retirement Community with piano recital-talks. Among his other hobbies, he was an avid chess player, a near-expert philatelist, and an eager tennis player. As a student, he played soccer, and twice competed in international boxing bouts, as a youth fly-weight.
He is survived by daughter, Antoinette Jourard of St. Augustine, Florida; daughter Miriam Herman and son-in-law Marvin Sharp of Victoria, BC Canada; nephew Robert Newhouser of New York, New York; five grandchildren, and five great grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife Sylvia (nee Morris) Fischel, and his sister Lotte Newhouser. His mother, nine uncles and aunts, and three cousins perished in the Holocaust. Memorial contributions may be made to the United Way, the Henry Fischel, Ph.D. Scholarship in Jewish Studies or the Fischel Book Fund in Jewish Studies.
Tributes in honor of Professor Henry Fischel
“The Rabbis had a sense of humor!” I have incorporated this into my own teaching, that sometimes the Talmudic rabbis simply appeared to have enjoyed the midrashic process. Yet, although I have since been instructed in both traditional and scientific Judaic contexts, I have never again heard this conjecture. So, perhaps, then Dr. Fischel’s aphorism applied only to this Rabbi whose insight into history and humanness was so often accompanied by gentle laughter.
When my friend, Ina Kahal, a JSP graduate and a fellow devotee, forwarded the email of his passing, I cried with an unquenchable yearning –And yet, although his death is so very sad and the way he impacted my life is so very serious, I nonetheless can only compose Professor Fischel’s tribute with that hint of personal playfulness.
Contrary to the popular lore that those engaged in the “60’s” were never really there if they could recount their experience -- I do remember! Sitting next to his desk in Goodbody in the early 70’s, clad in my torn, stained jeans, I incessantly attempted to persuade Dr. Fischel that in order to actualize the growth- producing prescription of Jewish philosophy, that one should not be stuck inside poring over ancient tomes. Too much of the world was happening out there; was it not infinitely more valuable to BE and BECOME in Dunn Meadow?! I dared not relate–he probably knew- that I absolutely refused on principle to obey his stricture to review the binyanim, grammatical Hebrew conjugations, before coming to class. Not when I could BE and BECOME! And why not lay aside those xeroxed mishnaiot from Rosh Hashana; secretly promising this great scholar and cherished mentor that “at some point,” I would return to them…. Life was just too immediate in those heady early 70’s ---albeit my chief celebration of the counterculture doubtless transpired within our ongoing dialogue.
It is just that I would have given anything to recreate those conversations, to open a tractate of Talmud and drink in his wisdom, to wrangle over the texts. For years, I harbored the fantasy of returning to Bloomington to learn with Dr. Fischel. However by that time, he had reduced his research and teaching responsibilities to care for his late wife, Sylvia. A diversion, but one that Professor Fischel, always humble may never have revealed-but shared with me because I was then pursuing my Master’s in Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. When the leading Talmudist Saul Lieberman died, Fischel- whose expertise on Hellenistic influences within Judaism and whose scholarship was deemed of equal stature had been invited to deliver Dr. Lieberman’s eulogy, an honor he declined due to Mrs. Fischel’s stroke.
It otherwise would have been thoroughly appropriate for me to have turned to him with Talmudic questions. I had become a serious student of Rabbinic texts, and subsequently learned with leading teachers of Talmudic literature in New York, Boston, and Jerusalem. Ironically, I had spent, had neglected, my hours in dialogue debating the merits of Being and Becoming in Dunn Meadow! This conundrum continues to grate. Yet, somehow, in the spirit of a Zen Koan, in vogue then in the Religious Studies Department, I may indeed have learned my “Talmud” from Professor Fischel. As in the Chasidic story where the Master Rebbe permits his carriage horses “their heads” letting them take him where fate decrees he must go, I may have received from Dr. Fischel what I needed to.
Talmud Taanit 7a inquires, based on Dvarim/Deuteronomy 20:19, how does a person resemble a tree? Because it says, concerning a tree that bears fruit, “one should eat from it and not cut it down.” How does this work? If the Talmid HaCham, the wise scholar is a favorable person, one should “eat from” and learn from him.
I had originally approached Dr. Fischel profoundly immersed in “Buberty,” the nomenclatural pun that he coined. PROFESSOR FISCHEL HAD ACTUALLY STUDIED WITH MARTIN BUBER!!!!! So I enrolled in his classes, being granted the honor of sitting in the identical class that he had taken from Buber: Biblical Hebrew of Genesis. Subsequently, I began my educational journey with him in midrash, mishnah, and the philosophy of “Ancient” Rabbinic Judaism. For the purposes of this piece, I am relying on my personal reflections, but our discussions just as frequently constituted a continuation of subjects broached in his seminars. Dr. Fischel had directly experienced emergence of what we now term “Modern Jewish philosophy,” being educated by Buber, intimately knowing about the Lehrhaus, and even recollecting “what you would today call a T.A.”-- a young, brilliant scholar who showed “promise,” Abraham Joshua Heschel. Professor Fischel was versed in ancient Biblical Hebrew, an expert in midrash and a major authority of the Rabbinic period. He would expostulate on contemporary Jewry and education, and occasionally reminiscence about the rise of Nazism that he had witnessed, elucidating why Germany had gone mad.
One day, toward the end of my senior year as I was plotting out my future demarcating it to Buber, Dr. Fischel stopped me. With determination, he articulated: “Ellen, Martin Buber had a strong Jewish background from his grandfather (the great midrashist, Solomon Buber), but many who follow Buber lack the broader understanding of Judaism.” He urged me to acquire a deeper grounding and to devote time delving into Jewish texts. Thus I went off to Israel where I became one of the early, “now famous” cadre of women in the 70’s who began intensive textual study -- a quest enriching and fulfilling, but also a path fraught with challenges before the current plethora of options for women.
Baba Metzia 33a debates what justifies the designation of “Rabbi” or “main teacher” in one’s life. The Rabbis pronounce that the person who imparts wisdom to you, becomes your Rabbi. Rabbi Yosi assigns that title to one who enlightened you in even a single Mishnah—“he is one’s teacher.” Rabbi Meir in the name of Rabbi Yehuda ascribes that appellation to the one from whom one gained the greater part of one’s knowledge.
Dr. Fischel launched me into text study; the foundation he laid for “the greater part of my knowledge base” - forever resonates. But the news of his death summoned another memory, that he had more indirectly inspired my other convergent direction. My leap toward “Being and Becoming” had not only been an excursion into a “60’s” fad of frivolousness. Buber’s followers often embraced psychology; I too began to focus on human development. “Psychology or Judaism?” I ardently pressed for a synthesis and it had been partially because Dr. Fischel demanded that I better comprehend the “Judaism” side of the equation, that he sent me off to research Jewish sources. Nonetheless, less proactive and more predictive, he proffered a solution to my psychology zeal. Ellen, here in Indiana, there is more of a dichotomy, he patiently explained. Why don’t you contact Jewish psychologists in Brandeis where you will find more of a synthesis and professionals who understand both worlds better? I eventually ended up at Brandeis in the Hornstein Program where I connected with new mentors and established skills in informal , adult, and family education, an expertise in combining Jewish education with responsiveness to individual and family life cycle issues. I write today, years after Professor Fischel’s suggestion as I begin my dissertation on adult Jewish education and how developmental stages impact the needs, interests, context, and motivation for adult Jewish learning….
After graduation, I remained committed to continuing my mentorship, my status as Dr. Fischel’s Talmid/student. Even though I had acquired new rabbis and teachers (as well as students), I called regularly and wrote from Israel. After one too long gap- shortly after the movie came out, Professor Fischel quipped, “Are you keeping in touch with us, or are you Breaking Away!” I did fulfill my promise -unspoken – to return to the Rosh Hashanah that I had cast aside and coincidentally, developed a theory of the yearly cycle precisely from those chapters. Wherever I moved, I carried around pages from Piske Rabbati – a work that he had referred me to. First I kept those pages in English, then in the Hebrew/Aramaic version. During one of my Israel years, Dr. Fischel told me to look up his granddaughter, Madeline who was also there that year-- a wonderful and creative person with whom I spent many hours. She shared with me the love Dr. Fischel had for his late wife, Sylvia and their daughters, the joyful warmth he had for his grandchildren.
After my father became ill and then died a few years ago, I stopped trying to call, fearing the worst (the psychology side of me, would pronounce it prototypical “transference”) Yet, just as I had carried around his texts, I carried around his phone number trying to procure the courage to reconnect. This year, having already missed what should have been an annual Rosh Hashanah call, I decided to wait until Passover –but for “some reason” did not wait and finally made the call. Expectant and tense, and because I have been in New York too long, I spoke too fast and he, hard of hearing, had difficulty following and tired easily. But forever I will value his remembering me and my rather inadequate endeavor to impart what he had meant to me, how I had taught and written on Rabbinic texts and was studying for my doctorate. I thanked him for launching me into my journey of serious text study. He, being Dr. Fischel at one point paused, relating some quip – and then because I was too intense to notice, in Professor Fischel style, asserted, “Ellen, that is a joke!”
I suspect that others will be able to eulogize Dr. Fischel’s contribution more academically (…if only I had memorized those binyanim!). But my approach and my life have been more integrative. That too, I grasp suddenly as I write it, derived from him who in his seminars, modeled and encouraged “integration.”
I met Professor Fischel, not only in the midst of “Buberty,” but in late puberty, “BECOMING” more of an integrated adult through our interaction. If I had sought a person of unmitigated humanity, deep caring, and someone with whom to engage in a dialogue about my potential within the continuum of the tradition, our history, and the community—I found it.
Ellen Cohn,
IU Graduate ’74 Religious Studies, “Judaic concentration” (pre-JSP)
Doctoral candidate, Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, Yeshiva University
Program Coordinator, Center for Modern Torah Leadership and Summer Beit Midrash
*******************
I had the pleasure of having Professor Fischel as my teacher for several classes from the years 1970-1974. He has always been my favorite teacher. He was always enthusiastic in his teaching and his knowledge base in Hebrew, linguistics, and Jewish Studies was unequaled. Even though I eas a math and premed student, my favorite classes were the ones taught by Professor Fischel.
Please convey to his family my condoloences and that I will remember his fondly.
Joseph Schacther, M.D.
Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program
Indiana University
1011 E. Third Street, Goodbody Hall 326
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-0453, Fax: 812-855-4314
iujsp@indiana.edu
Directions to the office
