Comments (0)On Rabbi Loeb
October 16, 2009Neil Rubin
Editor
Dec. 14. That’s the date on my calendar in which I had planned to call Rabbi Mark G. Loeb to see when we could convene for another two-hour or so lunch to discuss Jews, movies, politics, community, family, food and whatever else came up.
Around that date, he was expected to come back from four months in Milan, Italy.
But God had other plans. Rabbi Loeb died on Wednesday, Oct. 7. Frankly, it was pure Mark. He had just finished dinner with new friends in a nice restaurant. He went outside to go home. He felt uncomfortable. He sat on a bench. Then he was gone.
Before the High Holidays this year, Mark was busy calling dozens of Baltimore congregants and friends. I had sent an e-mail with questions for an article about how retired rabbis viewed the season. The next day I picked up the phone and heard his voice. “I’m settling in,” he started.
So how did he view this Rosh Hashanah, in which he would be serving a small congregation as an interim rabbi, and the season in general, in his retirement years? “I don’t get worried. I don’t get nervous. I don’t get anxious,” he said.
And how did he sum up his career? “I wanted to engage people, to observe what they understood sort in a [Franz] Rosenzweigian meaning. That’s still an important issue. We need to find things people respond to as it relates to their concerns.”
But what he said a few years earlier is now much more poignant. Just after publicly announcing his pending retirement, we were again at lunch. “I just hope that I’m healthy long enough to enjoy it,” he said matter-of-factly.
If you knew anything about Rabbi Loeb, it was that, one-on-one, he was incredibly blunt. Although a maven of liberal politics, he was far from politically correct in his choice of words. He was not insanely funny, but he certainly was fun. He did not suffer fools gladly — although he was a master communicator in any situation. Congregants and friends were his family; as with all families, he liked some relatives better than others.
His intellect was broad and deep, yet he never shoved it in your face. I once sat through an hour-long Torah discussion class he gave. In a 60-minute exploration of Exodus’ first chapter, he referred to Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Josephus, Albert Camus, the Nuremberg trials, Jesus, Moses, Slobodan Milosevic, Maimonides, Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, soldiers who used nerve gas in World War I, Nazi soldiers “just following orders” and U.S. soldiers who dropped napalm during the Vietnam War.
Everybody has a Rabbi Loeb story. Ask close friends to tell you about sitting with him in the Woodholme Country Club shvitz. (Yes, you read that correctly.) All I know is that he was a great personal friend. My grandfather died and Mark called at 7:30 a.m. — he had just read it in the newspaper — to make sure I was OK.
To the uninitiated he could be intimidating, but so many know he was remarkably soothing in moments of personal crisis. He would always ask me — and everyone — about family. He rarely spoke about his own. So what?
I wrote a cover story about him that candidly stated, “Congregants embrace his passions and compassions; detractors balk at what they call a stinging, coarse delivery of views they oppose.”
It was not a puff piece and I was not sure how he would react. We did not have the opportunity to talk for a few months. But when I saw him next, he gave me a mezuzah to thank me for being honest. It still hangs on my office door.
I called him days after his marvelous retirement weekend at Beth El to set up our next lunch. I wanted him to know that our friendship was not a professional convenience. He responded in kind.
I visited him earlier this year when he was recovering from serious surgery. He thanked me, told me he loved me.
So on Dec. 14 I’m off to a nice restaurant with a close friend, and I’ll tell stories about Mark Loeb. The hole in my heart will reopen, but the smile on my face will never disappear.