Mensch

Born in primitive circumstances in a small village in Prussia in the early 20th Century, Manfred Swarsensky rose to become the youngest rabbi ever appointed to the Jewish Commmunity in Berlin in 1932. A gifted orator and riveting speaker, his fame spread throughout Europe as he spoke out frequently and fervently against the National Socialist Government of Adolf Hitler. He was warned to cease and desist his defamation of the Fascist Government of the Nazis, but he persisted. Predictably, he was thrown into a concentration camp where he was subjected to unspeakable horrors.

He found his way to a small Midwestern college town, Madison, Wisconsin, where he became the founding rabbi of a Reform Congregation. He stated, "I was saved from the ovens to be a messenger from the dead to the living." Swarzensky became one of the most important moral and ethical forces in mid-America in the second half of the 20th Century.

Rabbi Swarsensky was a bridge Builder and at the forefront of Judeo-Christian dialogue. He was called "An Apostle to the Gentiles," and, although thoroughly Jewish, "The finest Christian in Madison." He was involved in the civil rights struggle in the 1960's, a mitigating force in the threatened anarchy surrounding anti-Vietnam protests on college campuses that threatened to engulf the entire nation.

According to Rabbi Swarsensky, "A Mensch is a complete person, both human and humane." Rabbi was a Mensch.