My father, zihrono l'vrahah (may his memory be a blessing) was a kind, gentle, and very sweet man. I do not recall him ever speaking harshly to me as a child or as an adult. He never told me what to do and never criticized me negatively me. Those who knew him agree, he never caused harm to another person, either wittingly or unwittingly. He died the death of a tzadik, a righteous one, leaving this world on Friday, March 15, 2002 in the late afternoon with a yoga-like slowing of his breathing until he passed from Susie's and my hands into the arms of the God he had served so devotedly for all of his 95 years.

He was born here in New York City, after my grandfather, Rabbi Tobias Geffen, zihrono l'vrahah made the radical decision to leave the great Talmudic academy in Slobodka outside of Kovno Lithuania, following the Kishinev pogrom of 1903. Most other young scholars stayed in Eastern Europe and most met their deaths at the hands of the Nazis 30 plus years later. My grandfather had the courage and foresight to leave the protected world of his parents and make a new life for his young family here in America. For the thousands of more secular Jews who came here, and certainly for those willing or eager to shed their religious lifestyle, the transition was often easy and fruitful, at least easier…but for my zeydeh, my grandfather to end up making and selling pants in the teaming streets of the Lower East Side of Manhattan was not an answer of proper dignity or wisdom.

Canton, Ohio had a synagogue that needed a rabbi, (actually it had a split congregation who may have thought they needed 2 rabbis but could barely afford one), and the family, now including 4 children, with my father a mere baby, made its way to the "Midwest". By 1910, Tobias had found the final pulpit of his long life here in America in Atlanta Georgia, where as Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel, he became the Rabbinic Posek, the arbiter and judge of theJewish religious community of the southern United States, serving, teaching, and inspiring for over 60 years until his own death, at almost 100 years of age, in 1970.

My father, Sam, grew up in Atlanta. He went to public school, to Boys High, and then to Emory University following his older brother Joel who was enrolled as the first Jewish student at this Methodist University in 1919. Joel was followed by his brother Louis and then by my father who entered in 1922, graduated in 1926 and then continued at Emory Law School, beginning his practice of law with his older brother Louis just as the depression hit. His timing was not very good!
My father was also a serious and accomplished musician. He brought music into the Geffen household as he mastered the classical violin, playing 2nd violin for the Emory University Orchestra and eventually with the Atlanta Symphony as well. He arranged for all of his younger siblings: Bessie, Annette, Abe, and Helen to have music lessons, and he, Bessie and/or Annette often played classical duets, wedding accompaniment, and entertainment events to earn money during high school and college. I have chosen an excerpt from Beethoven's Sonata # 6 for Violin and Piano to share with you today. As you listen to this beautiful piece, remember that my father was the age of my sons, Jonah(25) and Daniel(20) when he played this music!
His was a wonderful family, totaling three brothers and four sisters. All were cherished. Some said that he was his mother's favorite! I know that nothing was more important to him than the members of this extraordinary Geffen clan.

My father was also fascinated with language. He was a serious student of German, Latin and Greek. He was a self-taught Yiddishist. Yes, of course he learned Yiddish from his father in the study of Torah, but he mastered a sophisticated and intellectual Yiddish on his own, reading its vast secular literature and speaking, reading, and writing on a regular basis. He was, of course, a fine Hebraist as well.

Most all all, as the family stories go, my father was filed with good humor. He was not the teller of jokes per se, but the raconteur of stories that were always accompanied by a twinkle in his eye and a great sense for what would make people laugh. Over the last few years at the Jewish Home and Hospital where he lived for the last five years of his life, he loved when I would kibitz with him, say outrageous things to him about his rabbinate or his marriage (both often challenging) only to have him break out into laughter, sometimes so strong, with such belly laughs, that we worried we were going to lose him right there for shortness of breath. He loved to laugh.

My father came to NYC and enrolled at Julliard in the early 1930's, having decided that law was not for him and that he might make a career as a violinist. At Julliard, he learned that he was good enough for Atlanta, but not quite good enough for New York! He returned to Atlanta to assist his father as Shearith Israel suffered the impact of the depression on the one hand and the development of competitive congregations on the other. He built a Yeshiva in my grandfather's home, using his brothers and sisters as his faculty and staff. He created a Hebrew School through which new members were attracted to the congregation. And while in Atlanta he continued to study with my grandfather, eventually receiving s'miha (Orthodox Rabbinic Ordination). My grandfather considered my father to be a great Talmudist, and my father was the only one of the Geffen sons to my grandfather's smiha.

In 1936, he returned to New York, where he was introduced by his younger sisters to a fellow Jr. Hadassah member, Ruth Lenore Rosenfield, whom he married in 1938. My mother came from a distinguished and wealthy family of New York Jews, and my father was always honored by his selection. In particular, he treasured his relationship with my mother's maternal grandfather, William Fischman, one of the great creative philanthropists of the New York Jewish community in the pre-crash years of the early 20th century. He was invited to become the family rabbi, performing weddings and funerals for the extended Rosenfield/Fischman/Marks
/Vogel family for many many years. He loved his father-in-law, Abner and felt respected and appreciated by his new family.

My father was always a friendly man, easy to conversation and very engaging and engaged. His oldest living friend, Dr. Gary Zucker, himself 89 years old, is here today. Gary was camp doctor and Sam camp rabbi at Camp Ranger in the summer of 1936. They remained affectionate towards each other for over 65 years.

As a father, he was always present and caring. Everyone around him always felt his love and caring in constant, never faltering ways. As a child we often went on trips together…to all the great sights of his adopted city that he loved so much.

Because of my mother's temperment, my father needed to find a pulpit that would not make demands on his wife and accept him, without the rebbetzin as the spiritual leader that he was. He found The Jewish Center of Forest Hills West in Queens, where he spent almost 40 years until he retired at age 85. He arrived there in 1948 to young families. He and they grew older together and during his long and active lifetime he ended up performing the funerals of most of the original members of that congregation. He raised the money to refurbish a bare sanctuary, hiring a noted Italian architect to design the classical and quite beautiful interior. He built a school building for a thriving Hebrew School, produced one of the most successful and active youth programs of the late 1950's and early sixties, and led his congregation in chanting and davening with his wonderful voice and his inherited collection of melodies from Kovno.

My father told me that he left the South because he could not tolerate riding on racially segregated buses. He arrived in New York with a Southern Georgia drawl. Almost all of my aunts and uncles still had it, even after they had moved north for many years. My father developed a speech pattern of New York, without the Southern drawl…he was uncomfortable being identified with the then blatant racism of the South.

When activism on the racial front came north, he found his activist calling. He created the first interracial, interreligious clergy group in Queens and chaired it together with his dear friend, the Reverend Holder for many years. He saw the importance of building Catholic-Jewish relations following the historic Nostrae Atate decision by the Vatican Council, and he co-chaired the Catholic-Jewish Relations board of Brooklyn Queens that contains the largest Catholic Archdiocese in the world. His sense of humor always played him well. Once, when invited for the first time to speak at a Mass in the beautiful Catholic Church in Forest Hills, he was lovingly introduced to the Catholic congregants by their Priest as "Father Geffen…I mean Rabbi Geffen." My father rose to the podium and graciously said that it was fine to call him "Father", and that in fact he was both father and grandfather as well!
There was deep friction in the Jewish community in Forest Hills when the city decided to build low-income housing on the vast plot of land at the corner of 108th Street and the Long Island Expressway. The overwhelmingly white, largely Jewish community did not want a forced desegregation of their neighborhood, which the project implicitly promised. My father led the religious forces in favor, going against the wishes of the members of his and other congregations who were afraid of the impact on their property values, their schools, etc. Today, the wisdom of that decision is evident in a Forest Hills/Rego Park area that is one of the most successfully and extensively racially and ethnically diverse communities in the City, if not in the whole country.

He understood early on the importance of communal action of behalf of Soviet Jewry and organized one of the most successful public events in the City at the famed West Side Tennis Stadium in Forest Hills. He was the first chair of the Queens Council for Soviet Jewry.

He was an extraordinary grandfather. Many of those here today from the Heschel School remember the excitement in Jonah and Daniel's eyes when Tuesdays, "Zeydeh Day", would roll around. He loved his grandchildren, Jonah, Daniel, and Nessa with all of his heart, and a very big heart it was (and by the way, called by his doctors, as late as just a few weeks ago, the heart of a 25 year old!). Nessa said recently that she regrets that she did not have the years of his best health to go on these weekly, (often feeding adventures) as his brothers had before her. But actually Nessa, you received two very special gifts from Zeydeh. He came out of the Home only a few times in the last 5 years. Twice to see you: once to watch you dance in the Nutcracker with the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center, and then last June when Ema and Jonah and Dan rolled him down Broadway from 106th Street to the Heschel Middle School on 91st Street to attend and receive an aliyah at your in-school Bat Mitzvah. All three of you were the world to him.

And of you Susie, his daughter-in-law, what can be adequately said. You gave him a complete and unconditional love. And it was and is totally authentic. You are really the last person he completely and fully recognized calling out "Susie!" when you arrived at services several weeks ago, although he was already not exactly sure who Peter or even Abe, his brother were, certainly not before being introduced.

For me, my father will always be present in the universe of chant and melody that he taught to me as a young boy. Torah, Haftarah, Megillot, Services for weekday, holiday and Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the blowing of the shofar, the welcoming of a new baby, the marriage of lovers, and the burial of the dead. Although I am neither Hazan nor Rabbi, my father gave me all of these skills…and when I sing, he will sing, forever. Will you indulge me as I sing one of the beautiful Shabbat zimirot that he taught me and that we sang together, just last week for the last time…a melody from Kovno via Atlanta to New York.

Zur Meshelo Achalnu…"Bless the source of all that sustains us…we have been given our fill even more than we could expect, and this is God's word and doing."My father was a kind and gentle soul, whose voice and spirit will live on in those of us who loved him. As he gave my grandfather to me, I hope you, Jonah, Daniel, and Nessa will learn more and more and incorporate more and more of the life of your beloved grandfather, our sweet Sam, Harav Shlomo Zalman ben Harav Tuviah, Teheh nishmathah baruch…may your soul be blessed zeydeh.