Reform rabbi Albert Axelrad dies in the US — Jerusalem Post
On September 18, Reform rabbi, community leader and political activist Albert S. Axelrad died. He led the Hillel Foundation at Brandeis University in the United States for 34 years. He was 87.
As The Jerusalem Post reports, Axelrad began working as Hillel director and university chaplain in 1965, shortly after receiving rabbinic ordination at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. He sought to ensure that students and faculty from different branches of Judaism had the conditions and resources for religious life at the university.
Religious pluralism
Colleagues remembered Axelrad as a supporter of religious pluralism. In the mid-1970s, he invited an Orthodox rabbi to the university and provided space for an Orthodox minyan. Axelrad himself supported egalitarian prayer, in which men and women have equal roles, but also attended Orthodox and other non-egalitarian services.
He was a co-founder of Havurat Shalom, an independent non-denominational community in Somerville, Massachusetts. The lay-led community became one of the models of egalitarianism for the havurah movement. Axelrad is also credited with creating in the 1970s the first bar and bat mitzvah preparation programs for adults who had not undergone the rite in childhood.
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Public activities
At the beginning of his work at Brandeis, Axelrad advised students who were considering conscientious objection to military service amid the anti-Vietnam War movement. He also advocated divestment from South Africa as a means of opposing apartheid.
The rabbi was an early supporter of a two-state solution through his work with Breira, the first national Jewish organization to advocate for an independent Palestinian state. He also took part in campaigns for the release of Soviet Jews and traveled to the USSR twice, where he met with Jewish “refuseniks.” Axelrad described this experience in the book “Refusenik: Voices of Struggle and Hope,” published in 1985.
After retiring from Brandeis University in 1999, he became the founding director of the Center for Spiritual Life and an adjunct professor of religious studies at Emerson College in Boston. The rabbi's wife, Bertha Axelrad, to whom he was married for 63 years, died in December 2024. He is survived by four children and several grandchildren.
