GELB, MAX

GELB, MAX (1907–1987), U.S. rabbi. Born in Austria, Gelb immigrated to New York City with his parents at the age of seven. He was educated at Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and Yeshiva Yitzhak Elchanan, earned his B.A. from City College in 1929, and was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1932. His first pulpit was in Harrisburg, PA (1933–39), a congregation that was undergoing financial difficulties as well as problems of morale in post-depression America. He strengthened the education and youth activities of his congregation, thereby gaining the support of their parents. He left that congregation in significantly better condition than when he had assumed the pulpit. He moved to White Plains, NY, where he was rabbi of Temple Israel, a suburban congregation before the onset of suburbanization. Within a decade membership had grown fourfold. He fought for strong Jewish programming within his congregation at a time when other rabbis were seeking to attract young people without regard to the content of what happened once they entered the building. He became a leader in Westchester Jewish communal life. An ardent Zionist, he was president of the White Plains Region of the Zionist Organization of America and president of the West Council of Rabbis. He helped establish with Orthodox colleagues the first day school in Westchester County and then broke with the school to establish in 1965 the Solomon Schechter School, more akin to his own brand of Conservative Judaism. Among his achievements was finding the compromise language by which the Conservative liturgy rewrote the morning blessing, recited by men praising God for not making them a woman and women praising God for making them according to His will. His solution was as elegant as it was simple. Both men and women praise God for creating them in the Divine image. He edited Understanding Conservative Judaism, essays by Robert Gordis, which were part of a Rabbinical Assembly series on Conservative Jewish Thought. Upon his death, he was still working on the English translation of Abraham Joshua Heschel's Torah Min Shamayim, a project that was brought to conclusion by his successor at Temple Israel, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, and published as Heavenly Torah: As Refracted by the Generations (2005). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: P.S. Nadell, Conservative Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook (1988); Proceedings of the Rabbinical Assembly (1989). (Michael Berenbaum (2nd ed.)