After 26 years as the high-profile rabbi of Orlandos Congregation of Liberal Judaism, Larry Halpern left Central Florida earlier this year in large part to support the career of the woman he loves.
Halpern said there were other, unspecified reasons for his departure, but he did acknowledge that the move gave his wife, Rabbi Ariel Stone-Halpern, the opportunity to achieve her goal to get back into the pulpit. Rabbi Stone-Halpern is the new associate rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, a reform synagogue in Portland, Ore., with a membership of 1,000 families.
Since Larry Halpern assumed the pulpit at the Congregation of Liberal Judaism in 1970, the temple grew from 150 families to nearly 800 families and embarked on a $1.3 million expansion campaign. A hallmark of his pastorate was the observation and celebration of life cycle events: birth, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, funerals and holidays.
Beyond the walls of his synagogue, Halpern was equally active in Jewish affairs. He established the Jewish chaplaincy program at Rollins College and was the only rabbi to serve as president of the Jewish Federation of Central Florida. He also led campaigns in support of Soviet Jews and of Israel.
Halpern was also a civic and political activist who was frequently in the spotlight. He served on the Mayors Commission on Civil Rights in the early 1970s and later founded the Mayors Commission on Human Rights. He served on the committee that brought public radio to Central Florida.
In 1995 Halpern joined with a group of like-minded clergy to establish a local chapter of the Interfaith Alliance, an ecumenical organization, which the rabbi said was needed to create a religious response to that of the right. Despite Orlandos conservative atmosphere, Halpern said he always found there were people who were willing to work with me not as many as I would have hoped willing to struggle and reach out.
Last December, Halpern announced that he was leaving the Congregation of Liberal Judaism to move to Atlanta, and earlier this year he was feted by a gala sendoff dinner in June at the Marriott Expo Center that drew numerous community leaders.
One of the speakers at the dinner was the Rev. Jim Armstrong, of the First Congregational Church in Winter Park. Larry Halpern represented all things good in this community, Armstrong said in a recent interview. He championed the causes sometimes unpopular that extended ministries of compassion and understanding to the oft-neglected and oppressed. He believed in civility in discourse and respected the views of those with whom he disagreed. He is sorely missed in Central Florida.
For a while, Halpern busied himself with plans to establish a Jewish funeral home in Atlanta, teaching classes at the Atlanta Jewish Community Center and a local Reform synagogue. But plans for the funeral home didnt work out, Halpern said, and when Ariel Stone-Halpern was offered the pulpit in Oregon the couple moved again.
What was unspoken but widely understood in the Orlando Jewish community was that Ariel Stone-Halpern could not expect to get a pulpit in Central Florida, for a number of reasons.
At 33, she is more than two decades younger than her husband. Larry Halpern had officiated at both her conversion to Judaism when she took the name Ariel and at her bat mitzvah. She had served as a rabbinic intern at the Congregation of Liberal Judaism in the mid-1980s, before attending seminary.
In 1989, when Halpern the father of two grown children divorced his wife of 25 years and began dating Stone, some in the congregation disapproved. The couple married in 1995.
For one of the few times in nearly 30 years, Larry Halpern was not busy working on his sermons for this weekends High Holidays. During the holiday services, Ill be sitting in the congregation, kvelling over my wife, he said, using the Yiddish term for brimming with pride. I even volunteered to be an usher.
Halpern still maintains his ties to the Orlando community, flying into town in August to conduct a bar mitzvah for old friends. As for the future, Halpern said he is looking for work in the Portland area. He said he would absolutely be willing to share a pulpit, even as associate rabbi to his wifes senior position.
Shes the best rabbi I know.