Rabbi Dr. Murray Berger
Murray Berger was born in Brooklyn in 1937 and moved to Cleveland with his family around the beginning of World War II, where his father worked as a welder in a defense factory. Both of his parents were born in a small town in the border region of Poland and came to the United States independently in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His mother, a gifted seamstress, gained entry through family connections, while his father made a difficult journey by way of Cuba and Mexico before settling first in Boston and later in New York, where the couple reconnected at a social event and married. Yiddish was Berger's first language, and he had to learn English when he started school in Cleveland. Years later, he and his wife discovered a surviving relative through connections traced to their parents' hometown.
Berger attended Western Reserve University in Cleveland and then transferred to the University of Cincinnati so he could pursue undergraduate and rabbinical studies together. While in a Jewish fraternity, he decided to become a rabbi, inspired by fellow students who wanted to learn more about their heritage. He gained early hands-on experience leading student congregations in Ohio, Georgia, and Alabama during a turbulent period in the South. Ordained in 1963, he married the next day and volunteered for the military as a chaplain, receiving a direct commission and serving at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He remained in the reserves until age 60, retiring with the rank of colonel and later serving as national deputy chaplain of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA.
After congregational positions in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Montgomery, Alabama, and Terre Haute, Indiana, Berger came to Dallas in 1976 as associate rabbi at Temple Shalom, drawn by the desire to raise his children in a larger Jewish community. He completed his PhD and opened a full-time counseling practice with his wife, who holds a doctorate in school psychology. Over the years he served or helped found numerous area congregations, including ones in Carrollton, Sherman, Arlington, and Abilene. He watched the Dallas Jewish community grow dramatically in size and cohesion. Married more than 50 years and a rabbi for 50 years, he and his wife raised three children, one of whom became a rabbi and military chaplain.
Full Transcript
Rabbi Murray 1937 Brooklyn New York that's where you were born but how long before you left that's what they tell me that's what they tell you how long before you left um I guess it was right at the beginning of uh World War II uh so you were in Brooklyn then for a couple of years do you have yeah no memories whatsoever no memories whatsoever except those that were told to me by my parents do you know why you guys went to Cleveland it was I think for a job opportunity um my uh something was available in uh Cleveland uh my dad uh was of
draft age and uh but he had a skill that uh he got a an exemption from going into the military and that's how he got to Cleveland Ohio also my uncle and his family lived in Cleveland at that time over there so we had some family over there what did your dad do for living in Cleveland he was a welder in a defense Factory during World War II over there tell me about your mom both my parents were born in Poland and um made their way over um during the late 20s and early 30s my mom was um a very small lady uh in stature
but she had a big heart and she was a wonderful seamstress MH and um when times were hard she worked full-time as a seamstress uh in Cleveland and one of the manufacturing companies over there now did your folks know each other before they came here or did they meet in the states they knew each other from the small town where they were in Poland but their I guess their lives uh separated uh as they grew older um my mom came to the United States before my dad she had access over here because my great-grandfather was a mamad and so she was able to get in
uh to the country uh my dad uh didn't have those connections I guess it was uh right before World War I and the conscription was on in uh Poland and in Russia the town that they lived in it depended what day you it was it could be Poland Russia uh Germany it was right in that triangle over there little town by the name ofin the family decided that um it'd be better if he U departed and was not in the military um there was no opportunity to get into the United States at that time so um someone in the town had a daughter A young
daughter and her teens that they wanted to get to uh to Cuba as a lot of uh Jews used to go uh to Cuba and Mexico to try to get closer to the United States to someday get into the country um hired my dad to be her husband uh and escort her her uh on the trip to uh to Cuba there was a lot of white slavery going on at that time um so that's what he did and he wound up in Cuba and uh uh went into his own little business in Cuba and then went to Mexico and uh ultimately was able to get
his citizenship papers and come into the United States but that was in the 30s already and I guess they used to have all sorts of Socials and dances in New York and and uh uh my dad and uh mom met at again at one of those events and I guess decided to get married do you know why your dad now in Mexico decided to go all the way to New York when he came to the states he didn't go to New York he went to Boston uh because again he had a relative over there and he worked as a uh shoe maker uh in uh
in Boston and um for some reason I don't know what moved up to New York did you know your grandparents at all I I knew my grandmother on my father's side she came to the states she was in the states um yeah uh again I I believe came in the in the late 20s or 30s and I had some family in Denver um and uh she settled there were my dad had uh two sisters who came over from uh from Poland and uh she decided to settle in Denver where they were now do you know did your um folks ever have communication with the family
still back in Europe yeah I guess so through the mail but through letters but of course with the with what was happening in that part of the world they they lost track I guess it was about uh 10 years ago my wife and I were at a rabinal conference in Houston and uh one of the programs was held at the Holocaust Museum and we're walking down the hall and there's an exhibition over there and I I just walked right pasted it but Bobby and my wife said you know that's the town where your parents are from I said oh no that you know that that
that can't be so um she said let's pursue it so we found out who who was um I guess they were photographs and things like that who would have more information about that we checked it out and uh we found out that indeed that was the town um gentleman in Houston owns a uh photography uh studio and his dad was what you call the town photographer over there it was Marvin K studios in Houston it's interesting how it became Marvin Kay his father came to the United States and his name was Moshe Kaplan so he couldn't get into the business he switched the names around
and it became K Martin instead of mosha kapan about five years later I get a message from Paris on the internet from someone and she says are you the Kaplan family from uh from Shin there were three Kaplan families uh the one that I was looking for her and so we I guess remin it turns out it's my mother's sister uh guess niece who had survived the Holocaust man and uh it's quite Eerie getting a a message out of out of nowhere over there because we had thought everyone anyway that was beginning we still in connection over there so let's go back now when you
were a little boy in Cleveland yes talk to me about what life was like for you what' you do for fun in New York where I was apparently um we were in a Jewish neighborhood and yish was my uh my mother tongue so when I came to Cleveland and I had to go to school it was sort of a traumatic experience because I didn't know very much of English over there so I had to I had to learn English uh I guess while I while I was in Cleveland and I guess my mother tongue sort of Switched on us I remember we lived in an
interesting neighborhood in Cleveland that it was much more segregated than it is here in in in Dallas there was a Jewish neighborhood and a black neighborhood and an Italian neighborhood and we were sort of right on the edge of both of those we lived in the Jewish neighborhood where almost everybody was Jewish but at this at the school it was a sort of a intersection of all these neighborhoods I remember um went religious school I was enrolled in a religious school where I would go after school for a couple of hours and in Cleveland um they had uh what was called the Cleveland Bureau of
Jewish Education which was a central organization of Jewish Education for everyone who was Jewish in the community who wasn't who didn't want to go to any of the synagogue or Temple uh uh schools so I I remember some of the resentful times that I had uh going over there I went to a uh high school that was uh I would say about uh 40% uh uh Jewish and 60% uh black what was that high school I went to Junior High which was uh Patrick Henry junior high and I also uh went to um Glenville uh High School uh in high school is is it then
you decided you wanted to uh pursue to become a rabbi no no no way at that time um we were the only thing I knew is I wanted to go to university and uh uh we didn't know if that was possible because of the E economics involved over there it wasn't until I got in at University and fraternity and things like that that I decided I wanted to become a rabbi my cousin also is a rabbi um he was living in New York so I had sort of had a a precedent for that my parents even though they came from Europe were what I would
call as U uh pseudo Orthodox I guess if they had the economic freedom to to be Orthodox they would have done that but the reality was that it was impossible my dad used to say when I get older and retire I'm going to live my life the way that I really should have left Liv my my life over but he was a pretty liberal guy we um the temple where ABA hillo silver was the rabbi over there used to have its uh which was a reformed congregation uh used to have its main service on Sunday morning and uh he um he probably was the most
prominent Rabbi in the country and a great preacher great preacher and the major service was Sunday morning so my dad used to take me over there on he used to go to the Sho when he could on on on on shavas and on Sunday morning go over there and uh that was that was interesting and I still remember vividly that one time we went over there and my dad uh wanted to put on a yamaka uh to go into services and um they wouldn't let them into Services uh it was a different world and over there and uh so we never went back to the
temple in Cleveland again over there but that was a good experience I enjoyed that let me regress for one second World War II broke out when you were a young boy how did it affect your family I mean we were affected like everyone else okay as far as rationing and everything like that but I don't remember anything or experiencing anything at all with regard to what was going on with the Jewish situation in Europe or anything like that right okay well let's move forward then University of Cincinnati that was my second school I went to uh case well at that time it was Western Reserve
University in Cleveland first and the reason for that was a matter of uh economics as as I said um it was again it was a different world I just made an application and put down my money for for what it got I went right into school no no problems over there I never took a formalized test until I had to get into the PHD program never had a uh anything like that um so he I I stayed uh at the University for two years I was in the fraternity it's no longer in existence anymore F sigad Jewish fraternity um it was there that I decided
that I wanted to become a rabbi because I was with a bunch of Jewish guys who were searching and they didn't know anything at all about their I guess their Jewish Heritage I guess that uh was the uh impetus that got me interested in being a rabbi namely the opportunity to I guess help people learn about who they were you still speak to these gentlemen when when I went back to Cleveland uh maybe five or 10 years ago I I met with one or two of them but uh I'm 76 years old and I was probably the youngest one in the fraternity at that time
they ever know that they were the reason you became a rabbi I think a couple of them well two of my closest friends and they were uh uh groomsman at my wedding went on to be a u prominent Physicians and one of them I'm still in touch with and when did you meet your wife I was at Hebrew Union College well I was sort of in retical school I I transferred from um uh Western Reserve to University of Cincinnati so that I could go into what they had then and which was a dual program where you could finish your undergraduate uh degree while you were
working on your graduate degree while coming around um my parents um uh eventually uh went into sort of the real estate business um in Cleveland uh they decided to move to Florida and so uh they were in Florida I was in Cincinnati and the business so to speak was in in Cleveland so since I was closest to there I became I guess the the business manager while I was in Rabino school and uh it was a maybe a four or five hour drive from uh Cincinnati to Cleveland so I was in Cleveland one weekend and I went in on a on a Friday I was
feeling lonely so I went down to the hillow house at Western Reserve and there was this uh goodlook gal over there and uh I thought I can't lose anything by uh seeing if uh we'd like to go out on a date that evening and that's where it begins and when did you guys get married in 1963 we uh were married the day after I was ordained so that was a full weekend then you volunteered to the Army yeah if you're a clergy person uh in order to get into the military you have to volunteer uh I guess the school and the reform movement of that
time the draft was on at that time um sort of uh um felt that it was a uh a responsibility to the Jewish Community to have some rabbis in there and um I was one I believe of of five in my class uh that uh ordained uh ordained that right after ordination went into the the military um I can honestly say that if uh I had my brothers I probably would not have done that but there was uh a necessity uh a moral necessity let's say um to do that and so I went into the military in 63 right after we were married got a
direct commission as a that time I think a first lieutenant uh had uh time for about uh 3 weeks uh honeymoon uh packed up our stuff uh the chaplain school was in Fort Hamilton uh uh New York and Brooklyn at that time went over there for two weeks and as on six no8 weeks and as luck would have it uh my first assignment was at Fort Sil Oklahoma right down the road and we were there for 2 and 1/2 years and that's where my first child was born um it was was the beginning of uh Vietnam I was young and stubborn I wanted an an
assignment in Europe for for two years the military would only give me three years uh I said farewell as far as active duty is concerned I still remained in the military and the reserves and stayed on until age 60 and ultimately retired with the with the rank of Colonel okay well tell us about your career as a revi know when I got to Cincinnati I was a junior in college but also actually a secondy year uh rabinal student uh the reason being I had a uh an excellent Hebrew background and I was able in a sense to pass off a year because of my background
and uh part of the uh training at the school was uh to send uh rabbis out on student pulpits so I guess I was 22 no yeah may I can't in that age before I had my uh first student congregation for the high holidays uh and that was in I remember in Ashtabula Ohio and that was the beginning my retical hands-on experience um did that for every year that that I was there so I had some interesting uh situation I was in the South for 2 years when things were really interesting burning of synagogues Etc in that part of the world I had a student
congregation in Brunswick Georgia I had a student congregation in Aniston Alabama besides other congregations where it was a little less uh hectic as far as the uh political situation so that was the beginning of uh uh I guess my rabinal career I was I was just a kid right after ordination went into the military like for 2 and a half years and then began uh I guess uh full-time Rabin experiences was your first position there in West Virginia I was in parkerburg West Virginia yes yeah I still keep in touch with some of the people over there that was a long long time ago you
spent how many years there four years what what brought you guys to Dallas we were in um terod Indiana mhm uh and had gone over there because uh I went from parkerburg I think to to Montgomery Alabama which was an interesting experience I was in a Safara congregation over there got interested again in studies and I didn't want to get into Jewish studies so I got into uh therapy and counseling and while I was in Montgomery I um finished a master's degree in counseling from uh Troy un State University and then I was really hooked I wanted to get a PhD I was accepted at
Auburn uh the the catch on it was that they wanted me to spend a year at least a year on campus over there which was about 80 miles from uh Montgomery I had three kids at the same time I had a congregation just impossible so um we looked for uh a position where in a college or university Town um and we found uh terot Indiana Indiana State University and that was primarily why I went there and the congregation knew that uh I wanted to work on my PhD while I was a full-time Rabbi in uh in terol so that's what happened finished up four years
um all but dissertation um then out of the blue I remember it was some morning I get a telephone call from an old friend of mine from school um Rabbi Sal besser who was the uh senior Rabbi at Temple Shalom over there and he said would you be interested in um uh coming to Dallas and we had talked about because our kids were going into their uh pre-teen years and uh we wanted to come to a community where there was a a fairly large uh Jewish Community right well things evolved that's what happened I I came here to Temple Shalom where I was associate Rabbi
for four years I think that was in 76 as a family we decided that I should finish my PhD and that I um look into other possibilities so I was in the military at that time I think I was a major a lieutenant colonel uh at that time the budget for the military had all sorts of money roaming around uh I found uh an opportunity to uh go for uh a year on active duty at uh Brook Army Medical Center uh in the clinical pastoral education program so I did that finished my PhD did you go into private practice a little bit into private practice
and then uh took this uh uh internship or whatever you want to call it at Fort Sal and basically I commuted back and forth on uh during during the week and on weekends and then when we came back uh we decided to open our own private practice fulltime and that was you and your wife yes she has a PHD in uh uh School of Psychology you're still doing that yeah when slowing down a little bit when I um res resigned from Temple Shalom and went into uh I still uh decided to keep be part of the um rabinal Jewish community over here so that uh
I have served as Rabbi at some of the congregations over over here I was uh the rabbi at uh near tamid and in uh Carolton uh for a couple years I have been the rabbi at uh Sherman Texas for several years when uh the congregation at uh in Arlington I believe it's Beth Shalom was in its founding stages I was the rabbi over there I I I guess I fathered several congregations I also when I got back from the military I was on a special tour during the Iraqi situation first Iraqi situ I came back um I was the rabbi also at that time it
was H EMT and uh uh helped to build that into uh an Torah and the vibrant congregation that's and I still go to abalene Texas for the high holidays and for for Yan so uh I I really have uh well and you're also uh uh the national Deputy chaplain for the Jewish War veterans of the USA right and I just uh I I'm Al I all there the military order of world wars just had their International Convention here in Dallas this weekend so I'm going to be the deputy chaplain of of that organization tell me about your involvement with the Jewish Community here that went
with the job when I when I came how have you seen the community evolv now first of all the size when we came over here I think there were five congregations um so that it has grown from uh grown immensely right in numbers since we came over here and was pretty divisive there there were uh there wasn't um compared to what there is now there I didn't see very much uh cohesion except on emergency things like uh Israel rallies or things like that it everybody was in their own Camp so size and I guess uh Community uh uh cohesiveness is is different I think I've
seen the community change also as far as observance at at that time um when I I came here I believe in 76 if you took a survey of the Jewish Community one you'd find that almost everyone was associated with a congregation um I think the number Jewish people at that time might have been 15,000 uh folks uh secondly that if uh in the survey you asked uh Jewish folks U what branch of Judaism it was it was primarily toward the reform or the conservative the Orthodox Community was very small uh I think as I've lived here I think that the growth percentage wise has been
primarily in the traditional uh portion of the community I think that the Jewish Community mirr the general community in the sense that when I came here Dallas was a big urban area but was not a large uh sophisticated uh Metropolis so I think that change has occurred here in in Dallas as well it's uh it's become one of the major cities in the world as opposed to a major city in Texas you were at Desert Storm I was not there okay I was on duty okay at that Desert Storm actually we were in Israel one right before it began and we had tickets home on
one of the uh Airlines other than L everybody canceled their flights out of Israel wow so and I had to get back and I was going to go to the Embassy and get on a military plane with bombing and ultimately L all the the reason they stopped the insurance companies would not insure the planes oh at that time so so the airlin stopped and the only one that was flying was L yeah so it worked out better because we got a better flight on L but that was an a scary situation being in Israel at that time what was the happiest time in your life
our wedding day we've been married for more than 50 years now we both worked at it over there and still do to make make it happen um the birth of our our children uh my first visit to Israel my parents took care of our kids and there was a conference of uh about a week in Israel and we went there as attendees at the conference over there but the rest of the time we were we really went as the college kids and and so uh we just took our backpacks and at that time it was safe to hit shik all over the country and it
was it was a a real a real good time over there first child was born in Lon Oklahoma H Carro at Fort S where were you other two born Allan was born in parkerburg West Virginia and hi was born in um Montgomery Alabama Karen was ordained as a rabbi she's now an active duty as a Chaplain actually at uh at Fort Sill my son Allan he's married uh they live in Denver he is an attorney and works uh in the government of I guess opes and Social Security under fraud investigation so be careful and uh Heidi has a um a degree in h social work
she is married and she went to Atlanta originally she was the uh assistant director of uh the hillow house at Emory University uh been there for many years met her husband currently she's a life coach and uh she also uh does some psychological work uh with with testing and stuff like that for psychologist now in your lifetime you've lived through so many momentous occasions of course as a young child World War II came along uh you were in the service during Vietnam time of course there was beginning the Kennedy assassination um uh something good the moon landing the first time in ' 69 and of
course the tragedy of 9/11 was there something that really stood out on the national scene that really affected you I know exactly where I was when Kennedy was assassinated because I was on active duty at that time at Fort Sill the base just went into uh high security we had a special memorial service uh at the chapel we had an ecumenical service and then we had a special service for the Jewish Community we had a lot of Jewish servicemen uh at Fort S that was a uh Advanced Training Center for artillery it was during the draft and it wasn't unusual to have a couple of
hundred guys and g a few gals at that time at Services uh for Shabbat air of Shabbat and Saturday morning 911 I remember vividly because it's so close but and also it was uh had a a personal scare our our um son and Grandson had were visiting uh from Denver and I drove out to the airport on 911 early in the morning to put them on a plane to Denver uh to go home that morning and I came home and turned on the TV and saw and we couldn't get in touch with they were in the air sometime in the middle of what was going
on so uh they were the last plane that landed at uh at the Denver Airport so there was a period of time where um unknown unknown yeah you and Bobby have three kids MH four grandkids MH what advice does Grandpa Rabbi want to leave to the Next Generation I I just encourage each of them to um to be uh true to themselves and to maximize whatever potential they had with in them the Jewish roots are important because uh uh for me and for Bobby if we ride the given or now if we ride the bicycle of Life there the uh the the training wheels that
keep us uh going uh where we might fall if uh we didn't have that uh for for support I would hope that uh we've been good m models in a sense to uh so that they had an example of what we thought would is I guess the the most enjoyable and productive way of of of living 50th year is a rabbi yes just uh celebrated that uh in June as a matter of fact congratulations thank you thanks for doing this today you're quite welcome that's a good job great job thank you