December 27, 2019

Steve Gutow

Steve Gutow was born on February 25, 1949, at Baylor Hospital in Dallas. His parents, Ruth Elaine (Shankman) and Albert Gutow, grew up and fell in love in Detroit, though his mother was born in Toronto and his father in Newark. His paternal grandparents, Abraham and Rose Gutow, had come from the Poland and Russia region to Newark before settling in Detroit, where his grandfather worked as a butcher and served as an observant, scholarly presence at an Orthodox congregation. Steve was the second youngest of four children, alongside brothers Billy and Andrew and sister Marcia. His younger brother Andrew died in a bicycle accident in England in 1992, and his sister Marcia died after a long struggle with early onset Alzheimer's.

Steve grew up in University Park and later near the Jewish Community Center, attending Mrs. Varner's school, Hyer, Dealey, and Arthur Kramer Elementary, then Benjamin Franklin junior high and Hillcrest High School. He became bar mitzvah at Shearith Israel and was deeply involved in AZA, serving as a leader of Kaplan chapter. With a close circle of friends he helped start the Christmas Day Classic, a beloved touch football tradition that has continued for decades across generations. He was profoundly shaped by his mother's Democratic activism, including work for Kennedy, and by a love of poetry sparked by a seventh grade teacher. He studied at the University of Michigan, SMU, and the University of Texas, graduating with a degree in history, then hitchhiked across America and around the world.

Steve earned a law degree from the University of Texas and practiced law in Dallas, staying active in civic and environmental committees and chairing the Jewish Community Relations Council. He organized progressive city politics in Austin, later ran a statewide coordinated campaign, launched an AIPAC regional effort across the Southwest, and moved to Washington to found the National Jewish Democratic Council. Feeling he had lost his poetic and spiritual center, and moved by experiences in Cambodia and at Angkor Wat, he entered the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in his fifties. He later served a synagogue in St. Louis, led a national umbrella of Jewish community relations organizations for more than a decade, and now, as a research scholar at New York University, builds interfaith leadership groups. He offers a lifelong message to open one's heart, listen, and love others.

He offers a lifelong message to open one's heart, listen, and love others.

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