By MIKE ISAACS, Skokie Review
May 3, 2010
Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer forgives you for showing a trace of incredulity when he reveals that he is turning 65.
You’re not the first one to think he’s much younger. The rabbi of Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf doesn’t look anywhere near his age, but his 65th birthday was a cause for celebration this weekend at Chateau Ritz in Niles.
Photo: Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer blows out the candles during his 65th birthday celebration with the Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf Sunday. The celebration was held at Chateau Ritz Elegant Banquets. (Michael Jarecki/for Sun-Times Media)
“How old do you think I look?” Goldhamer frequently asks when the subject comes up. The answer is often 10 years younger — maybe even more.
“I hate to say that it’s probably genetics, but it probably is,” Goldhamer says days before his big bash.
“I think genetics is the most powerful reason why. I think the second reason why is prayer. I pray, and when you pray with confidence, you leave happy, when you’re happy, you’ll smile and when you smile, I guess you’ll look younger.”
It doesn’t hurt that Goldhamer, an Evanston resident, has remained so active and achieved so much on his road toward social security. He formed his synagogue before the building was even built in 1972, the only deaf synagogue in the United States. He founded and is president of the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf, which is now housed in the same Skokie building at 4435 Oakton St.
Given Goldhamer’s life accomplishments, you might expect him to have some family history with deaf people. But he didn’t. Instead, his mission became crystallized as a student at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.
“I was watching a television program and there was a minister who said there is a large community in America of deaf people that we can save for Christ,” he recalls. “He said the Jewish community has no rabbis for them. That minister changed my life.”
PHOTO: Rabbi Douglas Goldhamer dances with his wife Peggy Bagley during the Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf celebration for Goldhamer’s 65th birthday in Niles Sunday. (Michael Jarecki/for Sun-Times Media)
Before the minister’s statement, the rabbi had never met a deaf person. After that statement, Goldhamer pursued his rabbinic thesis on the status of the deaf and the Talmud.
Goldhamer came to Chicago as a student rabbi to lead the Hebrew Association for the Deaf, which included 11 families at the time. He wasn’t paid, and there was no permanent home where his small congregation could worship.
“We prayed in people’s homes and basements of synagogues for the first year,” he says. For the second year the new Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf used Emanuel Congregation in Chicago until the permanent Skokie building opened around 1974.
Needing money to live at first, Goldhamer believes that providence intervened. He won a local TV job, speaking and signing simultaneously with morning news updates. He began by making $6,000 but his salary jumped to $20,000 before his appearances were cancelled four years later.
By then though, Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf was growing steadily in membership. Goldhamer went to different churches to recruit Jewish deaf people knowing that many such religious people prayed at churches.
The Skokie synagogue has changed since then with expansion and an increase in services and activities. It now welcomes both hearing and deaf members, but its original mission remains strong.
About 70 percent of the 210 members can hear, but the synagogue’s Constitution mandates that the president and executive vice president be deaf. All sermons and other presentations must be delivered in sign language under synagogue rules.
“These rules are in place to ensure that there will always be a deaf presence,” Goldhamer said. “I recognized from the outset that there would be a tilt toward hearing members. I saw nothing wrong with that as long as there would be a synagogue where deaf people would have parity.”
The most famous “graduate” of the synagogue is undoubtedly Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin who was bat mitzvahed in Skokie.
In Matlin’s recent book, “I’ll Scream Later,” she talks about her experiences at Congregation Bene Shalom Hebrew Association of the Deaf.
“I remember saying to her that she wasn’t projecting enough,” the rabbi recalls about her bat mitzvah rehearsals. “I told her she wasn’t going to make it because she had to project more. It’s kind of embarrassing when I think about that now.”
Almost 20 years ago, Goldhamer founded the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf to expand his mission.
“I wanted to train people to be rabbis of deaf people all over the country because I was being invited to go all over the world to train,” he says. “I was the only rabbi doing this and I just couldn’t fly to all of these places anymore.”
Three rabbis will graduate from the seminary this year, one who is deaf and the other two who can hear.
If you didn’t know Goldhamer was a rabbi, you would guess another profession upon meeting him in his synagogue office.
He looks the part of academic, an impression greatly enhanced by the office he keeps. He wears the tweed jacket of a professor and sits in a comfortable brown chair, tilting his head back slightly to mull and ponder before answering questions with an intellectual fervor.
His room is lined in oak bookcases filled with books and trinkets ranging from religious items to a Cubs Bobblehead doll. And two of his best friends, Maggie and Bailey, sit at his feet. He brings the lovable and friendly dogs to work every day because there is no one to care for them at home.
Goldhamer’s wife works as an administrator at the synagogue so the mutts always have their “parents” nearby.
The impression of academic is not entirely wrong either. In1989 Goldhamer took a year off to become an associate professor of philosophy at Gaullaudet University in Washington D.C. where he taught in voice and sign language.
The lesson here is that it’s difficult to characterize Goldhamer in any one way. He’s a rabbi, yes, a friend and advocate for religious deaf people, sure, but also an academic and an animal lover and a writer and an artist. He wishes he had more for his art, which includes expressionist works rendered on animal skins.
He’s also a healer, working with congregation members in one-on-one prayer, helping those who are struggling gain strength from prayer.
That’s a lot of life for someone who just turned 65, which is why Goldhamer admits he isn’t so happy about his latest birthday.
“I don’t mean to insult anyone but 65 seems old to me,” he says. “I’m active but I know inside I’m 65 and that means most of the years have been played out. From that perspective, I’m not thrilled because I like life, I like living and I enjoy it.”
On the other hand, the rabbi says, people listen to him more now.
“When I say something and they learn I’m 65, they stop and listen because they think I must be wiser at this age,” he says. “I’m serious about that. So I guess there is one benefit.”
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