The former president of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Alfred Gottschalk, died Saturday at the age of 79.
Gottschalk lived in Germany as a child. He came with his family to the United States shortly after Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”). As a teen in the United States, he had aspirations to become a football player. However, he was inspired to become a Reform rabbi in the wake of the Holocaust. In 1972, Gottschalk was the first cleric of the Reform movement to give rabbinical ordination to women.