Jack Segal Ancestry (5 records)

Rabbi Steindel:

Jack Segal was a "rabbi's rabbi." He was an exemplar of rabbinic service to members and congregation as a close, caring and compassionate human being. He maintained his modest, sincere and always approachable personality to colleagues of all ages. I was privileged to intersect with his life and career at several special junctures.

When I first arrived at Beth El Congregation of the South Hills after Ordination in 1973, my members included several families who had known Jack well as their "young single rabbi from New York" back in Homestead Hebrew Congregation on the South Side of Pittsburgh. In fact, the parents of one family in particular rejoiced in the special relationship he had before his marriage to Toby with their Great Grandmother whom the children and grandchildren lovingly called "Double Bubbee" Coltin/Stein. She was among those who actually hosted and fed him in those Homestead years. And since I myself was a "rookie" and a "bachelor" from New York, they saw the immediate analog.

As I met my bride and we married in 1976, both Lisa and I continued to hear about the Homestead years and rabbinic successes of Rabbi Jack. At every RA Convention at which we met, he was personally friendly and expressed interested in Beth El's growth. He delighted when I adopted some of his famous program initials for new departures in synagogue programming---especially TN"T for Sunday Morning Tallit and Tephillin. I watched for his monthly synagogue Bulletin and knew there would always be something novel and worthwhile.

Only now, as the Jewish world joins Jack's loved ones and the Beth Yeshurun family in mourning his death, do I realize this one additional note: Rabbi Jack had arrived in Houston in 1965, when I began undergraduate studies at Columbia College and moved into the Senior Rabbinate at his shul when I was ordained in 1973. Two shiduch committees and countless meetings and life cycle events in between had united us forever.

May his memory be for a blessing