By Leonard Felson

WEST HARTFORD — Rabbi Yitzchok Adler, a first-generation American whose German-Jewish parents survived the Holocaust, says he doesn’t remember wanting to do anything else with his life but be a rabbi. It was a calling deep within him, and it marked “a small part I could play to repair the damage of the Shoah [the Holocaust],” he says.

On June 9, Beth David Synagogue, where he is the spiritual leader, will honor Adler and his wife, Leslie, for their 18 years of service in West Hartford at a “Chai Tribute Dinner.”

The couple and their three children arrived in West Hartford in 1995 from Jacksonville, Fla., where Adler had served as the Orthodox rabbi for 11 years.  Since then, Adler has been a pillar of the greater Hartford Jewish community. “I’m careful to describe myself not as an Orthodox rabbi, but as a rabbi who is Orthodox, and my synagogue not as an Orthodox synagogue, but rather as a synagogue that is Orthodox. “ His emphasis is his belief that a rabbi and a synagogue not be identified by methods of worship and observance as much as by the commitment to be available for all who seek Torah, Judaism and a spiritual community.

In addition to serving as Beth David’s rabbi, Adler serves as community mohel, performing the ritual brit milah not just in the Hartford area, but all across the state and beyond. He also serves as rabbinic administrator of the Hartford Kashrut Commission, the supervisory agency that monitors kosher food products sold in the region.

Adler was also a founding board member of the Hebrew High School of New England that serves the communities of Hartford, New Haven and Springfield, Mass. and is located in West Hartford.  In addition, he is a faculty member at JT Connection, greater Hartford’s supplementary Jewish high school, and is founding chaplain of the Jewish Hospice of the Hartford Hospital VNA.

Adler has acted as a mentor for rabbinical students studying at Yeshiva University and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, both Orthodox seminaries in New York, bringing the future rabbis to Beth David for training.

Within the local Jewish community, Adler has been an active member of the Greater Hartford Rabbinic Fellowship, which represents clergy from all Jewish denominations. He also has been a driving force among clergy members for several popular inter-congregational worship services, bringing together members of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and other independent groups. At one point, 16 congregations gathered as one; a way Adler’s wife, Leslie, says her husband has fostered “a place of commonality.” Over the years too, Adler has maintained warm relations with rabbis from all of the area’s synagogues. He says he seeks to establish bridges with as many colleagues as possible, regardless of denominational identification.

“Orthodoxy loses nothing,” says Adler, “when it acknowledges the virtues of everything that is legitimately Jewish. Everybody gains when Jews walk arm in arm with common spirit and common purpose.”

Leslie Adler has been involved in education at Hebrew Academy and in public schools in West Hartford and Farmington. She also has been involved with the West Hartford mikveh, as well as the Chevra Kadisha of Greater Hartford, an organization that ensures the bodies of men and women are prepared for burial according to Jewish tradition. In addition, she teaches religious school at Temple Sinai in Newington and tutors students in Judaica.

All three of the Adler children attended the Bess and Paul Sigel Hebrew Academy in Bloomfield and the Hebrew High School of New England. Their eldest, Ariela, married and the mother of her own daughter, lives in New York; Talya, also married and the mother of two daughters, made aliyah and lives in Jerusalem. Their youngest, Hillel, is a student at Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Adler says whether he’s performing a life cycle event, delivering a lecture or teaching a class, “the subtext of everything I do is the strengthening of the fiber that we call the Jewish community.”

Adler was born in Manhattan, but his family moved to West Haven when he was three. Six years later, the Adlers moved to Atlanta, where he grew up. His mother, a widow, still lives there, as do his two brothers and their families.

He went to yeshiva in Memphis because, at the time, it was the best option that was even remotely close to home. He says he could have gone to Yeshiva University in New York, but the dean in Memphis “promised my parents that anything I could get in New York, he could provide in Memphis.”

The move to West Hartford came because he and his wife were looking for a Jewish community where they didn’t have to send their children away for high school.

“It was simply a blessing that the opportunity to come to West Hartford presented itself specifically at the time when we felt we needed to make a change for our family.”

Adler says perhaps the single most important change to the community landscape was the Hebrew High School of New England.

“Sending high school age students to Jewish schools has been the bane of many suburban Jewish families. It causes grief for many families living in smaller suburban areas. West Hartford is the largest Jewish community in which our children lived as they grew into young adults. My wife and I have considered every day in West Hartford to have been a blessing. We are looking forward to the future. We want to guide others towards the blessings that make this community such a wonderful place to raise a family.”

For more information about the Tribute Dinner June 9, contact Beth David Synagogue (860) 236-1241 or galaevent@bethdavidwh.org.

Leonard Felson is a freelance writer living in West Hartford.­­­