Remembering Rabbi Mariner
We are saddened to share the news of the death of Rabbi Rodney Mariner z’l, formerly convenor of the European Beit Din of the EUPJ. Rabbi Mariner was born in Australia in 1941 and graduated from Monash University Melbourne. He studied for the rabbinate at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, and in London at Leo Baeck College. In 1982 was appointed senior rabbi at Belsize Square Synagogue, an independent London congregation established by German and Central European German-speaking Jews in 1938. During his tenure, the synagogue maintained the unique blend of the timely and the timeless that characterized the Liberale Judaism of the middle and late 19th century in western Europe, especially in Germany, continuing up until its destruction by the end of the 1930s.
Rabbi Mariner served as the convenor of both the Beit Din of the UK Reform movement and the European Region of the WUPJ (today EUPJ) until his retirement in 2012. Rabbi Dr. Andrew Goldstein recalls: “Rodney ran the Beit Din with efficiency and, most importantly, with compassion. He begun his work for the Beit Din in the days before the fall of the Soviet Union. It was also the time before the increase in number of Progressive rabbis across the Western side of Europe and so the EBD was dealing largely with Germany, France and Austria; and the occasional candidate from further afield. On the couple of occasions, immediately after the end of communism, I brought cases from Czechoslovakia and witnessed Rodney dealing with the cases with understanding and especially his great sense of humour.”
Please see also the obituary from The Movement for Reform Judaism.
May Rabbi Mariner’s memory be for a blessing.
