Harvey J. Fields

Harvey J. Fields was born on August 26, 1935 in Portland, Oregon.[1][2] His grandfather settled in The Dakotas in the 1880s.[3] He had a brother and a sister.[1] He went to Jewish summer camps in Los Angeles, California.[1]

He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1958.[1][3] He studied Jewish Theology at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles and Cincinnati, Ohio.[1][3] He went on to receive a PhD in American foreign policy from Rutgers University.[1][3]

He served as a rabbi in Boston, Massachusetts and later in New Brunswick, New Jersey.[1][3] He then served as the rabbi of Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, the largest synagogue in Canada, from 1978 to 1982.[1][3]

He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1982 to become assistant rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, the oldest synagogue in Los Angeles.[1] He then served as its senior rabbi from 1985 to 2003.[1][2] During his rabbinate, he added music to the service, including the presence of a hazzan, or cantor.[1] He also encouraged rabbis to wear the tallit, or prayer shawl.[1]

He wrote A Torah Commentary for Our Times in 1995.[3] He also wrote a novel about his grandfather in The Dakotas.[3]

He served as the President of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.[1] Additionally, he served as the Chair of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation and the Interreligious Council of Southern California.[1] He also served on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel.[2][3] As the co-founder of the Interfaith Coalition to Heal L.A., he organised the "Hands Across L.A." march shortly after the 1992 Los Angeles riots.[1]

Thanks to a US$35 million charitable gift from philanthropist and art collector Sydney M. Irmas, he established the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Campus in West Los Angeles in 1998.[1][3] This reflection the historical move of Jews from East Los Angeles to West Los Angeles after the L.A. riots in Koreatown.[3]

He retired as rabbi of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in 2003, when he was replaced by Rabbi Steven Z. Leder.[1] He served as an academic consultant for the BBC documentary Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution' in 2005.[4]

He was married to Sybil Fields.[1] They had a son, Joel Fields, and two daughters, Debra Fields and Rachel Prishkolnik.[1] They resided in Beverly Hills, California.[1][5] They also spend a year living in Netanya, Israel.[3]

He died on January 23, 2014 in Beverly Hills, California.[1][3] His funeral took place at the Glazer Campus of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles.[5]