Who [is Mark Hurvitz?]

Mark Samuel Hurvitz

I was born in Spring­field, MA but grew up in Los Ange­les, CA. I have had an extreme­ly var­ied involve­ment in Jew­ish life. I attend­ed a Work­man’s Cir­cle Sun­day School for a cou­ple of years but became a Bar Mitz­vah and was con­firmed at a Con­ser­v­a­tive syn­a­gogue. As a teenag­er, I was involved in AZA, Habon­im, and Young Judaea, the last of which I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el to and study in Israel for a year fol­low­ing high school grad­u­a­tion in 1964.

After return­ing from Israel, I received a Bach­e­lor of Arts degree in music, with a focus on the recorder, from Cal­i­for­nia State Col­lege Los Ange­les in 1972. My com­po­si­tion “Feb­ru­ary, 1969” [Feb­ru­ary 1969 (per­for­mance ver­sion of May 22–23, 1969): Ten refrig­er­a­tors that cycle at least twice an hour are plugged in and arranged around a pedes­tri­an path­way in two fac­ing semi­cir­cles of five each with the uncov­ered motors fac­ing the cen­ter. With­in the semi­cir­cles, the refrig­er­a­tors must be near­ly touch­ing each oth­er.] was per­formed at the Cal State LA Envi­ron­men­tal Events Fine Arts Festival.

My com­po­si­tion “ShRQ” for unac­com­pa­nied alto recorder was pub­lished in “Tree” mag­a­zine, a jour­nal devot­ed to Jew­ish mys­ti­cism, edit­ed by David Meltzer (some of whose poems I had pub­lished in Davka).

Dur­ing the ear­ly 1970’s I played recorder with “The Fair­fax Five” a group of young Jew­ish activists who per­formed at var­i­ous street fairs in the Jew­ish community.

In addi­tion to these, my broth­er and I had a week­ly radio pro­gram on lis­ten­er-sup­port­ed Paci­fi­ca radio sta­tion KPFK called “Catch­ing Up”. Dur­ing one of these evenings, we per­formed (with the lis­ten­ing audi­ence) my com­po­si­tion Decem­ber 1968.

Dur­ing that peri­od I became a leader in Hashomer Hatzair, and after the June 1967 war in Israel, I became involved in the Jew­ish stu­dent move­ment of the peri­od. My great­est involve­ment was my par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Jew­ish Rad­i­cal Com­mu­ni­ty which held week­ly Shab­bat cel­e­bra­tions and attempt­ed to raise the con­scious­ness of the Jews of Los Ange­les regard­ing such issues as the Viet­nam War and the farm work­ers’ strike as well as Jew­ish edu­ca­tion and the cru­cial role of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple in a peace set­tle­ment for Israel. I was hired as part of the exper­i­men­tal ombuds­man staff of the Youth Depart­ment of the Jew­ish Fed­er­a­tion-Coun­cil of Greater Los Ange­les to help devel­op bet­ter rela­tions between Jew­ish youth and the “estab­lish­ment.” On the edi­to­r­i­al board at its incep­tion (1970), I became the sec­ond edi­tor of DAVKA, a mag­a­zine pub­lished by and for Jew­ish youth in the Los Ange­les area. I served in that capac­i­ty until com­plet­ing my BA in 1973.

I entered Hebrew Union Col­lege-Jew­ish Insti­tute of Reli­gion in 1973 and was in Israel on the first year of the rab­binic pro­gram dur­ing the Yom Kip­pur War. After study­ing for two years in Los Ange­les, I was ordained from the Cincin­nati cam­pus in June of 1978. My rab­binic the­sis dealt with a study of ear­ly Hebrew print­ing as depict­ed in the respon­sa, codes and the ear­li­est haskamot (rab­binic approbations).

After ordi­na­tion, I worked for two years with the Lead­er­ship Devel­op­ment Divi­sion of the UJA-Fed­er­a­tion Cam­paign of New York where I served both as a Staff Asso­ciate in charge of edu­ca­tion­al and com­mu­ni­ty action pro­gram­ming and as Direc­tor. From 1980 through 1982, I was a rab­bi at Tem­ple B’nai Abra­ham of Liv­ingston, New Jer­sey. I was the Assis­tant Direc­tor of SHAMOR of the Nation­al Jew­ish Resource Cen­ter (lat­er renamed CLAL), respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing and pre­sent­ing cours­es on Jew­ish val­ues for UJA-Fed­er­a­tion lead­er­ship and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of CHEVRA, a nation­al group of Con­ser­v­a­tive, Ortho­dox, Recon­struc­tion­ist and Reform rab­bis and aca­d­e­mics study­ing togeth­er to work toward a com­mon agen­dum. I was also the rab­binic facil­i­ta­tor of Chavu­rah Beth Chai of Mahopac, New York.

I was the rab­bi of the New York Soci­ety for the Deaf and the Hebrew Asso­ci­a­tion for the Deaf. In that capac­i­ty I lead ser­vices in Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage and orga­nized a youth, as well as a young adults group, to reach out to the many young deaf Jews who have no con­tact with the Deaf Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty. I was also the edi­tor of “Zeroa Netuyah” a nation­al newslet­ter (now defunct) for pro­fes­sion­als deal­ing with issues of being Jew­ish and deaf.

Before mov­ing to the San Diego area, I was the rab­bi of B’nai Keshet, the Mont­clair Jew­ish Cen­ter, a Recon­struc­tion­ist con­gre­ga­tion in sub­ur­ban New Jersey.

I am inter­est­ed in a wide vari­ety of sub­jects. I have a Mas­ter’s degree in Library Sci­ence from Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty in New Jer­sey. Par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the unique­ness of con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can Jew­ish life, I also pur­sued advanced stud­ies in Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can Jew­ish pop­u­lar cul­ture. I have pub­lished a num­ber of arti­cles deal­ing with var­i­ous aspects of our com­mu­ni­ty and col­lect arti­facts and ephemera that depict the val­ues and the accep­tance of Jew­ish life in Amer­i­ca. My col­lec­tion of Juda­ic lapel but­tons has been dis­played in syn­a­gogues, Jew­ish Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ters, and Libraries around the coun­try, and selec­tions of it have been on dis­play at the HUC Skir­ball Muse­um in Los Ange­les and in an exhib­it on Jew­ish Humor at the Sper­tus Muse­um in Chica­go. I am now prepar­ing (cat­a­loging) the col­lec­tion for deliv­ery to the Yeshi­va Uni­ver­si­ty Muse­um where has been accept­ed as part of their collection. 

For all the years we lived in San Diego, I was the part-time rab­bi of Con­gre­ga­tion Etz Chaim of Ramona and remain asso­ci­at­ed with this won­der­ful group of people.

I am Vice Pres­i­dent for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (retired) of Nis­us Soft­ware Inc. a soft­ware pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny that makes Nis­us Writer Pro and Nis­us Writer Express (pro­nounced “Nice us” a good Eng­lish word that means an endeav­or, or effort), easy to use and pow­er­ful award-win­ning word pro­cess­ing pro­grams (Joe Kissell’s lat­est review) and a vari­ety of oth­er use­ful tools.

I have taught the Intro­duc­tion to Judaism class of the UAHC (now URJ) at least once a year for near­ly twen­ty years in New York, New Jer­sey, and San Diego. I enjoyed teach­ing the class not only because of the joy I receive in expe­ri­enc­ing some­one’s first adult response to Judaism but also because of the vari­ety of approach­es I per­ceive, enrich my own aware­ness of the beau­ties and excite­ment of Jew­ish life.

I live in New York City. I am mar­ried to Rab­bi Deb­o­rah R. Prinz, Rab­bi Emeri­ta of Tem­ple Adat Shalom in Poway, Cal­i­for­nia, now retired from being the Direc­tor of Pro­gram and Mem­ber Ser­vices of the Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis. Deb­bie is the author of On the Choco­late Trail and a chil­dren’s book: The Boston Choco­late Par­ty. My moth­er Faye Hurvitz died in July of 2005; I have a sis­ter who retired from 30 years as a social work­er for the Jew­ish Board of Fam­i­ly and Chil­dren’s Ser­vices in New York, and a broth­er in Israel who lives with his fam­i­ly on kib­butz Hat­zor and who is lucky enough to be able to merge work with play through earn­ing a liv­ing spe­cial­iz­ing in the uses of the inter­net in the edu­ca­tion­al process.

Our fam­i­ly has grown. I am the joy­ous father of Avi­gail & Sarah & Beth and Noam & Rachel. I am thrilled to be the grand­fa­ther of Amiel, Pele, Ziv, Lior & Yon­ah (Green Bean).

---

Hurvitz || Prinz || Avrunin

Ego Surfing
(Wherein I look for people with my name on the WWW.)

Rabbis With Web Sites
(When this page was first prepared, it was an interesting idea. Now…?)

What would it be like if I took a(n almost) daily picture?

© Mark Hurvitz
Last mod­i­fied Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 24, 2020
Last mod­i­fied Thurs­day, Octo­ber 5, 2023
Last mod­i­fied Sat­ur­day, May 4, 2024