In Honor of Rabbi Aaron Panken, z”l, on His 8th Yahrzeit

"Long before the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and the Jewish prayer book,
our ancestors mourned an earlier exile and yearned for a reunion with their
brothers and sisters."

More than twenty years ago, fresh from a year of study at Hebrew Union College's Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem, I began my second year of rabbinical school in New York City. Among my first courses there was an introduction to the literature of the Second Temple period (516 BCE to 70 CE), taught by Rabbi Aaron Panken, of blessed memory. In subsequent years, Aaron, whose yahrzeit we commemorate this week, would become a mentor and friend. But at that time, we were still getting to know each other: Me, a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rabbinical student, and Aaron, the Dean of the New York campus and professor of rabbinics.

Aaron had a soft spot for the unconventional texts of the Second Temple period which are not often studied by Jews. The inclusion of his course into Hebrew Union College's rabbinical curriculum was part of a larger process of curricular renewal led by our former Provost, Rabbi Norman Cohen, in the early 2000s, a process in which Aaron played a crucial role. I am reminded of that process now as Hebrew Union College has just inaugurated another transformative rabbinical school curriculum, one seeking both to complete the work that Aaron began and to push farther: thoroughly integrating the historically-grounded, critical study of Jewish literature and culture with the work of teaching Torah, counseling, and leading dynamic Jewish organizations-an approach we are calling, "integrative rabbinical education."^[1]

In Aaron's Second Temple literature class, I read the Dead Sea Scrolls for the first time. I had, of course, visited the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem with my classmates the previous year, and seen the scrolls in all their fragmentary glory. I had not, however, read them until Aaron assigned us various excerpts. The scrolls, we learned, were an ancient library that preserved variant versions of well-known Jewish works (alternative Psalms, for example), keyed to the concerns of the schismatic and eccentric community in Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea. Through reading these scrolls, Aaron showed us how today's Judaism came to be amid competing groups.

I recall this class and Aaron's legacy today as we count the Omer-the forty-nine days between the second day of Passover and our next festival, Shavuot. The first day of the Omer counting is also the day on which the Book of Leviticus enjoined our ancestors to "elevate the sheaf" as an expression of gratitude at the start of the spring harvest (Leviticus 23:12). In fact, the word omer means "sheaf."

The members of the Dead Sea community developed special prayers for the Omer offering and for the holiday of Shavuot, prayers that are remarkably similar to those some Jews recite today. In the scrolls found in Cave 4 at Qumran, we find the following fragmentary blessing, dated to the first century BCE:

For Thou hast caused us to rejoice, removing our grief, and hast assembled our banished ones for a feast of … Thou shalt gather our dispersed women for the season of … Thy mercies on our congregation like rain-drops on the earth in the season of sowing … and like showers on the grass in the seasons of sprouting and … We shall recount Thy marvels from generation to generation. Blessed be the Lord who has caused us to rejoice.^[2]

According to Aaron's mentor and doctoral advisor in the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, Professor Lawrence Schiffman:

This passage strongly resembles the words of the Festival Musaf (additional service) of later rabbinic tradition… This parallel suggests that the prayer for restoring the Diaspora to the Land of Israel, recited on Festivals, may go back as early as the first century BCE…

[And further, the Jews of the Dead Sea sect,] did indeed long for and pray for a return to the ancient glories of the united monarchy of David and Solomon and that they continued to pray of the ingathering of the exiles.^[3]

At a time when the Jewish people's ancient and enduring bond to each other and to the Land of Israel is in question, this fragmentary prayer recited in this season over two millennia ago, demonstrates that long before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, long before the emergence of rabbinic Judaism and the Jewish prayer book, our ancestors mourned an earlier exile and yearned for a reunion with their brothers and sisters, dispersed by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia in 586 BCE. Even in desert climes, it was possible, then as it is now, to observe the earth renewing its bounty at this time of year-"rain-drops on the earth in the season of sowing" and "showers on the grass in the seasons of sprouting." In this hopeful context, our ancestors imagined that just as God might bring water to the parched earth, God might unite the Jewish family in the ancient homeland, exiles no more.

Hebrew Union College continues to require that our American students-students like me, two decades ago-spend substantial time in Israel so that they might come to know and value our people and our culture in their diversity and complexity, and so that they might come to know the land of our millennial yearnings. That is why, we maintain our magnificent campus in Jerusalem, a thriving center of Reform Judaism in Israel, and why we train an ever-growing cadre of rabbis to serve non-Orthodox, open-minded and open-hearted Israeli Jews.

Shortly before Aaron died, he travelled to Israel to ordain four graduates of our Israeli rabbinical program and to celebrate Hebrew Union College's ordination of the 100^th Israeli Reform rabbi. In his remarks that day, Aaron offered this prayer:

Go forth from here and build a future for the State of Israel that is more egalitarian; that recognizes Reform Judaism and the other streams in a true and sacred pluralism that accepts and respects difference; show the world what the State of Israel can and should mean as a beacon of hope, righteousness and goodness; and never lose hope for the repair of the world.^[4]

Reading this message and this hope today amid the wreckage of war and suffering, is painful and poignant. It is difficult to look toward the future with anything but unease. And yet, in these dark times, Aaron's message and his hope, his legacy of leadership and scholarship, remind us of what is possible, of all that the Jewish world and the State of Israel might be. As we count the Omer this year, with all our brothers and sisters, in the Land of Israel and outside it, we yearn for a day when we might once again recite, as those schismatic Jews of the Dead Sea sect did, "Blessed be the Lord who has caused us to rejoice."

Read more tributes and reflections in honor of Rabbi Panken

^[1] "Reimagining Rabbinical Education: Hebrew Union College's Integrative Curriculum for the 21st Century," January 14, 2026.

^[2] Geza Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English, Rev. Ed. (London: Penguin, 2004). For ease of reading, I have simplified the text and removed markings related to the editor's emendations. This prayer was originally published by M. Baillet in Qumrân Cave 4, Discoveries in the Judaean Desert Series VII, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 175-215.

^[3] Lawrence H. Schiffman, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls (New York: Doubleday, 1994), 298. See now, Ayhan Aksu, "The Qumran Opisthograph 4q509/4q496/4q506 as an Intentional Collection of Prayers," Dead Sea Discoveries 29, no. 3 (2022).

^[4] Aaron Panken, "On the Occasion of the Ordination of the 100th Israeli Reform Rabbi," November 16, 2017.