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Levi Arthur Olan (March 22, 1903 – October 17, 1984) was an American Reform Jewish rabbi, liberal social activist, author, and professor. Born in Ukraine in 1903, he grew up in Rochester, New York and was ordained at Hebrew Union College in 1929. He served as rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1929 to 1948, and Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Texas from 1948 to his retirement in 1970. Olan was one of the most prominent liberal voices in Dallas, which was a predominantly conservative city. His views on poverty, war, civil rights, civil liberties and other topics were disseminated largely through his popular program on WFAA radio, and earned him the moniker, “the conscience of Dallas.” He also had a longstanding visiting professorship at Southern Methodist University and published numerous works on Judaism, process theology, and contemporary social issues.
As a child, Olan frequented Rochester’s Baden Street Settlement House. He participated in the debate team and—with friends and future rabbis Milton Steinberg and Sidney Regner—the Boys Literary Club, eventually becoming a club leader.Weiner 270. He also joined Steinberg in studying after school at the neighborhood Talmud Torah school.Weiner 214-215
At HUC, Olan chafed against an academic atmosphere in which “theoretical absolutes were handed to us.” He heckled teachers, and was threatened with expulsion for his “attitude.”Weiner 215. His favorite class was on the prophets, relating them to contemporary issues such as the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti.Weiner 215-216.
Olan completed his bachelor's degree at the University of Cincinnati in 1925, and was ordained as a rabbi by HUC in 1929.Weiner 215;“Biographical Sketch,” ‘’ American Jewish Archives’’, <(http://americanjewisharchives.org/collections/ms0181/>. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
At first there were conflicts between the more traditional congregation and the more modern rabbi, who inserted English into services and stated that one could be both a Jew and an atheist. By the time Olan left Worcester twenty years later, however, congregation and rabbi “had grown comfortable with one another.”Weiner 219. One practice of his that the congregation supported was the trading of pulpits with Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and UUA ministers.Weiner 216-217.
Not satisfied only with his official rabbinical duties, Olan travelled to Harvard University and introduced himself to the renowned Jewish studies scholar Harry Wolfson. Wolfson recommended a course of independent study, and Olan began a lifelong habit of devoting mornings to scholarship and afternoons to his official duties. Some of the authors by whom he was most influenced were John Dewey, Friedrich Hegel, William James, Franz Rosenzweig, and Henri Bergson. At the same time, he studied the Babylonian Talmud, seeking connections between ancient and modern ideas.Weiner 217.
When Olan was offered the job, his liberal friends discouraged him. But he was encouraged by Nelson Glueck, president of Hebrew Union College, and Jacob Rader Marcus, founder of the American Jewish Archives. They thought Olan could play an important role in introducing some of the practices of Reform Judaism to the Southwest, a region with a growing Jewish population. And Olan welcomed the challenge of bringing liberal ideas to the conservative region. He took the job.Weiner 219-220.
Olan differed from his predecessor in many respects. Lefkowitz specialized in ministering to the needs of individual congregants. Olan was more of a preacher and scholar, focused on challenging the congregation as a group. His imposing voice and presence belied his short physical stature. He was known for his intellectually and morally challenging sermons, but was also an inveterate trader of jokes.Weiner 218.
Olan felt that many aspects of temple life—worship, education, social activities—were too assimilationist and secular, and worked to reintroduce a more serious focus on Jewish tradition. For example, he introduced more Hebrew into the almost exclusively English-language services. And he introduced Zionism into a congregation with many anti-Zionist members.Weiner 222-223. When several hundred disgruntled congregants called a meeting with Olan to air their complaints, he replied, according to his oral history, “‘I was brought down here to be the rabbi. If you're going to tell the rabbi what Judaism is then you don't need him. It's supposed to work the other way. He's supposed to tell you what Judaism is.’ And I said goodnight and went home. I never had another peep out of them.”“Oral Memoirs of Rabbi Levi Olan,” 63, ‘’Baylor University Institute for Oral History’’,
One of Olan’s most popular activities at Temple Emanu-El was the Significant Book lecture series. His first lecture was attended by 900 people, and the series continued after his retirement.Cristol 183.
At Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, Olan continued the scholarly pursuits he had begun at Harvard. As visiting professor of contemporary Judaism,Weiner 221. he spent every morning at Perkins. His favorite haunt was the library; when a new one was built in 1951, he was its first—and became its most prolific—patron. At his carrell during the mornings, and afterward at a neighborhood lunch spot, he became a valued source of counsel and discussion in the fields of academia, politics, and culture, befriending the likes of Neiman Marcus president Stanley Marcus, theologians Albert Outler and Schubert Ogden, soon-to-be federal judge Irving Goldberg, soon-to-be civil rights leader Zan Wesley Holmes Jr., and his best friend, Perkins library director Decherd Turner.Weiner 223-224.
Olan served on the University of Texas Board of Regents from 1963 to 1969,“Rabbi Levi Arthur Olan,” ‘’Former Regents of the University of Texas System’’,
Olan was one of the few whites who publicly opposed racism in Dallas during the 1950s. Some of his earliest radio broadcasts expressed his shock at segregation, his endorsement of federal public housing for Dallas, and his conviction that racism was against the teachings of the Bible. Olan delivered guest sermons at Good Street Baptist Church, and became a friend and ally to the pastors there. He joined Dallas Citizens for Peaceful Integration, and advocated for school integration when Dallas defied the Supreme Court-mandated desegregation of public schools in 1954. In 1967, he convinced African American leaders to unite behind a single African American school board candidate, who won and served on the board for a decade. Because of these activities, he received hate mail, his house was vandalized, and Temple Emanu-El received a bomb threat.Weiner 228-229.
Olan was also one of the few white members of the Dallas County United Poll Tax Committee, which opposed the $1.75 poll tax as a vestige of post-Reconstruction Era racism. On January 4, 1963, Olan joined the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a poll tax rally at the Fair Park Auditorium.Weiner 229-230.
Olan also spoke out against the Red Scare. He was one of the few members of the Southern Methodist University and Dallas communities to publicly criticize SMU English Department chair John O. Beaty when he published the anti-communist, anti-Semitic The Iron Curtain Over America in 1951. The administration of university president Umphrey Lee refused to rebuke Beaty. Gradually, however, a movement against Beaty grew, until, in 1954, the faculty condemned him, a new university president confronted him, and his political activities waned.Weiner 225-228.
Olan was a charter member of the Dallas branch of the ACLU. He fought against a campaign to ban suspected communist artists’ works from the Dallas Museum of Art—a campaign that succeeded for an eight-month period in 1955. As a founding member of the Friends of the Dallas Public Library, he fought for the library to go ahead with plans to place an abstract sculpture in the lobby of its new building in 1955 despite public suspicion of the sculpture’s artistic and political meaning. He even fought for the name “Friends of the Dallas Public Library” against a member who accused it of sounding too communist.Weiner 227-228.
When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, Olan used his sermons and radio broadcasts to accuse the city of complicity due to the popular stream of vitriol aimed at Kennedy prior to his visit. He was appointed to serve on the Citizens Memorial to JFK Committee, which raised funds for a memorial that was finally constructed in 1970.Weiner 210-212.
Olan's interest in process philosophy led him to befriend Charles Hartshorne, and he was one of the first authors to apply process philosophy to Jewish theology.Sandra B. Lubarsky and David Ray Griffin, eds., ‘’Jewish Theology and Process Thought’’, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
Olan married Sarita Messer, daughter of Frank Messer, founder of Cincinnati-based construction company Frank Messer & Sons (now Messer Construction), and sister of the actor Robert Middleton. They had three children, including the composer David Olan.
a blog about Olan's radio sermons
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