This NY radio rabbi’s interfaith spirit is on fire

NEW YORK – As a rabbi, talkshow host and New York City Fire Department chaplain, Joseph Potasnik is no stranger to offering advice on all things religious and spiritual. But he recalls one unusual High Holy Day request that made him redouble his efforts to promote interdenominational and interfaith dialogue.

It was 2003 when his phone rang at his office, where he was then president of the New York Board of Rabbis. On the other end of the line were Jewish American soldiers serving overseas who were in desperate need of Torah scrolls in Iraq and Kuwait for the holidays. Potasnik called on members and quickly got four Torah scrolls, one from each denomination — Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Torah — and shipped them off to the Middle East.

“I remember looking at them [the Torahs] with some other rabbis and asking them who can tell the difference,” Potasnik said. “They have different covers, different designs, but you couldn’t tell the difference really. Like us they had different layers on the outside but inside we are all Jews.”

In telling the story Potasnik reveals a bit about what makes him tick. His life of service is centered on the idea that people should find a shared purpose, no matter one’s denomination or faith. It’s a tenet he lives by.

‘I grew up in a home with an interfaith spirit’

“I grew up in a home with an interfaith spirit. It was a natural part of my life to include people of different faiths. I was taught that we are different; we are the same,” Potasnik said, speaking from his Murray Hill office in New York City where firefighter helmets and red-and-white-beaded Boston Red Sox baseball necklaces share space with books about Talmud and Israel.

Honoring the ‘non-living’

Born in 1946, Potasnik was raised in Lynn, Massachusetts (which explains being a Red Sox fan). Both his parents survived Auschwitz and spent time in a German Displaced Persons camp before moving to the US.

The Sisters of St. Mary’s Church were among the first to welcome the survivors to this New England town just north of Boston. As a way of showing their gratitude, the Potasniks often invited the nuns to Passover seder. To Rabbi Potasnik those Seders embodied the definition of religion, the root of which comes from the Latin religare — to tie or bind, he said.

“I prefer to look at religion as unifying then as something used as a sword to divide,” he said.

Potasnik was well versed in religion’s capacity to inflict loss and divide. Before Hitler’s rise to power, his parents had been married to other people, each raising their own families. Then came the deportations and concentration camps. His mother and father lost everyone, including seven children between them.

Photographs of the “non-living,” as Potasnik described the photos, hanged from the walls and sat on shelves of his childhood home. Yet, each time Potasnik asked his parents who they were, they would only reply, “Family.”

“They didn’t want to talk about it. I sensed they didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t want to impose their grief on their child. They wanted me to grow up as normal as possible,” said Potasnik.

Yet, he did inherit a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility toward his seven dead siblings, a feeling that crystallized in college when he heard Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel talk. Wiesel’s message that survivors have a responsibility to perpetuate the memories of those who perished resonated. Potasnik realized the best way for him to do that was to become a rabbi and set aside thoughts of becoming a physician.

After he graduated from Yeshiva University in 1972, Potasnik started his career as a rabbi at Brooklyn’s Mt. Sinai Congregation, arriving with just one suitcase in hand.

“It was in downtown Brooklyn and I didn’t think it had great promise,” he recalled. “I kept some things in the suitcase, just in case.”

Forty-three years later, Potasnik is Rabbi Emeritus of Mt. Sinai. He never considered another rabbinical posting, calling his relationship with the synagogue and its congregants “a great love affair.”

On air with the rabbi

In 1982, WABC invited Potasnik to co-host a radio show “Religion on the Line” with Roman Catholic Deacon Kevin McCormick. Airing every Sunday morning, it remains ABC’s longest running talk show.

‘We should not be endorsing issues, but we should be confronting issues’

“If it’s the Iran deal, if it’s gun control, if it’s the homeless, if it’s pro-choice, or human trafficking, we talk about it. We should not be endorsing issues, but we should be confronting issues,” he said.

Guests have included Alan Dershowitz, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg and Dr. M. Zudhi Jasser, the founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy

While the show delves into politics, Potasnik said he would prefer that US politics abstain from getting religious.

“Sometimes politicians use religion to give imprimatur to their positions, but God is not a Democrat or a Republican,” said the rabbi. “I like to think God is an independent. There is a danger to wrapping oneself in the mantle of religion.”

In addition to his radio show, Potasnik serves as executive vice president on the cross-denominational New York Board of Rabbis, the same organization he was at when he received the unusual request to ship Torahs to the Middle East. Throughout the years he has also published many articles in local Jewish newspapers and wrote the foreword for “The Illustrated Jewish Bible For Children.”

‘God is not a Democrat or a Republican. I like to think God is an independent’

Perhaps one of his most significant roles came in 1999 when former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani asked Potasnik to serve as chaplain for the New York Fire Department. Potasnik briefly hesitated, but then realized that administering to firefighters, whom he described as some of the most religious people he has met, was simply an extension of what he does daily.

Former fire commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said Potasnik’s compassionate personality shows FDNY families just how much they are valued.

“Even in our darkest days his comforting words have helped us get through them a little bit easier,” Cassano said. “The rabbi has a way of adding humor to the most solemn ceremonies that makes you feel at ease. He is someone I would be proud to call a brother. If had to sum up the rabbi in one word it would be he is a mensch.”

For his part Potasnik said the fire department is like family.

“We are blessed to be surrounded by first responders who are always there for us when we have a tragedy,” Potasnik said.

He’s been thinking about that a lot, particularly since the recent 9/11 anniversary. The day before, September 10, 2001, Potasnik found himself with Father Mychal Judge at a ceremony rededicating a Bronx firehouse. Potasnik remembers Judge telling the firefighters to hold on to memories, to hold on to the day. He never saw Judge alive again.

When the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m., debris hurtled through the adjacent North Tower, killing many, including Judge. By 11 a.m. – 32 minutes after the North Tower collapsed — Potasnik had arrived on the scene of what would become known as Ground Zero.

“Being there all those days, all those weeks; it was a family of faiths,” he said. “We decided to have a Christmas tree and a menorah. We had a Seder there. Ground Zero became a place where death taught us love.”

‘Ground Zero became a place where death taught us love’

Such dedication and compassion has earned Potasnik respect throughout the city. In 2014 the Polish Consulate awarded him the Jan Karski Humanitarian Award and he has also received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Earlier in the year he was awarded the 2015 MLK Servant Leader Bridge Builder Award for outstanding public service. This was part of the New Horizon Church of New York’s Celebration of the Dreamers.

The honors and accolades are welcome, but in the end, Potasnik said he simply hopes his parents would be proud.

“My parents are buried in New Jersey. On their tombstone it says ‘They lost much, and they loved much.’ To begin life again after all they lost, that took a kind of inner strength,” he said, his voice drifting for a moment. “They put a lot of love into this one guy and hoped he would amount to something.”