-Staff Report-
Kurt Sax, 89, a former president of Temple Beth Sholom in Chula Vista who had been in ill health since his first stroke six years ago, died Friday, May 11 at La Jolla Nursing and Rehabilitation, after celebrating Shabbat for the last time. His daughter Sandi had helped him on with his kippah and tallit, recited some of his favorite prayers, swabbed his lips with some white zinfandel wine, and let him taste a chocolate chip bagel, before he said “Amen” to the singing of “Adon Olam.”
“Within a half-hour after the Shabbat had begun, he expired–just as he had hoped he would– on the Shabbat,” said Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel at Sax’s funeral service on Tuesday, May 15.
Sax was a mainstay of the small Conservative congregation, especially in the years that its finances were such that it could not afford to pay a rabbi. Sax, who had grown up in Vienna, Austria, led the services, sometimes letting his love for opera determine his choice of melody for the Adon Olam. On one occasion, he had the congregation sing it to a melody from Carmen.
He also was an innovative fundraiser. On one Yom Kippur, Sax announced that the buildings of the congregation all were for sale, listing the various buildings the synagogue was going to sell including the sanctuary building, the social hall, the pre-school and the religious school. Rabbi Samuel related that ‘when the members asked him, ‘Kurt, who’s going to buy the buildings?’ he replied with a wry grin: ‘All of you–of course–for without your financial help, we will not be able to keep the doors of TBS open.”
In numerous ways, Sax served the synagogue with devotion, whether it was training youngsters for b’nai mitzvah, writing a commentary on the weekly Torah portion, or organizing yearly community Passover seders.
So, it was appropriate that Sax’s funeral was held in the Temple that he loved. Because Sax was a bullfight afficionado, it was arranged for a music group to play the stirring music of the bullfight during one portion of the service. In that vein, also, Rabbi Samuel recited the poem “The Matador” by Steve Reeve.
Married to Ruth, a cousin who also had grown up in Vienna, Sax always stood when she was called to the Torah for an aliyah, and vice versa. “As the new rabbi in Chula Vista, I was deeply impressed by their love and respect for one another,” said Samuel.
Kurt Sax was born August 24, 1922, the son of Herman and Sophie Sax. He met his cousin Ruth when they were children, he about 12 and studying for his bar mitzvah with her father. She was about 9. The advent of the Nazis separated the childhood friends. After Kristallnacht, Kurt , 16, fled to Northern Italy where he remained throughout the war. Ruth was grabbed up by the Nazis and sent to Theresienstadt, then to Auschwitz, and then back to Theresienstadt.
During the war years, Sax wrote letters to some 150 people named Sax whom he found in telephone books, asking them to sponsor him to the United States. Ironically, it was a man named Isaac Potts, who responded with an offer to sponsor Sax and three other youngsters.
In the United States, Sax learned the real estate business and later became a stockbroker. Learning meanwhile that “little Ruthie” had survived the death camps, he began a correspondence. Eventually he flew to Czechoslovakia to see her again. They fell in love and were married in Bernau, Moravia. Then he and friends and relatives set about getting Ruth the paperwork to come to the United States. They spent 66 years together, raising daughters Eva and Sandy. He also was very close to his nephew Steven, son of his half-brother Hansel.
A singer and musician, Sax played the accordion, clarinet and, yes, the sax. Today daughter Eve is a skilled flute player, and Sandy plays the flute and the piano. Eve absorbed her father’s love of Judaism and today is in her third year of study for the rabbinate. Sandy has an exciting job, working for Cirque du Soleil.
Sax was buried at Home of Peace Cemetery. The family will sit shiva at the Sax home at 1141 Via Trieste, Chula Vista.
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Preceding based on Rabbi Samuel’s written eulogy