When Stephen Dobbs bet his brother, Gregory, he could get the pope to talk to them, Gregory’s response was immediate: “Don’t get us arrested.”
Not only did Dobbs not get arrested, he won his bet. It was Jan. 2, 1979, and as the newly anointed Pope John Paul II strode by in a procession, Dobbs shouted, “Shalom!” That stopped the procession.
The pope took Dobbs’ hand and said, “Shalom. That’s a very beautiful word.” At a once-in-a-lifetime loss for words, the San Francisco professor and historian could only respond, “Yes it is.” When John Paul II then commented that San Francisco was a beautiful city, a dumbstruck Dobbs could, once again, only note that “Yes, it is.”
Finally mustering up a bit of verbiage, Dobbs attempted to introduce the pontiff to his two sisters — but, when he turned to gesture toward them, he was horrified to see a pair of nuns had muscled in front of his family.
“He probably thought ‘What a smart aleck,'” recalled Dobbs of his meeting with the pope.
Dobbs is one of a handful of local Jews who personally met with Pope John Paul II. Like most, he was saddened by the passing of a man he regarded as a friend of the Jews.
William J. Lowenberg, former president of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, was one of several Holocaust survivors who participated in a Vatican remembrance ceremony in 1994. He was one of six men picked to light huge candelabra brought to Rome from Jerusalem in biblical times.
Following the solemn ceremony, the London Philharmonic played a concert in the majestic Vatican concert hall.
“The pope was there, of course, and the chief rabbi of Rome and the president of Italy. The pope sat at the same level as the other people. That’s very unusual, I was told,” recalled Lowenberg, a San Francisco real estate developer.
“I was very impressed with him, with the way he talked to us. It was a very small group. He knew about Auschwitz; he was brought up in Krakow. I found him extremely sympathetic. And, during his regime, he went to Jerusalem, he went to The Wall. And, after all, during his regime, the Vatican recognized the state of Israel.”
And, even 11 years ago, Lowenberg detected a bit of the pope’s frailty.
“His hands were shaking. When I stood in front of him, I saw his hands moving, very little,” he recalled.
“That caught my eye.”
Although she never personally met the pope, Rita Semel, the executive vice chair of the S.F. Interfaith Council, recalled John Paul II as the modern pope who reached out the most to the Jewish community other than John XXIII. She saw John Paul II as continuing and cementing the bold steps John took 40 years ago during the days of Vatican II, and, due to his Polish upbringing, she saw his acknowledgement of Poland’s role in the Holocaust as vital.
In addition to visiting Israel and recognizing the Jewish state, Semel pointed out that the pope also made the shorter — but perhaps even more significant — journey to a Rome synagogue, where he sat with Italy’s chief rabbi.
“This man was very open. He talked to us,” recalled Lowenberg.
“He had great sympathy and was very concerned [about the Shoah]. And he wanted to do the best he could to be humane about it.”