Gerald Wolpe, one of the country’s most prominent rabbis and medical ethicists, has died. Wolpe, who presided over the 1,500-family Har Zion Temple in Philadelphia for 30 years until resigning in 1999, died May 18 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 81.
As the leader of Har Zion, Wolpe became a leading voice in medical ethics and caregiving, a field that he became interested in during the 1960s but became personally invested in after his late wife suffered brain aneurysms, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Wolpe also served as the director of the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Religion and Social Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York from 1997 to 2002, and was chairman of the advisory committee of the Bioethics Center at the University of Pennsylvania from 1996 to 1999.
In 2002 author Stephen Fried wrote a book, “The New Rabbi,” about the search for Wolpe’s successor. Wolpe’s son David is the rabbi at Sinai Temple in L.A. — jta