• General Notes

  David Polish, 85, Rabbi and Leader Of Reform Judaism
  
  New York Times,  April 18, 1995
  
  Rabbi David Polish, long a prominent figure in American Reform Judaism and author of nine books, died on Sunday at his home in Evanston, Ill. He was 85.The cause was complications from infection and vasculitis, his family said.
  
  Rabbi Polish was a leader of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the rabbinical arm of Reform Judaism in this country. He was elected president of the group at its 82d annual convention in 1971 and for two years represented 1,100 rabbis serving more than a million congregants in virtually every section of the country.
  He planned the organization's first rabbinical conference in Jerusalem in 1970. Under his guidance, the Central Conference joined the World Jewish Organization.
  He was the founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Emet the Free Synagogue in Evanston and was its spiritual leader
  
  from 1950 until his retirement in 1980. He was the founding president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and a founder of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, an organization whose statement of principles he drafted.
  Born in Cleveland, he graduated from the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and was ordained in 1934. Early in his career he was associated with the Hillel Foundation at Cornell University.
  
  His most recent book was "Give Us a King: Legal-Religious Sources of Jewish Sovereignty" (Ktav Publishing, 1989). A study of sovereignty in Jewish thought, it remains in print.
  Earlier titles include "A Guide for Reform Jews," written with Frederic A. Doppelt (Bloch, 1957), and "The Eternal Dissent: Search for Meaning in Jewish History" (Abelard-Schuman, 1961).
  
  Rabbi Polish is survived by his wife of 57 years, Aviva Friedland Polish; a daughter, Judith Shenker of Evanston; a son, Rabbi Daniel Polish of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and six grandchildren.
  
  Buried in Shalom Memorial Park Cemetery , Skokie, Illinois
  

Details of David's family with Aviva Friedland