Rabbi Paul “Pinky” Dubin, founding executive director of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California and a widely respected rabbi, interfaith advocate and mainstay on the boards of myriad Jewish organizations in Los Angeles, died Saturday, July 3. He was 85.
Born in the once-thriving Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights, Dubin attended the historic Breed Street Shul (Talmud Torah Los Angeles), where his uncle, Sam Dubinsky, was the synagogue’s shammash (caretaker). He was bar mitzvahed there in 1938 among relatives and friends from the yeshiva—the city’s first, later known as Los Angeles Jewish Academy—founded by Breed Street Rabbi Osher Zilberstein.
After attending Roosevelt High School, Dubin went to UCLA, where he majored in physics and math and struggled with questions about his faith. A chance reading of “As a Driven Leaf” struck a nerve, and he found out that its author, Rabbi Milton Steinberg, was teaching at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
“I’d never heard of it in my life,” Dubin recalled. “In 1946, no one in the East knew we existed; no one knew there were Jews out here. Back then in Los Angeles, the whole city was like a shtetl.”
Dubin graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1950 and moved back to Los Angeles, where he became rabbi at B’nai Israel, a small congregation in Baldwin Hills. After serving as chaplain in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he returned to the congregation.
As the neighborhood integrated, Dubin attempted to keep the congregation intact and a part of the community, but his efforts were cut short by forces beyond his control—the Baldwin Hills dam burst in 1963, destroying more than 100 homes, and the Watts Riots broke out two years later. His congregation of more than 15 years decided to merge with a neighboring synagogue. The rabbi’s call for ethnic and religious tolerance, however, would be a recurring theme throughout the rest of his career.
In 1968, Dubin became the founding executive director of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. While there, he helped found the Interreligious Council of Southern California, which gathered a diverse slate of religious leaders to tackle community concerns from an interfaith standpoint.
Dubin served a seven-year stint as director of education at Sinai Temple, and for three of those years he led groups of Jewish students from across the city to Israel with his wife, Esther, now deceased, for the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Hebrew High Ulpan.
He returned to the Board of Rabbis of Southern California as executive vice president in 1979, and held that position until his retirement in 1998.
Dubin also served the board of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council and chaired the Jewish Committee for Personal Service, a subsidiary of Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Center, which provides aid to Jewish prisoners. He also served on the boards of Los Angeles Hebrew High School, the Bureau of Jewish Education and the Anti-Defamation League.
Dubin, who celebrated a bar mitzvah just two years ago, at 83, is survived by two daughters, Judy (Mel) Aranoff and Ruth (Carl) Steinberg, of Santa Barbara, and four granddaughters.
The funeral was held on Monday, July 5, 1 p.m. at Adat Ari El Synagogue, followed by burial at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Hollywood Hills at 3 p.m.
The family will sit shiva at the Aranoff home. For more information, call (818) 989-7679.
Anyone wishing to make a donation in memory of Rabbi Paul Dubin is invited to do so to the scholarship funds at either the Los Angeles Hebrew High School or to Camp Ramah in California. Please indicate that it is for the Rabbi Paul and Esther Dubin Scholarship Fund at either of these institutions. Rabbi Dubin’s family thanks you very much.
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