Rabbi Emanuel “Manny” Rose

Rabbi Emanuel “Manny” Rose, a life trustee of Lewis & Clark, passed away on February 7, 2020. A trustee from 1970 to 1991, he served as board chair from 1988 to 1991, after which time he became a life trustee.

Rose served as the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland from 1960 to 2006, and then as rabbi emeritus of the congregation until his passing. He hails from a family of 15 generations of rabbis. For more than four decades, as the leading voice of Reform Judaism in Oregon, Rose addressed the major ethical, cultural, social and political issues of the day, such as civil rights, church-state relations, nuclear war, capital punishment, anti-gay legislation, poverty, the environment, censorship, and reproductive rights. Rose has been called the most influential religious leader in the State of Oregon.

In an interview with the L&C Pioneer Log in 1976, he said: “[A liberal arts education] is marketable for life. It’s marketable in the important things of how we live and the attitudes we have about what’s going on in our own country. It has ramifications for insight into current politics, potential plusses and dangers of a certain political thrust or orientation. It has significance as to how we grow as human beings.”

Rose and his wife, Lorraine Wilson Rose, were married in 1960. They have three daughters, Melanie, Tania, and Laura; one son, Rabbi Joshua Rose; and six grandchildren.