Rabbi William Greenberg: "A person with a good soul"

Rabbi Emeritus William H. Greenberg — brilliant and talented, but with an unassuming Midwestern warmth — probably could have excelled at just about anything.

But, as he sometimes explained: "I preferred working with people rather than things."

And so Rabbi Greenberg abandoned a career in engineering in favor of teaching and spiritual leadership.

As the Jewish saying goes, he was "a person with a good soul," said his sister, Dvora Friedman of Miami. "There wasn't a bad, mean streak in him. He had tremendous tolerance and understanding."

Rabbi Greenberg, who retired in 1990 as the head of Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, a Sephardic Jewish synagogue in Seattle, was found at home Thursday morning (May 31) after dying in his sleep. He was 81.

When his passing became known, leaders from across the broader Jewish community sent out news alerts, a testament to the high regard in which he was held.

Over the last four decades, Rabbi Greenberg presided over major life occasions for hundreds of local Jewish families — births, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings and funerals, said his son, Aryeh Greenberg of Seattle, the cantor at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth.

"That was the core of what he did as the congregational rabbi and why so many families feel so close to him," his son said.

He was also known as a teacher and gifted speaker.

On his 80th birthday, the congregation bought a new Torah and dedicated it to Rabbi Greenberg. "It's a very valuable thing ... It was an honor for him," said his daughter, Sarah Goldman of Mercer Island.

"He knew so much," she said. "Yet, if you spoke to him, he was so humble. He had those Midwest manners."

Rabbi Greenberg was known for his generous spirit and loved a good joke.

"He never let a moment go by that wasn't to benefit somebody or to increase his knowledge in some way," said Jack De Leon, president of Ezra Bessaroth.

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Rabbi Greenberg moved at a young age to Kansas City, Mo. As a teenager, his parents sent him to a yeshiva, a school for Torah study, in Chicago. He earned a bachelor of science degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology and about the same time was ordained as a rabbi at Hebrew Theological College.

In the mid-1950s, Rabbi Greenberg served as an Army chaplain in Germany. After that, he received his first pulpit in Chicago Heights, where he met and married his wife, Rosa.

The couple moved to Phoenix, then settled in Seattle, where he earned a Ph.D. at the University of Washington.

He was one of the first teachers at the Northwest Yeshiva High School on Mercer Island, where he taught students the values of Jewish life, to treat people with respect — and how to make kosher wine and root beer.

He also traveled the Northwest inspecting food-manufacturing sites — from salmon canneries to potato plants — making sure the ingredients and processes were kosher.

In addition to his wife, daughter and son, and sister, Rabbi Greenberg is survived by daughter Deena Greenberg, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; son Don Greenberg, of Lakewood, N.J., and sister Shifra Gordon, of Israel.