Joseph Blatt

Joseph Blatt
Personal life
Born	1878 Ohio
Died	1946 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Religious life
Religion	Judaism
Jewish leader
Predecessor	Arthur Lewisohn
Successor	Joseph Levenson

Joseph Blatt was an American rabbi, civic leader, and professor who was the longest serving rabbi of Temple B'nai Israel in Oklahoma City. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1932.

Early life

Joseph Blatt was born in 1878 in Ohio. In 1901, he became a rabbi and worked at a temple in Georgia.[1]

Oklahoma

Rabbi

Blatt moved to Oklahoma City in 1906.[1] He became the rabbi for the congregation that would build the Temple B'nai Israel there and served in that position until 1946.[2] From 1906 to 1916 he was the only full-time rabbi in the state of Oklahoma.[3] He is remembered for his classical reform approach, interfaith efforts (including guest speaking at many churches in Oklahoma City),[2] but also for his strident defense of the Jewish community in the face of anti-semitic accusations by the Guthrie Daily Leader newspaper (accusations that the state capitol's move from Guthrie to Oklahoma City was inappropriately orchestrated by a group of prominent Jewish businessmen in Oklahoma City).[4] Rabbi Blatt responded that the newspaper's claims were slanderous and that they were a “a disgrace to the civilization of our state.”[5][6]

Rabbi Blatt was also remembered for his work in helping to organize congregations in Tulsa, Enid, Shawnee and Ardmore, at times even serving as a kind of circuit preacher of sorts,[7] as well as his opposition towards Zionism, as recalled by his successor Rabbi Levinson: (he was) "staunchly opposed to Jewish nationalism and died broken-hearted (in 1946) in the thought that the Reform movement had made peace with political Zionism."[8] He was even described as being a "bitter anti-zionist" by Rabbi Randall Falk of Tulsa.[9]

Other work and death

Blatt was a part-time professor at the School of Religion at the University of Oklahoma starting in 1915. In 1932, he was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. He died in 1946.[1]

References

1. "Joseph Blatt, Class of 1932". oklahomahof.com. Oklahoma Hall of Fame. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
2. "Oklahoma City: Historical Overview". isjl.org. The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
3. "Early Jewish Pioneers of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma". jmaw.org. Jewish Museum of the American West. Retrieved 27 September 2023.
4. [ | Guthrie Daily Leader "Shylocks of Oklahoma City have state by the throat" (Nov. 1, 1912) - Archived from the Oklahoma Historical Society]
5. San Diego Jewish World "A Short history of Jewish Oklahoma" (Nov. 21, 2016)
6. Rockoff, Stuart, MyJewishLearning.com "The Guthrie incident, an episode of anti-semitism in Oklahoma" (Nov. 26, 2012)
7. Tobias, Henry J. The Jews in Oklahoma (Univ. of Oklahoma Press 1980), p. 34
8. Tobias, Henry J. The Jews in Oklahoma (Univ. of Oklahoma Press 1980), p. 46
9. Nicholson, Anne E. "The Strategies of the Jews of Oklahoma for preserving distinctive ethno-religious identity" (A thesis submitted to the graduate college of the University of Oklahoma) 2005. - Archived at the library of Temple B'nai Israel, Oklahoma City, p. 145