Asher Wade
Rabbi Asher Wade | |
|---|---|
| Personal | |
| Born | Wallace S. Wade May 31, 1949 Danville, Virginia |
| Religion | Judaism |
| Denomination | Orthodox Judaism |
| Occupation | Psychotherapist |
| Website | www.asherwade.com/ |
| Residence | Jerusalem |
| Semikhah | Ohr Somayach, Jerusalem |
Rabbi Dr. Asher Wade is an American-born international lecturer, college instructor and psychotherapist. He was also well known as a "must have" tour-guide at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel, from Jan. 1991 until Nov. 2005.
Although there have been a number of Christian clergy who have become converts to Judaism, Asher Wade is one of the few who have gone on to become an orthodox rabbi. As an ordained Methodist minister, Asher Wade and his wife were moved by the articles in a Sunday morning newspaper commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Kristallnacht. At that time, he was attending the University of Hamburg in Germany working towards his doctorate in the field of Metaphysics and Relativity Theory.[1]
He had already earned a B.A. in Philosophy in America and a Master's degree in Philosophical Theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In addition, he had previously interned as an adolescent and marriage counselor at the U.S. Army Chaplaincy Center in Berlin while he was attending the Goethe Institute for German studies.[1]
Kristallnacht
That Sunday morning newspaper included graphic pictures of the destruction of Jewish homes and stores of Hamburg during Kristallnacht, among which was that of the great Born Platz Synagogue of Rabbi Joseph Carlebach. Rev. Wade and his German born wife recognized that the site where Hamburg's once thriving 30,000 member Jewish community had worshipped was now merely an unmarked university parking lot.
They began a historical investigation and found that the first public organization to join Hitler's ranks was the university teaching staff in Germany; first, the Medical faculty, followed by the Law faculty. Five out of eight university students, they found out, had also openly joined the Nazi party.
Conversion
Rev. Wade and his wife then began to study about Jewish history and the Jewish religion, especially vis-a-vis Christianity.[2] After about a year & a half of study, they both decided to pursue conversion to Judaism.[2] This caused a stir, not only within the Church, but also among his professors at university, primarily with his doctoral supervisior, who, it turned out, had been a chaplain in one of Hitler's tank divisions in Poland during World War II. This professor thwarted the completion of his doctoral program. Several months later, Wade obtained the support of a younger professor, who apparently had no qualms with their conversion to Judaism. Although he was forced to drop his prior research studies as a condition for this support, Wade happily began research in a fully Jewish topic: Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the Orthodox-Reform Debate. About two years later, having undertaken expensive research trips to New York, as well as having written up his first rough-draft, his second supervisor mysteriously withdrew his support of his doctoral program which left Wade with two dissertations written but disallowed from taking the oral exams for completion. The Wades eventually converted to orthodox Judaism in Frankfurt-am-Main in May, 1983 and, shortly thereafter, moved to the United States.
While living in America, they were contacted by Ner Israel Rabbinical College in Baltimore. This meeting, chaired by Rabbi Herman N. Neuberger (z"l), led to him and his family being sent in 1988 to Jerusalem where he learned for a number of years at Yeshivah Ohr Somayach. Rabbi Wade was ordained a rabbi in Dec.,1992 and worked at The Heritage House in the Old City of Jerusalem, Ohr Somayach as well as Aish HaTorah for many years. In 2004, Rabbi Wade completed a professional doctoral degree in clinical psychology through Southern California University for Professional Studies. Today, Rabbi and Mrs. Wade live in Jerusalem with their six children where he lectures at yeshivas & seminaries, teaches at Touro College and has a private practice in clinical psychology. [3]
References
- ^ a b Asher Wade's Story
- ^ a b http://www.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2003/200345/frederickcty/county/186594-1.html
- ^ "A Pastor's Conversion to Judaism" CD/Tape Ohr Somayach Tape Library.