Public Note #9 – In memory of Rabbi Henry Sobel (1944-2019)

The Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Commission for the Defense of Human Rights – the Arns Commission – goes public to express its profound sorrow and pay tribute to the memory of Rabbi Henry Sobel, who died on November 21, in Miami, United States. The world is losing a remarkable religious leader, conciliatory in his permanent openness to dialogue and radical in his commitment to human dignity. His trajectory and commitment to life marked the history of Brazil in the last 50 years when he took a stand against arbitrariness, authoritarianism, and dogmatisms.

Rabbi Sobel made lifelong friends among the members of this Commission. This closer approximation began in the hard years of the military dictatorship: it was 1975 when the young Sobel, who had recently arrived from the USA to head the rabbinate of São Paulo’s Hebrew Congregation (Congregação Israelita Paulista – CIP, in Portuguese), received news of the death of journalist Vladimir Herzog at the DOI-Codi premises, in São Paulo. Sobel did not hesitate to deny the official version of a death under torture when he prevented Herzog from being buried in the section reserved for suicides in a Jewish cemetery, as the regime wanted and expected.

His courage and bravery continued in the following days. Summoned by the Archbishop of São Paulo, Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns, and together with the Presbyterian pastor Jaime Wright, Sobel proceeded to the altar of the Sé Cathedral to co-celebrate the seventh-day mass for the death of Herzog, in an ecumenical act that gathered 8 thousand people inside and outside the church, causing the first major fissure in the dictatorial monolith.

Sobel will always be remembered for those days of pain and fearlessness. However, his trajectory lies beyond those moments. Human rights defenders in Brazil know that they were able to count on the rabbi's support and words at crucial moments. Whether it was a political prisoner, a landless person, a journalist under threats, or a Black victim of racism, the feeling of outrage at situations of injustice immediately put him into action. He was not just the rabbi of temples, but of communities and social movements. A voice respected by all creeds. A man far above the criticism he was subjected to.

To the Sobel family, the Arns Commission sends its most sincere condolences. We hope that the legacy of courage and generosity of the 'rabbi of all', so necessary nowadays, can guide us in the construction of a fairer, more fraternal, and essentially more humane society.

Photo: Non-identified author, published on Portal Vermelho