The outspoken rabbi who spent 7 decades leading Baltimore’s Jewish community

At the end of every phone call, even when Rabbi Gustav “Gus” Buchdahl was sick and had little energy to expend, he’d ask: “Is there anything I can do for you?”

It seemed like such a frivolous question to Rabbi Debi Wechsler. What hadn’t Buchdahl done for her? He was a rabbi’s rabbi, someone she could always turn to for advice or a reality check. She’d asked him on many occasions to preach from her pulpit or teach classes on Jewish history.

He had a wealth of knowledge and wisdom that he shared freely, but he never challenged another rabbi when they were addressing a crowd. He was as much a model student as he was a model teacher, she said.

“He was mentor. He was friend. He was a guide,” Wechsler said. “There have certainly been times, shortly after he died, [when] something came up, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. And even after all these decades in the rabbinate, my first thought was, ‘I have to call Gus and ask him about this.’”

She’s among hundreds of Baltimoreans mourning the loss of a man who, over six decades of service, became a pillar of the city’s Jewish community. Buchdahl, who preached at Temple Emanuel of Baltimore and later Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, died June 7. He was 91.

Buchdahl was born May 17, 1935, in Rheine, Germany. He was the only child of Max and Tessy Buchdahl. His family, fearing the rising influence of the Nazi Party, fled to the U.S. when he was 2.

They settled in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, essentially a “small German town” where many other German Jewish refugees landed at the time, said his grandson, Max Buchdahl. He grew up eating German food, learning about the culture and speaking the native language.

He loved going to synagogue so much as a child that his parents would ban him from attending services when he was grounded, Max Buchdahl said.

Gus Buchdahl graduated from Hunter College in the Bronx in 1957 and attended rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He also studied in Israel, where he met his wife, Sheila, who had also recently finished college. They married in 1961.

The next year, he took a job at a small synagogue in Randallstown, where the couple settled down and welcomed three children, Micah, Ezra and Hannah.

“They shared similar values and really wanted to build a family,” Ezra Buchdahl said. “She took the role of rebbetzin — a rabbi’s wife — very seriously as well. I think her calm and comforting influence really helped support his ability to do what he needed to do in his career.”

Gus Buchdahl spent 37 years as a rabbi at Temple Emanuel, where he built a reputation as an honest and straightforward preacher who stood behind his beliefs even when they weren’t popular. When he arrived, one of his first decisions was to remove the American and Israeli flags from the synagogue, because he felt religion transcended country lines, his grandson said.

His time in New York, and his experiences with diverse friend groups, made social justice and civil rights top priorities for him. He arrived in Baltimore at a time when local pools, restaurants and other venues were still being desegregated. It was “perfectly natural” for him to participate in the 1963 March on Washington, Gus Buchdahl recalled in a video commemorating the 50th anniversary of the march.

“I remember the excitement and the feeling of a fellowship and companionship that transcended race and transcended gender and transcended religion,” he said. “I think it was one of those seminal moments in the life of a country that changes the country and changes the individuals who participate in it.”

He spoke out against the Vietnam War and in favor of reproductive freedom and women’s rights. He protested racial injustice and mistreatment of immigrants. He was a strong opponent of the Trump administration.

“It came from his own history, I think — his outrage at what his parents had had to endure,” Hannah Buchdahl said. “It was a tough road, and he was determined to use his voice to make that difference.”

He also wasn’t opposed to reevaluating his own views. When his cousin, Ken Kay, got married in 1977, Gus Buchdahl declined to officiate the wedding because the bride was Catholic. But as the years went on, he became more open to the idea of interfaith marriages.

“I appreciated so much his ability to accommodate his congregation and accommodate the times in such a way that he was able to be more flexible about some things that, earlier in his rabbihood, were doctrine,” Kay said. “He found the capacity to meet his congregation halfway.”

Buchdahl also taught religious studies at Villa Julie College, now Stevenson University, for nearly two decades. After he retired from Temple Emanuel in 2000, he became a rabbi emeritus and taught Judaic studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. At the end of the day, he was really just a people person — so he also took a job as a volunteer “Pathfinder” staffing information desks at BWI Airport.

“He loved meeting people and learning about people’s lives, and the airport let him do that on a wider scale,” Max Buchdahl said.

At home, he loved listening to classical music and reading mystery novels, loved ones said. But perhaps his greatest joy, especially at the end of his life, was spending time and sharing stories with his grandchildren. They often swapped roles as teacher and student.

When he couldn’t be with them in person, he made sure to check in via text, usually with a smiling or laughing emoji capping off the message.

The kids, for their part, made a sticker of his face side-eyeing a camera. They’d send it whenever they wondered: What would Opa say?

The Banner publishes news stories about people who have recently died in Maryland. If your loved one has passed and you would like to inquire about an obituary, please contact obituary@thebanner.com. If you are interested in placing a paid death notice, please contact groupsales@thebanner.com or visit this website.