Rabbi Jack Shlachter

By CAROL A. CLARK
Los Alamos Daily Post
caclark@ladailypost.com

The J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee (JROMC) and Los Alamos Jewish Center are co-hosting a free lecture by Rabbi Jack Shlachter on the  relationship between Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. Monday, July 10 at the SALA Los Alamos Event Center, and is part of Los Alamos ScienceFest. The lecture is titled: Fifty (Well, Maybe Two) Shades of Grey: Nuance in the Relationship Between Lewis Strauss and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

JROMC Chair David Izraelevitz spoke about Rabbi Shlachter and expressed appreciation to him on behalf of his board for presenting this lecture.

“JROMC is grateful to Rabbi Shlachter for adding his perspective on two complex individuals who played such a major role in the development of atomic energy policy in the 1950’s,” Izraelevitz said. “The fact that they had commonalities as well as differences, including their common Jewish heritage, is sure to make for an engaging presentation and greater insight into Oppenheimer and his times.”

Rabbi Shlachter is a physicist who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than 30 years with briefer stints at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Atomic Energy Agency, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, the latter two based in Vienna, Austria. He led both the Physics Division and Theoretical Division during his LANL career.

In parallel, he is an ordained rabbi who led the Jewish congregation in Los Alamos for many years, was the rabbi in Center Moriches, NY, during his years at Brookhaven, and now serves as rabbi of HaMakom, a congregation in Santa Fe, as well as the Los Alamos Jewish Center. He has also provided itinerant rabbinic support to far-flung Jewish communities including those in Vienna, Austria, and Beijing, China.

In speaking about Monday’s lecture, Rabbi Shlachter said, “I am truly honored and humbled to participate in the lecture series organized by the JROMC. Everywhere I go around town, when I mention this upcoming talk co-sponsored by the LAJC, I find people who are more expert on the topic than I. This is an intimidating experience! My hope is that each person who attends my presentation will learn at least one new piece of information about J. Robert Oppenheimer.”

The brief back story on Oppenheimer and Strauss is that in June 1954, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) revoked Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Strauss was AEC Chairman at the time. Particularly in Los Alamos, the canonical view today of the clearance clash between Oppenheimer and Strauss paints Oppenheimer as the victim and Strauss as the villain.

Monday’s lecture will focus on the Jewish dimension of these two individuals and reflect on how their opposing approaches to their respective Jewish heritage may have contributed to the revocation. Rabbi  Shlachter will begin by exploring the history of the Jewish presence in the United States and the mechanisms used by Jews to integrate into American society. A little-known connection between Strauss and the Los Alamos Jewish Center will be described. Through the efforts in part of the JROMC, in December 2022 the Secretary of Energy apologized for the clearance revocation and vacated the June 1954 decision In The Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Q&A with Rabbi Shlachter Ahead of July 10 Lecture:

Daily Post: Presumably nearly everyone in Los Alamos knows who Oppenheimer was – his statue is out in front of Fuller Lodge after all – and his role as founding scientific director of the Laboratory is legend.  But who is this other individual about whom you’ll be speaking, Lewis Strauss?

Rabbi Shlachter: Lewis Strauss [pronounced “Straws”] was the chair of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1954. The AEC was the civilian organization with responsibility for the development and production of atomic weapons, and it was the predecessor to the Department of Energy.

Daily Post: What’s so special about 1954?

Rabbi Shlachter: 1954 was the year that Oppenheimer lost his security clearance, and Strauss was one of the driving forces behind that process.

Daily Post: What made you, a rabbi, want to talk about Oppenheimer and Strauss?

Rabbi Shlachter: I’m privileged to be both a physicist and a rabbi, so I’ve been interested in Oppenheimer as a physicist for a long time. In addition, however, both Oppenheimer and Strauss were Jewish, and they had very different approaches to their Judaism. Oppenheimer, in some ways, tried to hide from his Jewishness, while Strauss was visible and active in the Jewish community, serving for a decade as the president of Temple Emanu-El in New York, the largest synagogue in the country. My talk will attempt to dispel some misunderstandings about Judaism as a whole and to show that some of the conflict between these two individuals stemmed from their vastly different connections to their respective Jewish heritage.

Daily Post: Will this talk presuppose any knowledge of Judaism, and will it appeal to non-Jews as well as Jews?

Rabbi Shlachter: I promise that not a single word of Hebrew will be spoken during the talk, at least by me, and I’ll give a quick synopsis of the Jewish presence in North America, putting everyone in attendance on a reasonably equal footing. So, I am hoping that anyone interested in Oppenheimer as an individual will gain a bit of insight into yet another dimension of this fascinating, multi-faceted character.

Daily Post: What made you as a rabbi want to talk about Strauss and Oppenheimer from a Jewish perspective?

Rabbi Shlachter: In preparation for a talk I delivered last fall for the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society’s annual meeting, I poured through the archives of our local synagogue, the Los Alamos Jewish Center, located at 2400 Canyon Road. During that research, I stumbled across a document about Lewis Strauss that nearly floored me, and I’ll be sharing that in this presentation.

Daily Post: What was the most interesting thing that you uncovered as you prepared for this lecture?

Rabbi Shlachter: I had drunk the Los Alamos Kool-Aid, which suggested that Oppenheimer was basically a deity and Strauss was the devil. As I explored this topic of their animosity in some depth, I came to realize that the story is not so black and white. None of us is perfect, and that includes both Oppenheimer and Strauss. My goal is to present a more balanced picture of their relationship, particularly through the lens of their Jewishness.

Daily Post: Are you excited about the upcoming release of the Oppenheimer film?

Rabbi Shlachter: I am, indeed, and I’ve already bought my tickets online to see it at SALA! It looks like several showings are sold out, so I encourage people to pre-purchase.

Links:

• Tickets for the Oppenheimer film are available at https://sala.losalamos.com/tickets/.
• Learn more about the Los Alamos Jewish Center at https://www.lajc.org/.
• Learn more about the JROMC at https://jromc.org/.