Levy, Clifton Harby
LEVY, CLIFTON HARBY
LEVY, CLIFTON HARBY (1867–1962), U.S. Reform rabbi. Born in New Orleans, his family had settled in the American colonies in 1740. Levy was ordained at Hebrew Union College (1890), was rabbi of Congregation Gates of Hope, New York City (1890–91), and superintendent of classes for immigrant children established by the Baron de Hirsch Fund. He later served congregations in Lancaster, Pa. (1892–94) and Baltimore, Md. (1894–96), where he organized a Jewish kindergarten in a religious school and the first United Hebrew Charities. He founded Tremont Temple, Bronx, n.y., and was its rabbi from 1906 to 1921. He left the pulpit rabbinate in 1921. In 1924 he organized the Center of Jewish Science, New York City, which sought to counter the influence of Christian Science among middle-class Jews and to inject spirituality into the Reform Jewish synagogue. He was a founding member of the American Council for Judaism, which consisted primarily of anti-Zionist Reform rabbis and laymen. While still a student, Levy published a five-act Purim play, Haman and Mordecai (1886). During his stay in Baltimore he edited Jewish Comment. He edited The Bible in Art (1936) and The Bible in Pictures (1942), and served as art editor of the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia.