Musleah, Ezekiel Nissim, 1927-2020

For nearly 70 years, until his death on July 14 of COVID-19 at the age of 92, Musleah enthralled congregants at four synagogues on two continents, bringing the expertise of a scholar and the dramatic flair of a storyteller to his reading of Torah. Musleah was born in 1927, in Kolkata, India. His tight-knit extended family traced its lineage to 17th-century Baghdad, a heritage that remained a source of pride throughout his life. His journey to the rabbinate was propelled by the encouragement of a Jewish chaplain in the U.S. Army who was stationed in India. At age 20, Musleah enrolled at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, where he learned the Ashkenazi style of Torah reading. He returned to Kolkata in 1952, becoming the Jewish community’s first Western-trained rabbi.

In 1964, he and his wife, Margaret, and their three young daughters moved to Philadelphia, where he served for 15 years as rabbi at the city’s historic Mikveh Israel synagogue. He also led Congregation B’nai Abraham Synagogue and served on the Conservative movement’s local and national rabbinic court. For the last 30 years, Musleah was the weekly Torah reader at Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia.