Jonathan Krasner's Remarks about Joe Reimer
Remarks delivered during the May 2026 Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program graduation and presentation of the Bernard Reisman Award for Professional Excellence to Joseph Reimer.
"The Bernard Reisman Professional Excellence Award is given each year to a professional who has demonstrated innovative work and significant leadership — and a commitment to the standards of excellence, Jewish commitment, and sensitivity to others that Bernard Reisman embodied throughout his career.
Bernard Reisman founded the Hornstein Program in 1969 and led it for twenty-five years. He was a master practitioner of exactly what this program teaches: how to build institutions, develop leaders, and strengthen Jewish communal life with both vision and humility. The award that bears his name has been given, since 1991, to some of the most distinguished figures in Jewish professional life. This year, we are giving it to someone who was here when Bernie was here — who worked alongside him, and who has spent his career honoring that legacy. In honoring Joe Reimer, Hornstein is in some sense honoring its own origins.
"In honoring Joe Reimer, Hornstein is in some sense honoring its own origins."
I should say a word about my own relationship with Joe. We were colleagues and have been friends for fifteen years, since the time I joined Brandeis as a faculty member. Inexplicably, I had not crossed his path when I was a graduate student here in the late 1990s — Hornstein felt like a world away from Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. But once we found each other, I understood quickly what I had been missing. We share many of the same intellectual interests, and the fact that we approached them from different disciplinary angles only made our conversations richer. I have benefited enormously from his thinking. There was also something deeply personal in my identification with Joe. We both grew up in modern Orthodox households, attended yeshiva day schools, spent summers at the same camps — just a generation apart. And that generational difference was part of the allure. Joe came of age during what one writer has called the golden age of American Jewish life. He was shaped by storied institutions and movements — by Camp Ramah at a moment of genuine ferment, by Havurat Shalom, which he helped found in 1968, and by towering figures like Lawrence Kohlberg and, of course, Bernie Reisman. It was a time of idealism and possibility. Joe represents the very best of that generation — and he has the rare gift of being able to reflect on it with both deep affection and real intellectual honesty, without ever lapsing into nostalgia.
Words like warm, collegial, curious, and supportive come to mind when I think of Joe — but they don't quite do him justice. His erudition is matched by his humility. He is a cherished thought partner.
Ellen Smith, who served as Hornstein's director and was Joe's colleague for twelve years, put it this way: "I hate adjectives. But when I think of Joe, an inspirational list of adjectives dances in my thoughts. He is kindness itself. He is a brilliant listener. He is generous — spiritually and intellectually. When a big decision had to be made, or difficult circumstances had to be navigated, it was to Joe I would quietly turn. His advice was always patient, thoughtful, and focused — academically sound, emotionally intelligent, and often illustrated with Jewish text and history. He would help guide you not only to a good decision, but to have
confidence in the why and the how of it. These are too rare — but quintessentially Hornstein — skills."
Joe arrived at Brandeis in 1986, working alongside Bernie Reisman in the program Bernie had built. He went on to direct both the Hornstein Program and the Institute for Informal Jewish Education, and to serve as a formative teacher to generations of Jewish professionals — many of whom are in this room today. And for those of you who completed the Hornstein EdM track: you owe Joe a particular debt of gratitude. It was long his dream, and he spent three patient years shepherding it through the university approval process — keeping his focus and, as Ellen put it, his humor throughout.
As a scholar, Joe produced three landmark books. Promoting Moral Growth brought the insights of developmental psychology to the practice of education. Succeeding at Jewish Education won the National Jewish Book Award in 1997. And Making Shabbat, published the year he retired, traces a century of Shabbat at American Jewish summer camps — showing how a once-peripheral practice became one of the most powerful sites of Jewish identity formation we have.
Joe is also the consummate mensch. When Bernie’s health began to fail, Joe became his right hand, helping him end his career with dignity—a singular act of chesed. Joe did this quietly, almost surreptitiously, without expecting any recognition of expressions of gratitude.
Joe once said that Bernie Reisman "created a gold standard for Jewish professional practice." It's a phrase worth sitting with today, as you step into that practice yourselves. The gold standard isn't a credential or a title. It is a way of showing up — with excellence, with Jewish commitment, and with genuine care for the people in front of you.
"The gold standard isn't a credential or a title. It is a way of showing up — with excellence, with Jewish commitment, and with genuine care for the people in front of you. Joe Reimer has spent nearly four decades showing us what that looks like."
Joe Reimer has spent nearly four decades showing us what that looks like. It is a privilege — and for me, a personal joy — to honor him with the award that bears Bernie Reisman's name.
Please join me in congratulating Professor Emeritus Joseph Reimer."