Rabbi Harvey M. Tattelbaum

Rabbi Harvey Tattelbaum was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and was educated at Harvard University and the Hebrew College, which he attended simultaneously, and he graduated with honors from both in the same week of June 1955. He was awarded a traveling fellowship for a year’s study at the Hebrew University in Jersualem. Upon return to the United States, he enrolled in the Hebrew College Union College (Jewish Institute of Religion of New York), where he was ordained a rabbi in 1960. Drafted into the military by his own rabbinic organization (CCAR), he served as a Navy Chaplain assigned to the US Marines at Parris Island Marine Corps Recruit Depot for two years. Upon leaving active duty, he was appointed assistant rabbi at Temple Shaaray Tefila in Manhattan for three years, served as Rabbi of “the Village Temple” (Congregation B’nai Israel of Greenwich Village) for six years, and then returned to Shaaray Tefila as senior rabbi for the remaining thirty years of his career.


Tattelbaum is married to the former Meryl Herrmann of New York City, and they have three married children and seven grandchildren. They both adore the excitement and vitality of Manhattan as well as their lakeside Connecticut country home, where most of the “village tales” were actually written.