By Andrew Silow-Carroll

NEW YORK (JTA) – Richard Siegel, an educator who advocated for Jewish culture and arts and co-edited the seminal Jewish Catalog series of guides to “do-it-yourself” Judaism, died of cancer July 12 in Los Angeles. He was 70.

Siegel was the director emeritus of the Zelikow School of Jewish Nonprofit Management at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.

For 28 years he worked at the National Foundation for Jewish Culture (renamed the Foundation for Jewish Culture), and served as its executive director from 1978 to 2006. According to HUC, he created the Jewish Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and initiated the Fund for Jewish Documentary Filmmaking, the Fund for New Play Commissions in Jewish Theater and the 6-Points Fellowships in the Arts.

In 1973, along with Michael Strassfeld and Sharon Strassfeld – fellow members of Havurat Shalom in Somerville, Massachusetts – he published what became known as The First Jewish Catalog. Its subtitle was “A Do-It-Yourself Kit,” and it offered instructions on everything from making a seder to crafting a tallit to protest for Soviet Jewry. Its target audience was young Jews who wanted to return to the traditions of their grandparents but weren’t exactly sure how.

Inspired by the The Whole Earth Catalog, a source of “tools and ideas” for the hippie generation, Siegel and the Strassfelds found contributors who, like them, boasted excellent Jewish and even rabbinic educations.

The book became an instant best-seller for the Jewish Publication Society. It and two subsequent volumes were credited with empowering young Jews who felt alienated from synagogue life and popularizing an ethos of pluralism and gender egalitarianism. Critics objected to the very elements that its fans considered its strengths: that it leaned too heavily on the ethos of the 1960s counterculture and gave too little respect to the major Jewish denominations and institutions.

As his generation of young activists themselves became part of the Jewish establishment, Siegel turned to promoting Jewish culture and training professionals for work in Jewish institutions.

In his 2015 speech, he said, “Now more than ever, Jewish organizations, whether startups or legacy institutions, need business-savvy, Jewishly educated and visionary professional leaders to help them address both the enormous challenges and significant opportunities facing the Jewish world and the broader society.”

In recent years he worked with his wife, Rabbi Laura Geller, on a forthcoming book titled Good at Getting Older: A Practical Catalog Grounded in Jewish Wisdom, to be published by Behrman House.

His other books included The Jewish Almanac (1981) and The Writer in the Jewish Community: An Israel-North America Dialogue (1993).

Siegel also was one of the founding members of Minyan Maat, a lay-led congregation that meets at Ansche Chesed, an egalitarian, Conservative synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

“Richard Siegel was a transformative force in the Jewish world through his commitment to strengthening professional education, enhancing Jewish culture and advancing contemporary Jewish identity formation,” the Zelikow School said in a statement announcing his death.

Raised in Pittsburgh, Siegel received a masters degree in contemporary Jewish studies (now the Hornstein Program) at Brandeis University and another masters in Jewish history from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

He is survived by his wife and four children.