Kurt F. Stone, D.D.
Long one of Lifelong Learning’s most popular instructors, Kurt Stone is a man who has worn many, many hats. At the time of his birth in Hollywood, California, his parents, the actress Alice and“stockbroker to the stars” Henry, quickly agreed that their newborn son’s middle name should be Franklin. They disagreed as who the Franklin was that they were honoring. According to Alice, they were naming him after the recently deceased president, Franklin D. Roosevelt; his mother wanted him to grow up and become the first Jewish president. Henry, on the other hand, was naming him after his grandfather, Franklin Schimberg, who had been a revered leader of the Jewish community in Victorian Baltimore. “Names really have an amazing power,” Kurt maintains. “After all, I have spent the lion’s share of my life straddling the line between politics and religion.”
Tell us about your childhood and education. You began working on Capitol Hill at a very early age, correct?
Yes. I was a child actor, and then went on to graduate from Adlai Stevenson College at the University of California, where I majored in American History, minored in Russian History, and completed course work in both philosophy and political science. I wrote my dissertation on the political psychology of McCarthyism, and what effect it had on the presidential election of 1952. By the time I was 19, I was working on Capitol Hill for Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel. I went on to work as a campaign organizer and advance man for California Assembly Speaker Jess (“Big Daddy”) Unruh in the 1969 gubernatorial election, and then was named a fellow of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University.
What additional avenues did you pursue during your professional career?
Following stints with Westinghouse Broadcasting in Hollywood (where I covered both Watergate and the Patty Hearst kidnapping) and California Governor Jerry Brown (where I served as the governor’s “environmental ethicist”), I went off to Israel and spent the next half-decade becoming a rabbi. I earned both a Master’s Degree in Hebrew Literature and a Doctor of Divinity at Hebrew Union College.
Once you became a rabbi, did you also continue acting?
Over the course of the next twenty years, I served pulpits in Arkansas, Vermont, suburban Pittsburgh, and finally moved to Florida in 1982, where I led congregations in Tamarac and Coral Springs. During all those years, I kept my hand in the world of acting by performing a one-man show Teatime with Sholem Aleichem, in which I portrayed the “father of Yiddish literature.” In total, I have appeared as the revered writer more than 400 times on four continents.
You have also worked in the medical field. Could you tell us about the work you did when you became a member of the Cleveland Clinic Institutional Review Board?
In 1995, I was invited to become a member of the Cleveland Clinic Institutional Review Board (IRB), where I began vetting and simplifying medical research proposals. I have worked as a medical ethicist ever since. In 2013, I was asked to become a board member of Schulman Associates IRB, the leading independent Institutional Review Board dedicated to safeguarding the rights and welfare of clinical research participants. In March 2016, Schulman Associates was selected as the national IRB for the Cancer MoonShot 2020 program.
In addition to your many other accomplishments, you are also a writer. What subjects have you targeted in your books and other works?
I am the the author of two seminal books on Congress: the bestselling The Congressional Minyan, published in 2001, and 2010’s The Jews of Capitol Hill. Since 2005, I have also written more than 600 essays for my political blog The K.F. Stone Weekly. In 2012, I served as a writer and surrogate for President Obama; in 2016, I am acting in the same role for Secretary Hillary Clinton.
Beginning in 1999, Dr. Stone started lecturing at the Lifelong Learning Institute in both Jupiter and Boca Raton. During those 18 years, he has lectured on subjects as varied as American biography and literature to Tales from Hollywood and Vine and his ever-popular film courses. One highlight of his Jupiter film courses is placing an annual call to his mother and having the entire class sing “Happy Birthday” to “Madame,” who is now a very, very young and active 90+ year old.
Dr. Stone also teaches at Florida International University and Nova University, and keeps up a busy outside schedule, giving some 150-175 lectures per year throughout the United States.
Dr. Stone is a lifelong “gym rat” and world-class L.A. Dodger fan. Married to Anna Zamosc-Stone, an Argentine native and gifted teacher of English as a Second Language (ESOL) at Broward College, the Stones have two adult children, Nurit (married to Scott) and Ilan (married to Amanda), and, as of the past year, two granddaughters, Claire Emily and Mia Jade, whom he describes as “breathtakingly beautiful.” They also have a cat named Shlomo and a “South Beach Dog” named Fred Astaire Stone. Rabbi Stone continues leading weekly shabbat services in Parkland, and holds services for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in Coral Springs.
When he finds the time, Dr. Stone is working on a family history of Hollywood, the film industry, and the fascinating people he grew up with – and delivered newspapers to – a long, long time ago . . .
Dr. Stone will be offering a 6-week summer film class at LLS Jupiter on Wednesdays, May 18 – June 22 from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.:
Belly Laughs and Heartfelt Tears: The Magic of Movies.
For further details, please consult the LLS Spring/Summer 2016 class catalog.
Article by Kami Barrett-Batchelder, Associate Director of the Lifelong Learning Society
0
0
0
