“I was pretty confident I’d have things to do,” said the 85-year-
old Maslin, who retired from Reform Congregation Keneseth
Israel in Elkins Park in 1999. “I like to write. I’ve written three
books and published 108 articles.

“But I sort of stumbled into something that’s made life interest-
ing and pleasant over the past 19 years. I bought a retirement
place in Brunswick, Maine, near Bowdoin College and made
friends with lot of faculty at Bowdoin.

“They asked me to serve as their rabbi for the High Holidays there.

There’s about 100 to 125 students and 25 to 30 faculty who attend.

And what happened after that was I started a Shabbat morning
chavurah using their facilities, and I sort of became the town rabbi.

“Our lives in Maine have become very rich because of that.”
According to Maslin, who’s been the rabbi on a number of
cruises and will soon set sail for New Zealand and Australia, being
a rabbi can’t be the only thing in your life.

“You have to have some outside interest other than the
rabbinate,” said Maslin, who, in his early years, was rabbi on the
island of Curaçao, where he helped merge the Sephardic syna-
gogue considered the oldest in the Western hemisphere with a
new one. “If all you have is the rabbinate and you retire, there’s not
much for you do to.

“The book I just finished, Uncle Sol’s Women, is my first novel.

It’s been percolating in my mind for years. But I had no time as a
rabbi to do that kind of serious writing.”
See Rabbis, Page 26
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