Academic career
In 1982 Cole became a professor at UTMB Galveston, where he assisted his mentor, Ronald Carson, in developing the nation's first Ph.D. Program in medical humanities. [3]
His 1993 book, The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America]examined the tradition of European thought and art about aging, traced its evolution in America, and emphasized the absence of social and cultural meaning in later life. [4]
In 1997 Cole wrote No Color is My Kind, the story of Eldrewey Stearns and the integration of Houston. [5]
Cole and his student at the time, Kate de Medeiros, taught Life Story Writing Workshops to groups of elders in Galveston from 1998 to 2003. [6] The PBS film Life Stories was made about the workshops.
In 2004 Cole became the founding director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics. [7] With Ronald Carson and Nathan Carlin, he co-authored Medical Humanities: An Introduction.
In 2018 Cole began training to become a Spiritual Director under Rabbi James Ponet. He was ordained in 2021 by Rabbi Ponet, Rabbi David Lyon, Rabbi Richard Address, Dr. Catherine Stephenson, Reverend Laura Mayo, and Dr. Thelma Jean Goodrich. In 2021, he founded Congregation Beth Israel's Center for Healing, Hope, and the Human Spirit with Rabbi David Lyon and began working as a Spiritual Director at Temple Beth Israel in Houston. [8]
Cole is currently completing a spiritual memoir, tentatively entitled My Journey tothe Angels: Towards A Spiritual Renewal.
The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) is a public academic health science center in Galveston, Texas, United States. It is part of the University of Texas System. UTMB includes the oldest medical school in Texas, and has about 11,000 employees. As of April 2024, it had an endowment of $763 million.
The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) is a Jewish seminary in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. It is the only seminary affiliated with Reconstructionist Judaism. It is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools. RRC has an enrollment of approximately 80 students in rabbinic and other graduate programs.
Jewish Texans have been a part of the history of Texas since the first European explorers arrived in the region in the 16th century. In 1990, there were around 108,000 adherents to Judaism in Texas. More recent estimates place the number at around 120,000.
James Lee Kessler, the founder of the Texas Jewish Historical Society, was the first native Texan to serve as rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel in Galveston, Texas.
Jews have inhabited the city of Galveston, Texas, for almost two centuries. The first known Jewish immigrant to the Galveston area was Jao de la Porta, who, along with his brother Morin, financed the first settlement by Europeans on Galveston Island in 1816. de la Porta was born in Portugal of Jewish parentage and later became a Jewish Texan trader. In 1818, Jean Laffite appointed de la Porta supercargo for the Karankawa Indian trade. When Laffite left Galveston Island in 1820, de la Porta became a full-time trader.
Temple Beth Israel is a Reconstructionist synagogue located at 1175 East 29th Avenue in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States. Founded in the early 1930s as a Conservative congregation, Beth Israel was for many decades the only synagogue in Eugene.
Beth Israel Congregation is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 5315 Old Canton Road in Jackson, Mississippi, United States. Organized in 1860 by Jews of German background, it is the only Jewish synagogue in Jackson. Beth Israel built the first synagogue in Mississippi in 1867, and, after it burned down, its 1874 replacement was at one time the oldest religious building in Jackson.
Congregation Beth Israel is an independent, traditional egalitarian Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 229 Murdock Avenue in Asheville, North Carolina, in the United States. Founded in 1899 as Bikur Cholim, it was an Orthodox breakaway from Asheville's existing synagogue. It hired its first full-time rabbi in 1909, opened a religious school in 1911, and acquired its first building, which burnt down in 1916, in 1913.
Congregation Beth Israel is a Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 411 South Eighth Street, in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Founded in 1907 to provide services for the High Holidays, it was then, and remains today, the only synagogue in the Lebanon area.
Congregation Beth Israel is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue located at 5600 North Braeswood Boulevard, in Houston, Texas, in the United States. The congregation, founded in 1854, is the oldest Jewish congregation in Texas; and it operates the Shlenker School.
John P. McGovern was an American allergist, investor and philanthropist. He established the McGovern Allergy Clinic in Houston, Texas, created the Texas Allergy Research Foundation and the John P. McGovern Foundation, and co-founded the American Osler Society.
Beth Sholom Congregation is a Conservative Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 1011 North Market Street, in Frederick, Maryland, in the United States.
Rabbi Ira F. Stone is a leading figure in the contemporary renewal of the Musar movement, a Jewish ethical movement.
Martin Samuel Cohen is rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York.
Temple Beth Sholom is a Reform Jewish congregation and synagogue, located at 4144 Chase Avenue, on Miami Beach, Florida, in the United States.
Linda Joy Holtzman is an American rabbi and author. In 1979, she became one of the first women in the United States to serve as the presiding rabbi of a synagogue, and the first woman to serve as a rabbi for a solely Conservative congregation, when she was hired by Beth Israel Congregation of Chester County, which was then located in Coatesville, Pennsylvania.
The Jewish community of Houston, Texas has grown and thrived since the 1800s. As of 2008, Jews lived in many Houston neighborhoods and Meyerland is the center of the Jewish community in the area.
Alan Lew (1943–2009) was a Conservative rabbi best known for establishing the world's first Jewish meditation center and for his work bridging Jewish and Buddhist traditions. Lew was often described as "the Zen rabbi," a phrase that he himself used in the title of his book One God Clapping: The Spiritual Path of a Zen Rabbi.
Nathan Steven Carlin is a Scholar of medical humanities with interest in Psychology of religion. He is the Samuel Karff Chair and a professor at the McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, where he directs the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics.
