Leo M. Franklin

Leo Morris Franklin (March 5, 1870 – August 8, 1948) was an influential Reform rabbi from Detroit, who headed Temple Beth El from 1899 to 1941.

Early life Leo M. Franklin was born on March 5, 1870, in Cambridge City, Indiana, to Michael H. and Rachel Levy Franklin. As a teenager, Franklin attended both the University of Cincinnati and Hebrew Union College simultaneously. In 1892, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Cincinnati; in the same year, he graduated from Hebrew Union (as the only member of his class), and was ordained as a rabbi. In 1901, Franklin organized the Woman's Auxiliary Association (later the Sisterhood of Temple Beth El), and assumed editorship of the Jewish American, Detroit's first English-Jewish weekly. He convinced the Beth El congregation to build a new temple. They purchased land on Woodward near Eliot and engaged George Mason as an architect; Mason was aided by the young (and then relatively unknown) Beth El congregant Albert Kahn.

Franklin introduced more changes over the next few years, including holding services on Sunday morning (in addition to Saturday morning), unassigned seating, and an exchange of pulpits with out-of-town rabbis. He reached out to Orthodox and Conservative congregations, instituted an interdenominational community Thanksgiving service, and spoke often at church groups to attempt to bridge the gap between Jews and non-Jews. He did not, however, cease publishing the Independent.

That day came much later: in 1927, Ford endured a libel trial over the Independent that caused him to close the paper and issue a public apology. Franklin immediately wrote Ford, reminding him of their conversation seven years earlier but accepting his apology. Franklin did not, as some of his colleagues suggested, immediately approach Ford for a monetary example of his contrition. Instead, he preferred to keep Ford in his debt, saying, "let us be the creditors while he remains our debtor." The new temple (now the Bethel Community Transformation Center) was dedicated in November 1922. In that same year, Franklin was elected by the congregation to a life tenure. for many years. He received an honorary Doctor of Law degrees from the University of Detroit (a Catholic institution) in 1923 and Wayne State University in 1939, and an honorary Doctor of Divinity from his alma mater, Hebrew Union College, in 1939.