In November 2025, Rabbi Dr. Gary P Zola of the Class of 1970 became an official ETHS distinguished alumnus, but who is he?

Dr. Gary Zola worked for 26 years as a teacher of rabbis in Cincinnati. Unlike a usual rabbi, Zola has never been in a congregation and has devoted his life to academia. He was the executive director of the American Jewish Archives, which is currently the largest archive of data on American Jews.

“Anybody who needed to know anything about American Jewish life would often have to come to the archives, and that was my area of specialty,” explained Zola. “That’s what I wrote about, studied, and taught. That was a big part of my career.”

Zola graduated from ETHS in 1970 and believes that the school, in many ways, led him to his career and helped shape who he is today. A large part of that is because when Zola started at ETHS in 1966, the school was already desegregated.

“At Evanston, I had classes with all different kinds of people, people of all different colors and all different religions,” said Zola.

The diversity at ETHS gave him a different perspective on the world, one that he would take with him for the rest of his life.

“There was an Asian community at ETHS at the time,” explained Zola. My class president was a wonderful person whom I liked very much. He was a friend whom I remember to this day. His name was Ben Bridges, and Ben was African American.”

After high school, Zola noticed that in places other than Evanston, people of color were not treated in the same way as he had seen at ETHS.

“When I got older, I saw that there wasn’t that kind of quality [everywhere], and I was motivated to fight for it,” stated Zola. “Evanston was an example, a good example, a positive example.”

After high school, Zola started at the University of Michigan, where he got a degree in history. He then moved back to Evanston, where he got his master’s in counseling psychology from Northwestern. This all finally led him to rabbinical school in Cincinnati, where he has been since.
In 2009, the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission awarded Zola the Bishop Herman Thompson Jr. Humanitarian Award for his service to the people of Cincinnati. In 2011, he was appointed by President Barack Obama as a member of the US Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.

Zola is currently very involved in community social justice, especially civil rights causes.

“I’m trying to make the world a better place,” said Zola.