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February 21, 2003/Adar1 19 5763, Vol. 55, No. 26
Pulpit fictionLosing - choosing - rabbis makes a good read
VICKI CABOT
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 Rabbi B. Charles Herring, who has led Temple Kol Ami since its founding 18 years ago, plans on retiring in the spring of 2004. Photo by Tegwin Winterhalt |
"The New Rabbi, A Congregation Searches for its Leader," the nonfiction expos‚ by journalist Stephen Fried based on the real life experience of a mainline Philadelphia Conservative congregation in search of a new spiritual leader, captures the human drama of a rabbinic search with painstaking accuracy, scrupulous detail and unbridled suspense.
Will the larger than life rabbi, played in the book by Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, a legend in his own time, retreat gracefully into retirement leaving behind the immense power of his position as mara d'atri, master of the house? Will the likeable junior rabbi, Jacob Herber, be able to persuade the congregation that he has what it takes to succeed the venerable master? Will the able search committee chairman, lawyer Louis Fryman, have the patience and forbearance to guide the process to its conclusion? Will congregation president Lew Grafman prevail? And will the congregants, and the congregation, weather the strum and drang of change and emerge better and stronger for it?
You have to read the book to find out - or just take a peek into any number of Valley congregations that are now playing out their own version of Fried's drama with an equally engaging cast of characters.
Beth El Congregation, currently served by interim Rabbi Moshe Tutnauer, who has his own chapter in Fried's book, is engaged in a national search for a new rabbi, the third in eight years. Temple Beth Israel, also served by an interim rabbi, Rabbi Robert Klensin, awaits the arrival of new Rabbi Steven Kahn after an intensive selection process. Temple Solel hired former Associate Rabbi Alan Berlin to succeed senior Rabbi Maynard Bell when Bell retired last summer. And Temple Kol Ami is searching for a new spiritual leader with the announcement late last year of founding Rabbi B. Charles Herring's pending retirement.
As Fried's riveting read makes clear, Phoenix is no different than any of the hundreds of American Jewish communities. At any given time many of the 4,000 synagogues around the country are engaged in the heart-wrenching process of hiring a new rabbi, stirring up an often unanticipated welter of emotions, even among congregants who are not necessarily active members or regular shul goers.
"There is an intimacy between the individual and the rabbi and a collective intimacy between a rabbi and his or her congregation," observes Judy Schaffert, former Solel president who shepherded the congregation through its rabbinic transition. "He (or she) has seen you at your best and your worst, at simchas and funerals, at times of great emotional intensity." So the emotion infused in losing - or choosing - a new rabbi is magnified.
Tutnauer tells of a bar mitzvah boy now grown who found his former rabbi on the Internet recently and wrote to thank him for his support on that special day so many years ago. "He recalled that he was so scared and remembered me just putting my arm around him to reassure him," recounts Tutnauer a bit incredulously, noting that even rabbis often do not grasp the impact of their involvement or the perceived depth of the relationship.
Nor do congregants truly understand the oft unrealistic expectations they project onto potential candidates when searching for a new spiritual leader.
"They want a guy to preach like Moses, heal like Jesus, be an activist like Gandhi and run a business like Jack Welch," jokes Kahn half seriously about the search process. Kahn applied to six congregations, including Shearith Israel where he currently serves as assistant rabbi, when the senior rabbi there, Martin Wiener, announced his plans to retire. Shearith Israel has not yet chosen a replacement for Wiener.
Kahn says the tenor of the Beth Israel search process, headed by Beth Israel's Vice President Steve Lisker, influenced his decision to come to Phoenix.
Different from the experience recounted in Fried's book, where the search committee was characterized as indecisive, the Beth Israel committee was very focused and had a clear consensus of what they were looking for in a rabbi.
"They were on task, they did not get distracted, and they were honest and direct in their communications.
"They made it easy," says Kahn, who also says the openness of the Valley Jewish community and its tremendous potential were indeed draws for the rabbi and his young family. Kahn is married and the father of two preschoolers.
"You are looking for a partner when you are looking for a synagogue," Kahn says simply. "It's definitely a covenantal relationship."
More like a marriage is how Schaffert characterizes the ties between rabbi and congregation.
"But it's a relationship between a one-headed rabbi and a 2,000-headed congregation," she says wryly.
When Solel's senior rabbi informed the congregation in December 2001 that he intended to retire in six months, the board decided to eschew a national search and offer the job to current associate Berlin.
Berlin had been with the congregation for almost five years and was perceived warmly by many.
Yet, says Schaffert, the leadership wanted to provide the opportunity for frank and open discussion before making a decision.
"We needed to ask, 'who are we,' 'who do we want to be,' " she says. "We had to have that conversation."
An open board meeting provided that venue and led to the decision to retain Berlin.
"We voted unanimously to offer Rabbi Berlin a two-year contract," says Schaffert.
At Philadelphia's Har Zion, described in Fried's book, a long, drawn-out national search ended in the congregation eventually offering the pulpit to their junior rabbi, Herber, but not without a lot of angst on both sides.
Schaffert says that Solel did not want to chance losing Berlin to another congregation, if both he and the temple were actively looking elsewhere.
"It's like a romance," she says of the match between rabbis and congregations. "And we didn't want to risk the possibility that someone would fall in love with someone they were dating."
While the board decision was unanimous, Schaffert fielded complaints from disgruntled congregants who felt that the temple should have looked further than its own "heir apparent."
"I was pressured a lot, told that I was doing things the wrong way," she now recalls.
The tendency to politicize the process can often derail a search. At Har Zion, a one-year search stretched into an agonizing three as differing visions of where the congregation was going, and who it needed to lead it there, surfaced.
Temple Beth Israel was in the midst of an intensive long range planning process when former senior Rabbi Kenneth Segel announced that he was leaving. The information gleaned helped to provide parameters for the search.
"We had a couple of meetings and talked about what we wanted," explains Lisker, noting that the search committee was purposely small and comprised of a cross section of congregants.
"We came up with a good list (of attributes) that we thought were critical for us."
Of primary importance were both pulpit and pastoral skills.
Tutnauer, who is reprising his role in "The New Rabbi," is the veteran of six stints as an interim. However, serving at Beth El here is bittersweet; Tutnauer was the head rabbi of the central Phoenix Conservative congregation in the 1970s.
"The American rabbinate is one of the last areas of generalization in a world of specialization," he observes. "When you break down the elements of the rabbi's job, no human being can do it all."
Steve Nathan, a former congregation president, is chairing the current search committee along with Paul Euan.
Nathan agonizes that the congregation is still struggling with defining what it wants and needs, impeding the process. Still at issue is whether or not Beth El should maintain its central Phoenix presence or relocate, even as more younger Jewish families move north and east.
"The congregation needs to decide where it wants to go," he says. "We need to have direction and tell the candidates."
The committee has received nine or 10 resumes to consider, more than it received when it underwent its last search three years ago.
Nathan remains optimistic.
"We're not looking for Moses to take us to the Promised Land," he says. "We are looking for a rabbi to stimulate us, to move us, to work with us."
Both he and Euan credit Tutnauer with bringing stability to the congregation and helping it deal with the transition in spiritual leadership.
Tutnauer, who Fried refers to as "the fixer" in his book, says that an interim rabbi can help a congregation deal with change.
"An interim can serve as a bridge," he says. "The congregation can get used to me - so they can get used to someone else."
Too, he says, an interim rabbi can help a divided congregation heal.
"I can put some Band-Aids on old wounds," he says, noting that he has spent an inordinate amount of his time at Beth El helping congregants work through issues.
He also says that age and experience afford him credibility that enhances his effectiveness.
"I've been through a lot of winters and summers, a lot of board meetings, and I've learned something," he says.
Still, he says, the search for a new rabbi often depends on luck.
"It's a little like picking a Supreme Court justice," he says. "You don't know how it will turn out until the justice is on the bench."
He says that he has encouraged the search committee to look at candidates from the rabbi's point of view, as well as the congregation's.
"Do you know how scary it is for the rabbi?" he asks, ticking off the usual search scenario, first a telephone interview, then a personal interview, then perhaps an opportunity to preach from the prospective congregation's bimah.
"And we are asking him (or her) to pick up his family and move here so that in two years we can tell them we made a mistake?"
Euan says that Tutnauer's reasoning has helped the search committee to see both sides.
"It is not just what we want - but what they want, too." And, notes Euan, choosing a rabbi is as much a spiritual as a material consideration for a congregation.
"We can look at it as a higher calling, but it is a business decision."
And yet, talk to Herring, as he readies himself to step away from the congregation that he literally has built.
"When I first said publicly that I would retire I started crying," he admits, noting that it is easier to process the decision intellectually than viscerally.
He has been at Kol Ami since its founding in 1989, before that serving as assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Israel for 20 years.
He notes that he has enjoyed an unusual tenure at Kol Ami.
"The congregation agreed to let me be the mara d'atri, to be the model and to follow me. It was a beautiful thing for me."
Now, he says, it is time for the congregation to take ownership of itself - to hire a newer, younger, more energetic rabbi to replace him.
"There is more to life than what you do," says Herring, ticking off his other roles as husband, father and growing grandfather. "I'm not able to devote as much time as I'd like (to those other areas) because the demands of a congregation are seven days a week," he says.
He is cognizant of the allure of the pulpit and the difficulty many rabbis, including Wolpe, have had in giving up that power.
"I want to be stronger than Gerry Wolpe," he says. "I have children and grandchildren here and want to daven with them as a father and grandfather."
Both Schaffert and Berlin laud Bell, who retired as spiritual leader of Solel to pursue a new career path, with stepping aside gracefully.
"I knew that Rabbi Bell would support and guide me and give me the freedom to be myself," says Berlin.
Herring says he looks forward to seeing where the new rabbi will take his congregation.
"I hope that the new person will make it different in different ways. That there will be a spirit of experiment, of excitement."
Herring says he is anxious to see the next chapter in Kol Ami's history unfold.
"This is the end of something and the beginning of something," he says. "I can't wait to watch it happen."
Contact the writer at vicki_cabot@jewishaz.com.