Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Jewish Book Month
December 13, 2002
Pulpit Review of
“The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader”
by Steven Fried
My colleague, Conservative Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg, has a good sense of humor and I enjoy reading his material. I learned from him that each fall there is a day on the calendar of which I was unaware. “Clergy Appreciation Day” is the second Sunday in October. Now it is not as popular as Mother’s Day, the day on which the most long-distance phone calls are made. Nor is it even as popular as Father’s Day, the day on which the most long-distance collect calls are made.
You’re going to find this a little strange coming from your Rabbi; but, if you use the Google search engine and type in the words “clergy appreciation day,” you’ll find more than 41,000 entries. It is recognized as an official day in over 40 states, yet who even knows about Clergy Appreciation Day, much less celebrates it?
Let me educate you. This very important day started in 1992 when a layperson was brainstorming with church colleagues about how they might be of help to their minister. They glanced at a calendar and noticed that it was almost Ground Hog Day. They thought, if there is a day for ground hogs, there ought to be a day for the 375,000 clergypeople in America.
I want you to know, friends, that there are people out there who take this day seriously. A subsidiary of Hallmark Cards now offers 120 Clergy Appreciation cards – and you don’t even have to go to a store to buy one. They are available right on the internet.
Rabbi Wohlberg says, since he did not receive a single card last year, he decided to send himself one. He picked out the one he thought most appropriate and emailed it to himself. This is what it said: “Thank you, Pastor, for making a difference. You are a servant who is kind and sensitive to the needs of others. You are greatly appreciated. We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, when we pray for you.”
OK, it was not a perfect fit, but sending a card is the first thing found on a webpage list of things you could do for your clergy to show your appreciation. The list goes on, but I shall leave this matter in your capable hands.
What I want you to know is something I have told you often. I love being your Rabbi. There is nothing else in the world I would rather be than the Rabbi of Temple Israel in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But truth be told, friends, most clergy are not as happy as I am. Many, if not most, feel unappreciated. There are a number of statistical surveys which have come to light in recent years indicating that 70% of clergy feel that they have a lower self-image now than when they entered their calling; 50% – half – have considered leaving their position within the past three months; 70% say they have no one they consider a close friend; etc., etc. It is not easy being a clergyperson. Too many get turned into CEOs and therapists and lonely, angry men and women of faith. Even when people attempt to express their appreciation, it sometimes does not come out right.
I can think of a very kindly, elderly woman who told me week after week how much she loves my sermons and hopes that I’ll publish them in a book. After the umpteenth time she told me this, I said that sometimes sermons sound better than they read and that I’m reluctant to set aside time to edit such a book. She kept insisting. So, finally, to keep her at bay, I said maybe I’ll publish them posthumously. With a gleam in her eye she said: “Oh great! I hope it’s real soon!” That was from someone who likes me.
Then there are the other kinds, the congregants for whom the rabbi never gets it right. I said to a woman I saw during the High Holydays; “Gutt yontif, how are you?”. She angrily replied: “Now you ask! I was in the hospital for a week this year – not once did you come to visit me!”.
Of course, I apologized and tried to explain to her that I’m in the hospitals every week; I just didn’t know that she was there. I gently reminded her that a member of her family should have told me. To which she replied: “You should have known!” Now when people do this to me, I have to bite my tongue because I want to say – how did your doctor find out you were there? But I am a polite person. “You should have known” – rabbis are expected to know everything and be everything. And that is not easy to do.
What brings all this to mind is two new books published this past fall, both focusing on rabbis. One is entitled “Rabbis – The Many Faces of Judaism. It contains 100 unexpected photographs of rabbis with essays in their own words.” It is a picture book, photographed by one of world’s great sports photographers, George Kalinsky, who traveled around the world taking pictures of rabbis. When you look at the hundred he chose for his book, there are a surfing rabbi; a Black Ethiopian rabbi; a rabbi dressed in cowboy hat and boots, guitar in hand and a horse beside him; and then there is a Lubavitcher rabbi sitting on a red Suzuki motorcycle; etc.
There is certainly diversity in the rabbinate. Which brings me to the book that I want to speak with you about tonight, Steven Fried’s “The New Rabbi.” It is a 350-page description of the process which was involved in filling the pulpit of Har Sinai Temple in Philadelphia.
There are probably many reasons for my having chosen this book to review in honor of Jewish Book Month. I just marked the one-third century mark of my rabbinate. To my surprise, several of my seminary classmates – including one of my dearest friends – have already retired and several more are planning to retire. Philadelphia’s Har Sinai Temple is involved in a rabbinic search because its rabbi of 30 years – Gerald Wolpe – is retiring at the age of 70.
Our Tulsa community is not used to senior rabbinic searches. There has been one in the past half century here at Temple Israel and one in the same period of time at Congregation B’nai Emunah. (I don’t count searches for Cantors and Assistant or Associate Rabbis – it is really not the same as the process or pressure in the search for a new Senior Rabbi.) This is a remarkably stable rabbinic community.
Some of you know that our sister congregation, Temple B’nai Israel in Oklahoma City, is beginning its search process. My colleague and dear friend, David Packman, is retiring in June, 2004. Now some of you are aware that Rabbi Packman and I came to Oklahoma at exactly the same time – the summer of 1976 – and I gather some of our congregants have asked whether this means that I’m thinking of retirement. So, let’s clear the air. My friend David Packman is five-and-a-half years older than I am and was ordained five years before I was. He will be 66 when he retires. Although I realize I look much older, very soon I shall turn 59. I was the youngest member of my ordination class, and I am not thinking of taking early retirement. To be very candid, if – God willing – I am blessed with good health, I’m not sure I’ll ever retire. I hope to die with my robe on. But, we’ll take it step by step.
I’m told that Oklahoma City’s B’nai Israel has already formed a Pulpit Search Committee, begun the process and that people are uptight about their chances of engaging a good rabbi – which is absolutely ridiculous. They will have no trouble attracting capable candidates – although filling David Packman’s shoes will not be an easy task. David is an excellent rabbi and it has truly been a privilege to share this state with him for the past 26-1/2 years.
The author of this book, Steven Fried, is an award-winning investigative journalist and essayist, author of previous books on the fashion and pharmaceutical industries. During the course of writing this book, he served for a while as Editor of “Philadelphia” magazine. Three years of his life is devoted to this pulpit search. But there is a sub–plot. When he began this project, Fried was what he calls a “six-day-a-year Jew” – High Holydays, Chanukah and two seders on Passover – far from observant or spiritually engaged. Then, when he was about to turn 40, his father died at the age of only 62. This book’s sub-theme is Steven Fried’s search for spiritual meaning in his life and his re-connection with Judaism.
Har Zion is one of the more influential Jewish congregations in North America, a flagship in the Conservative Movement. Founded in 1924, it has had only three rabbis, each a giant in his own right. The congregation today numbers 1400 families with an annual budget of over $4 million, a Hebrew School which is regularly named among the very the best in the country, and a reputation for supporting intellectual pursuits and social causes.
Please understand that Philadelphia is one of the great Jewish communities of North America. Philadelphia was where the first sermon in English was preached and the first English-language Jewish newspaper was published. Philadelphia was where the Conservative Movement was conceived by immigrants who believed that both main forms of European Jewry – Orthodox and Reform – were too extreme. They founded the short-lived Maimonides College, which was the precursor to the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Har Zion is the pre-eminent Conservative synagogue in the heartland of Conservative Judaism. Few American synagogues have produced as many world-class rabbis and scholars, or can match this congregation’s ability to put its money where its mouth is. All synagogues have their machers; “Har Zion,” writes Fried, “has a smorgasbord of them, some of the wealthiest and most generous lay leaders of the Conservative Movement.” In the rabbi business, this pulpit would be considered a “plum.” So why did it take three, bruising disappointing years to fill this pulpit?
What makes Fried’s book valuable is that most of the issues and problems confronting this congregation at its time of change are not unique to Conservative Judaism or even to Jews in general. Fried says: “Many Christian friends and colleagues have told me about similar dramas in their churches when there is a change in senior clergy.”
I admit that I read this book with especially close focus. Rabbi Wolpe had his open-heart surgery at the age of 63; mine was at 53. Two of Wolpe’s sons followed him into the rabbinate; we have had one of them, Rabbi David Wolpe, speak in our community several times. He is a very talented, gifted writer and thinker who has now taken the pulpit of Los Angeles’ huge Sinai Temple. While I have not read our Movement’s Placement List for personal reasons in many years, I have two sons who are going to be involved in placement in the coming years; so this analysis was particularly of interest to me.
It should never take three years to find a new rabbi. Therefore, let me focus on what I think went wrong here, because I believe there are some lessons to be learned for other congregations. These are not necessarily in order of importance.
Number one. The Pulpit Search Committee numbered 21 members, and they tried to make its membership reflect the demographics of the congregation. I believe that is a large committee. They started their work much too soon but may not have spent enough time struggling, as both the Reform and Conservative Placement Commissions urge synagogues to do, with a congregational self-study on where it is and where it wants to go in the next number of years.
Not surprisingly, they came up with the number one priority that their new rabbi be a great sermonizer. I say it is not surprising because they were replacing a man who was a master at homiletics. So what they really wanted was what every congregation wants – a younger, hipper version of their beloved rabbi. Someone who has all of his good qualities and none of his imperfections, all of his wisdom plus all of the energy he expended acquiring that wisdom.
Yet there were still real divisions within the Search Committee. Some members who have young kids wanted to be sure that the new Senior Rabbi will be popular with kids and, for them, that was more important than whether their own adult intellectual and spiritual needs would be fulfilled. Some loved the “High Church” culture of Har Zion; that is why they joined there and it is what they expect their congregation to be. Others would prefer services a little less formal and more interactive. Still others wanted a rabbi who would emphasize greater observance, including increased attendance at Shabbat services, enrollment in Jewish day schools and summer camps, someone who would put more emphasis upon full-time practice of Judaism and be a role model for that priority.
The Placement Commission Director, a skilled professional, tried to advise them – you are not looking for the best rabbi; you’re looking for the best match, the bet fit. But that is a hard thing for people to adjust to – the idea that the best rabbi may not be the best rabbi for them. So there were those who wanted to conduct an international search to bring in a “big name,” someone who will be “worthy” of Har Sinai’s reputation.
I feel that the Har Zion Pulpit Search Committee spent insufficient time getting its act together as to what it was looking for, and they started the search process too early.
Which brings me to mistake number two. Rabbi Wolpe had a sabbatical coming and decided to take it at the end of his tenure so that, basically, he wasn’t going to be around for the last six months of his rabbinate except to return for some May and June farewell fests. His young assistant would have all of the responsibilities during Wolpe’s sabbatical. This made for all kinds of problems. In my opinion, it was a dumb arrangement from the word go, and it unnecessarily complicated the placement picture with the presence and popularity among many of the young families of an assistant who himself was ineligible for consideration as Senior Rabbi.
Placement rules hold that a candidate would have to have been out in the field at least ten years in order to be eligible for a pulpit of that size. We have almost identical placement rules and procedures in Reform Judaism, and there are good reasons for them. I was an Assistant and Associate for seven years in a 1400 family congregation and I knew then, as I know now, what I didn’t know.
We Jews have been learning in the last decade or so from our Protestant brothers and sisters about the wisdom of the position of interim clergy. In some Christian denominations, there is a mandatory interim period after the departure of a long-term senior clergyperson, to give the congregation a breather before it begins searching for a new spiritual leader. Many of you know that when Dr. Hultren retired as Pastor of First Baptist Church, they brought in a former seminary president as the interim pastor for a year while they went through their placement process. First Presbyterian Church did the same thing for a period of two years; they had two different interim senior pastors. We are beginning to do that now in Reform and Conservative congregations where there has been a congregational cleavage and the rabbi has left under a cloud. Having an interim for a year has been a healing experience. It’s also hard to replace a rabbi who has been loved for many decades, and sometimes an interim rabbi can serve as a bridge between the retiree and the successor. When Har Sinai began to recognize that it wasn’t going to meet its deadline, it should have considered an interim rabbi.
Number three. I think Jews have to understand that there have been some significant changes in the rabbinate. I alluded to some of them last month when I spoke about the 30th anniversary of the ordination of females in our Movement. I return to it now because I think that it is important. Har Sinai thought they had found their new rabbi, and he ended up turning them down. Part of it was his ambivalence, which is common when a rabbi is torn between pastoral skills and scholarship. There are some men and women who struggle – not just in their early years – but throughout their careers between their abilities as religious functionaries and their desire to ignore the rest of the world so that they may study intensely. This often comes down to a quality of life decision which also involves spouse and children.
The rabbinate was once, and it remains for some of us, a calling. It is that to which we have devoted our lives. So whatever time it takes in order to fulfill what we see as our calling, we give that time. If this means some sacrifices or many sacrifices in terms of home life and vacations and other quality-of-life issues, rabbis, ministers and priests have made those sacrifices – many uncomplainingly and willingly. There is less of a willingness to do that today and, one has to add very quickly, young smart clergy are in demand – it is a rabbis’ market.
There are too few Jewish professionals today, you know that, and there are more and more off-bima opportunities – non-congregational positions which are becoming more attractive and lucrative – headmasters of growing day schools, directors or scholars-in-residence at Jewish community centers and Hillel centers on college campuses, chaplains at large hospitals and retirement facilities. These positions, incidently, as well as that of teaching in a wide variety of settings, are more family friendly than being a congregational rabbi.
Therefore, as Fried discovered, of the newly ordained rabbis in the last class of the Jewish Theological Seminary, almost half chose non-bima jobs. This is a double whammy friends. We have too few applicants for seminary, and a rapidly increasing percentage of seminary graduates are not being attracted to the pulpit rabbinate.
Another phenomenon which my generation has witnessed is the avoidance of the large congregation. When I was ordained, for many of us the goal was that mega congregation. Today there is an opening in a very healthy 2000 family congregation in St. Louis, to succeed a splendid rabbi – there have been only six applicants so far. Twenty years ago, our Placement Commission would have had to make two or three panels numbering 12 to 15 candidates each for that congregation. So while huge congregations often pay better and have more prestige, nothing can compensate for the increase in stress.
The last mistake and one of the biggest ones, in my humble opinion, was Rabbi Wolpe remaining totally uninvolved in the Pulpit Search Committee’s work. Our Placement Commission rules also call for the same thing. I believe it is naarishkeit – foolishness. There is nobody on the face of this earth who understood what the Senior Rabbi of Har Zion Temple needed to be better than Gerald Wolpe, and for him to have taken a totally hands-off stance and the Committee to have not regularly consulted him was, in my opinion, a major error, which Wolpe himself acknowledged to Steven Fried at the end of the process.
By definition, change produces feelings of anxiety, uncertainty and vulnerability. The period of transition from one rabbi to another is such a time. I found The New Rabbi to be a well-written, occasionally insightful study of transition within a particular congregation. Those of us concerned about and committed to synagogue life will find it especially interesting. I concur with the criticism that Fried should not have used the real names of the rejected candidates; he could have changed names without taking anything away from his observations of rabbinic and congregational life.
So let me conclude with two notes. One – the 430-family Temple B’nai Israel of Oklahoma City and our 500-family Temple Israel of Tulsa will be attractive openings for the next generation of rabbis. They are manageable sized congregations where there is enough people and resources to have staff, and yet small enough so that the rabbi can know the congregants. The drawbacks are going to be what you already recognize – the lack of Jewish day schools through high school for children of rabbis, the geographic isolation in terms of colleagues and the lack of depth and breadth of Jewish life. But the drawbacks will not be enough to overcome the advantages.
Note 2. I return to Clergy Appreciation Day. One of the reasons I can say to you with all candor that I can’t think of anything I’d rather be than your rabbi is because I have almost always felt appreciated here. There was a panel discussion on Sunday morning at the Oklahoma City Biennial about treatment of clergy and other Jewish professionals – Rabbi Yoffie’s concerns about days off, vacation time, sabbaticals, respect for privacy and things like that. Within the next couple of days, our President – sensitive and caring person that she is – made it a point to ask how things were with me. You’ve always cared about how your Rabbi and Cantor are doing. You have been genuinely appreciative of my efforts and, I believe, my predecessor’s as well. Would that more congregations treated their clergy as Temple Israel does. Here, I feel that every day is Clergy Appreciation Day. I thank you and I thank God for such a blessing. Amen.
