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Rabbinic Reflections

Teaching, Caring, Helping: Rabbi Fred Raskind on 50 Years in the Rabbinate

Over the past five decades, I take great satisfaction from my experiences and accomplishments during my rabbinate. I am so grateful for:

  • The health, energy, and focus to work and serve
  • The small congregation rabbinate that fostered personal, quality relationships
  • The variety of settings of Southeast congregations, Hillel, V.A. chaplaincy, and retirement positions, as well as counseling and private consulting work
  • Countless life cycle events, sharing joys, transitions, and losses through pastoral care, ceremonies, and celebrations
  • Intellectual stimulation, teaching and learning Torah, personal study, and community programs
  • Connecting with so many interesting, bright, and kind Jews and non-Jews, too
  • Achieving a successful balance between my professional and personal life.

Many of my key remembrances include:

  • Initiating an annual brotherhood weekend pulpit exchange program: the service and my sermon at First Methodist Church was radio broadcast through northeast Alabama
  • Creating an accompanying script and coordinating music for a two-hour December Chanukah concert radio broadcast [ALA]
  • Planning and implementing a two-summer sabbatical to prepare programs, lectures, and sermons on “Jews in the Civil War” for the temple, pulpit exchanges, and community groups
  • Initiating my congregation’s participation in the annual Athens Pulpit Exchange Day
  • Delivering the invocation and benediction at the University of Georgia commencement IN 1980, and the invocation at the 1981 Homecoming game, broadcast on regional TV
  • Reading at the Inaugural Service at the National Cathedral; being invited to official events of St. Augustine’s 450th anniversary, including the reenactment of Menendez’ landing (the costumed actors sailed in a replica boat piloted by one of my congregants!); a major social event with Cardinal O’Malley, and the celebratory mass at the historical cathedral.

Over the course of my rabbinic career, three lessons have emerged for me.

First, the focus for my rabbinate is a “three-legged stool”-teaching, pastoral caring, and officiating at worship and life cycle occasions.

Second, my task has been to help those in their individual Jewish lives and journeys to the extent possible—to help rather than obstruct.

Third, despite inevitable frustrations and setbacks of the professional rabbinate, the priority has been to maintain my personal integrity and sense of self beyond rabbinic roles: Just weeks prior to ordination, a favorite faculty member had offered this insight and compliment: “You’re one-we never got to.”

For that, I’m still grateful.

Rabbi Fred Raskind served Congregation B’nai Abraham in Hagerstown, Maryland and Temple Bet Yam in St. Augustine, Florida. He celebrates 50 years as a Reform rabbi.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 2022. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger: Gratitude for 50 Years Spent Teaching and Preaching

With rabbis on both sides of my family, growing up spending weeks each summer at UAHC camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and involvement in local and regional NFTY, I do not remember ever wanting to be anything but a rabbi. So, I saved a year by attending HUC-JIR’s undergraduate program, taking courses at HUC-JIR while majoring in English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, then entering the second year of HUC-JIR.

The summer before my final year at HUC-JIR, Ann and I married. The fine folks of my student pulpit in Jonesboro, Arkansas thought we were adorable as they wined and dined us from Rosh HaShanah through Yom Kippur. Then we settled down to married life, which, for me included writing a dissertation on Reform Jewish theology with Dr. Jakob Petuchowsky.

Then we were off to an assistant rabbi position with Joseph Asher at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco for three years, and to another great place as solo rabbi for eight and a half years (nine football seasons) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Aren’t you afraid to preach to all those academics?” a few friends asked. Perhaps I should have been, but I quickly found that the academics were great people, each a specialist in some narrow field and anxious to respect their rabbi as a Jewish specialist!

In each step in my career Ann has been an invaluable partner, with creative ideas for congregations, and, at least as important, a memory for names and relationships far superior to mine. When we decided we were ready to move on to a larger pulpit, we ended up in a city with a marvelous cultural life, Fort Worth, Texas, where we have lived for thirty-eight years and raised two wonderful children. Moreover, the Beth-El community was proud to have their rabbi play leadership roles in the city as well as work on growing the temple and, ultimately, building a marvelous new building, and endowments. Brite Divinity School at TCU welcomed my teaching a course every couple of years, and I made time to write articles for the CCAR Journal and other publications.

When asked over the years what I liked about the congregational rabbinate I generally spoke of the great variety of the work: not only preaching, teaching, and being there with people at life’s highs and lows, but administration, programming, leadership development, counseling, youth work, and engagement in the community. Always, both because I feel most authentic as a rabbi when studying and because I enjoy it, writing has brought satisfaction, whether sermons and articles or, in recent years, two books.

Some twenty years ago the fine folks of Beth-El asked if I would like to take some months off as a sabbatical leave. I had the chutzpah to respond that what I needed was not a single chunk of time, but a month or two each summer to pursue various writing projects where good Jewish libraries were available. They graciously agreed. Soon Ann and I were enjoying the delights of New York City, and I was happily ensconced most days in the HUC-JIR library.  Serendipitously, I had contacted a JTS professor of Jewish philosophy, Neil Gillman, for some reading suggestions. It turned out that we shared an interest in the significance of the current revolution in cognitive studies and neuroscience for theology. Each summer I would make pilgrimage to JTS, and later to Gillman’s apartment, and in the role of friend and mentor he pushed and prodded as I shared chapters. Later he told his publisher, Jewish Lights, that I needed to be taken seriously. I am not under any illusions about going down in history as a revolutionary Jewish thinker, but I dare to think I have made some original contributions to the stream of Jewish thinking in Our Religious Brains (Jewish Lights, 2012) and Why Call It God?: Theology for the Age of Science (Wipf & Stock, 2020).

No rush to wrap it up, but when mortality catches up with me, I will continue to be grateful to God, the rabbinate, family, and friends for a satisfying and, I dare say, meaningful life.

Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger is celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate. He retired in 2016.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 2022. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Revolution, Innovation, and ‘Quiet Victories’: Rabbi Richard Address on 50 Years in the Rabbinate

Our generation of rabbis has been blessed to have served during one of the most transitional times in American Jewish history. From the moment we walked off the bimah in  June of 1972, we were witness to and part of great changes. We helped shepherd the feminist revolution, the revolution in synagogue music and worship styles, the LGBTQ revolution, and numerous social justice causes. It is safe to say that in many ways, the Reform Judaism that welcomed us in 1972 is not the same as it is in 2022. This is all for the good. We have lived the reality of innovation and flexibility, even up to the present as so many of us still teach and preach electronically.  

As I reflect on these 50 years, I also reflect on the friends from our years who have died, friends with whom I still hold sacred memories. Our rabbinate has changed in so many ways, yet, as we move into our own futures, we can also take pride in the lives we have touched, the moments of meaning we helped shape, and the relationships that, in so many ways, helped shape us.

I think, as I look back on these years, that one of the great lessons has been the mystery of personal encounters. We can never know what impact a class, or a word, or a call, or a visit may have made with someone. If we are lucky, some of these people will remind us, often years after the event. I think that these “quiet victories” are the real payback for all of us. They reinforce what I call the theology of relationships; that as we age we come to understand that the relationships we have really are what gives us meaning. Our rabbinate has given us so many of the moments. Maybe we do not celebrate them enough.

Let us also keep in mind that, as long as we are blessed with health, we can continue to help, each of us in our own way, to continue to create these relationships and shape a unique Jewish future. We have been blessed to have been called to be of service, so may we continue.

Rabbi Richard F. Address, DMin, is the Founder and Director of Jewish Sacred Aging, and he hosts the weekly podcast Seekers of Meaning. He is adjunct faculty at HUC-JIR in New York City and the Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University. He served for over three decades on the staff of the Union for Reform Judaism and was the founding director of URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns. He is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 2022. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Roberto Graetz: 50 Years, Three Languages, and Two Continents as a Rabbi

A lot has happened in my half a century in the rabbinate—marriage, children, and grandchildren, who are at the stabilizing center of my life in a world in constant change. I believe that the rabbinate changed with the ordination of Rabbi Sally Priesand, and my rabbinate changed as I worked with women colleagues who became close family friends. As driven as I was, they didn’t teach me to work less; they taught me to work better.

I served in two continents and in three languages! I survived persecution and death threats as well as a near-death experience; each of these taught me something new about how to be in the world, in my work, with my family, and communities. I loved the teaching, engaging with good thinkers—young and old—watching people learn and ask deep question, taking lessons I taught them further than I could or would.

My greatest joy was whenever a young woman or man would talk to me about exploring the rabbinate for themselves. Along the years, I can claim at least some credit for sending 25 to 30 students to HUC-JIR, JTS, AJU, and even one to a seriously Orthodox yeshivah in Jerusalem. Each of them a link to the future. As some of them already think of retirement, I helped to start, and now teach at a Reform rabbinical training institute for the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world.

They say that one shebs naches fun kindern, and I believe one does from one’s students as well. I learned from all of them.

It has been and continues to be one hell of a ride!

Rabbi Roberto Graetz retired as Rabbi Emeritus from Temple Isaiah in Lafayette, California in 2016. He is celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 2022. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Peter Grumbacher on a Charmed 50 Years in the Rabbinate

I’m glad I can look back on these past fifty years with a smile. As my wife Suzy says, “It was a charmed rabbinate.” To serve one congregation for an entire career says more about them than it does about me. We had—and still have—a wonderful relationship, and there’s not a minute of that half-century I’d trade with anyone else.     

My congregation, Congregation Beth Emeth in Wilmington, Delaware, was kind and very open to change and to challenge; they were involved with the broader community, with our Movement; and I found that they cared for each other deeply. I hope I was part of that positive vibe that was felt by so many because I tried my best to foster relationships that spoke of the congregation as truly “sacred.” 

To me, that’s what it’s all about. My predecessor, Herbert Drooz, taught me by example, by deed, that we were stewards of God’s people, not overlords. And they responded in kind. In my twenty-fifth year, one of our classmates asked me what the best thing was about serving one congregation for so long, and I responded, “Getting to know all the people.” And of course when he asked me the worst, well, I had to say, “Getting to know all the people.” And now another twenty-five years have passed and my answer is the same. I’ve become good friends with so many, most of my past presidents, in fact; and when they die, as so many have, I have felt it deeply. There’s a void in the pews, and there’s a void within me.

I couldn’t have done it without Suzy, and those aren’t empty words. There have been some tough times across our fifty-two years, but her love and concern for me have been the pillars, sometimes more than I deserved.

It’s all in the relationships, how we view ourselves and others, recognizing our strengths and our faults and realizing that everyone has their own strengths and faults. After all, we’re mortals. 

It’s been a charmed rabbinate for me.

I wish all my classmates health and strength, and many more years of dedicated service. Most of us may have retired as rabbis, but we sure didn’t retire as Jews.

Rabbi Peter Grumbacher is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Emeth in Wilmington, Delaware. He is celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 222. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Books CCAR Press Social Justice Torah

Teaching and Preaching with The Social Justice Torah Commentary

Rabbi Barry H. Block is the editor of the new CCAR Press book The Social Justice Torah Commentary, which delves into the many ways that the Torah can inspire us to address today’s social justice issues. In this post, Rabbi Block discusses how the book’s diverse lessons have influenced his own sermons throughout the past year.

On many Friday nights in the last year, contributors to The Social Justice Torah Commentary have been de facto guest preachers at Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock.

For more than a year now, I have been in the unique position of having access to the brilliant work of our CCAR colleagues and other contributors to The Social Justice Torah Commentary. The last of the chapters was completed in late 2020. Transforming the content into a physical book takes a while, particularly in this era of contraction in the printing industry and global supply chain issues.

The book’s chapters have deeply influenced my own rabbinate over the last year; I hope this will be replicated as rabbis and others now have their hands on the full book.

I give formal sermons most Friday nights, and the authors of The Social Justice Torah Commentary have provided me with content that I have shaped into these sermons. I suspect that colleagues who speak more informally could similarly benefit from the book.

Last fall, when the Supreme Court forced the City of Philadelphia to continue contracting with a religious foster care agency that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, I preached on “Religious Certainty and Religious Liberty,” drawing both on that week’s portion, Vayeira, and Rabbi David Segal’s insightful piece on that parashah for the book. I turned back to Rabbi Segal’s entry this year, as we face a historic threat to abortion rights. In 5782, my sermon for Vayeira was entitled, “Abortion Rights: Bound to the Altar”. While both of those sermons drew on the same chapter in the book, neither recapitulated Rabbi Segal’s central argument in full. Instead, crediting Rabbi Segal repeatedly in each sermon, I shared some of his words—and, more importantly, texts that he provides.

In other cases, I have shared an author’s entire thesis more fully. Before I received Rabbi Reuben Zellman’s draft for Parashat Mikeitz, I had somehow never thought of Joseph and the cupbearer as formerly incarcerated people who had been given extraordinary opportunities to succeed after imprisonment. I shared Rabbi Zellman’s perspective rather fully last December, in a sermon titled “Joseph and the Cupbearer: The Potential of Formerly Incarcerated People”.

Rabbi Mary Zamore’s entry on harassment-free Jewish spaces for Parashat Vayikra is so compelling that I taught it even though the week of reading that portion wasn’t the right time. Shabbat HaGadol, when we read Parashat Tzav (close enough to Vayikra!), would be the occasion for me to share her wisdom in a sermon I entitled “Harassment, Bullying, and Jewish Institutions”.

In no case have I merely recited another author’s work verbatim as my Shabbat sermon. Instead, I have shaped kernels of these chapters into drashot that would fit the congregation I serve and the season when I have preached.

More recently, Rabbis Alan Freedman and Ellie Steinman and Temple Beth Shalom in Austin blessed me with my first scholar-in-residence opportunity since the pandemic began. My Friday evening sermon was based on The Mussar Torah Commentary. However, for the Shabbat morning Torah Study, I prepared a Sefaria source sheet based on Rabbi Naamah Kelman’s entry for Parashat Chayei Sarah, “Torah’s Precedent for Women’s Agency.” Rabbi Kelman focused on how women’s agency is taken away by the marriage and divorce laws of Israel’s chief rabbinate. Teaching in Texas in 2021, though, the matter of women’s agency is most relevant to the struggle for access to abortion.

Later that same Shabbat, our attention had turned to Parashat Tol’dot. In his chapter about systemic racism and water rights, Rabbi David Spinrad draws on Isaac’s digging and naming successive wells—and importantly, on Nachmanides’ midrashic reading of that story. Kernels of his work, encapsulated in a Sefaria sheet, were the perfect material on which to base a conversation about whether and how rabbis can properly speak on issues of the day: “Politics or Social Justice: Should Rabbis Preach about Issues of the Day.”

I hope that these examples, only a few of the many, many times I have employed the content of The Social Justice Torah Commentary over the last year, will inspire CCAR colleagues and others to draw on this new book to bring Torah and the prophetic voice for a brighter future to all the communities we serve.

Rabbi Barry H. Block serves Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is the CCAR’s Vice President for Organizational Relationships and also edited The Mussar Torah Commentary: A Spiritual Path to Living a Meaningful and Ethical Life (CCAR Press, 2020).

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Israel Rabbinic Reflections Social Justice

Implement the Kotel Agreement: An Open Letter to Ambassador Michael Herzog

Dear Ambassador Hertzog,

I am an American Reform rabbi. I am writing to you from Tel Aviv, where I am privileged to be spending a month with my Israeli family.

This morning, I joined friends and colleagues to celebrate Rosh Chodesh at the Kotel, as I have many, many times before.

I am honored to join my courageous and resilient Israeli sisters to welcome the new month, even though we who join Women of the Wall (נשות הכותל) are often screamed at, spat upon, and prevented from praying together. Today was no different: we were corralled into a separate space as if we, not our hecklers, needed to be contained. The true desecration today was the screaming, the shrill whistles, and the guards’ bullhorns that attempted to silence our prayer. Instead of providing protection to us, the Kotel authorities ignored and seemed to support those who harassed us.

You know that the current situation at the Kotel causes grave harm and deep embarrassment for all of us who love Israel. Israel is my home, but being heckled by ultra-Orthodox men and women, and boys and girls, when I lift my voice in praise to the Source of all makes me feel unwelcome and alienated in one of Israel’s most sacred places. 

You also know that Israel is home to many Jews who do not identify as Orthodox, and that North American Jews from all liberal streams feel a profound sense of peoplehood when we visit Israel and attend one of the many Israeli Reform, Reconstructionist, or Conservative synagogues. And when we visit the Kotel, we want to pray in peace, in a space that welcomes us. 

No one heckles the men who gather to pray. No one prevents men from bringing a Sefer Torah to sanctify their gathering. No one prevents men from being called to the Torah for the first time, or to celebrate a simchah, or to remember a loved one. No one accuses other prayer groups of “disturbing the peace.”

Yet I return to Israel, and to the Kotel, whenever I can, in the hopes that the Kotel Agreement, approved on January 31, 2016 by the Israeli government will finally be implemented. This detailed, 45-page document, negotiated over three and a half years, provides full and unimpeded access to the Western Wall for Jews of all streams. It is my hope that once implemented, the harassment, intimidation, and שנאת חינם will cease. 

Today we welcomed a new month: Adar. Tradition teaches: משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה.

However, my joy today was diminished, and my heart heavy with disappointment and anger that Prime Minister Bennett, on the sixth anniversary of the signing of the Kotel Agreement, is capitulating to extremists and denying that the Kotel Agreement is a fair and long overdue compromise. As you know, there is broad support in his coalition to finally move forward on this long delayed and eminently fair solution. 

Now is the time to rise beyond narrow political considerations. I implore you, as a representative of the Israeli government, to conclude the task begun with “Ezrat Israel” in 2013. Nine years later, it is time for the Israeli government to implement the Kotel Agreement.

Let us welcome Adar with joy, not shame.

Thank you.

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD

Learn more about the Kotel Agreement here.

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD serves as a Spiritual Director at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the editor of Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives (Cascade Books) and The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah (CCAR Press), and has served as a congregational rabbi, worked with congregations and lay leaders through the URJ, and has taught at the University of Cincinnati, University of California, Los Angeles, and LaSalle University.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Sally Priesand on Celebrating 50 Years in the Rabbinate and the Path to Becoming the First Woman Rabbi in North America

As I reflect on the past fifty years, I am grateful to God that part of my life’s work has been to open new doors for women in the Jewish community, but at the same time, I have tried never to lose sight of the larger mission of the Jewish people—which is to derive from the words of Torah a set of values and a sense of holiness that will enable us always to be partners with God in completing the world.

Dr. Nelson Glueck, president of HUC-JIR, was the man most responsible for my ordination. He was passionate about those things that were important to him, and he had a certain charm that inspired others to dream bigger and do more. As someone once said, “He brushed away the ruts that others were prone to stumble in. He stepped right over them. He didn’t even see them. He had a higher horizon.” That horizon enabled him to envision a day when women would serve the Jewish people as rabbis. From the moment I arrived in Cincinnati I knew that he believed in me, and I was conscious of the fact that ordaining a woman as rabbi was a decision being made by the College-Institute itself under his leadership—the Union and the CCAR had nothing to do with it.

I was devastated when Dr. Glueck died a year and a half before my ordination, but his wife Helen, a distinguished physician and researcher in Cincinnati, told me that before he died, he said there were three things he wanted to live to do, and one of them was to ordain me. Throughout my career, I have had a picture of Dr. Glueck hanging above my desk, together with a letter from his wife dated March 19, 1971. The letter ends this way: “I have already told you how meaningful your ordination would have been for him and how he would have loved to have seen that day. I am sure when I see you ordained, in my mind’s eye I will see his hands on your shoulders, for no matter whose hands are there the meaning will be clear, the continuity of Jewish life and his immortality of spirit.”

I came to HUC-JIR because I wanted to be a congregational rabbi. That dream was fulfilled for me in 1981 when I became rabbi of Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, a position I was privileged to hold for twenty-five years, becoming Rabbi Emerita upon my retirement. Its members were warm and welcoming, open to new ideas and unafraid of new challenges. They allowed me to be myself, to experiment and be creative, and they were willing to take responsibility for their own Jewishness, one mitzvah at a time. Together we created a temple family and studied Torah hoping to discover what God would have us do and be. Our commitment to social justice grew from year to year, as we provided a Jewish presence in our community, joining with others in the task of tikkun olam. Without my temple family, my life would never be the same. They kept me grounded and treated me, not as the first, but simply as their rabbi.

My experience tells me that we are richer for the gifts that female rabbis bring to our shared task: rethinking previous models of leadership; empowering others to become more responsible for their own Jewishness; discovering new models of divinity, knowing that God embodies characteristics both masculine and feminine; training new leaders to be more gender aware by welcoming to our institutions of higher learning respected female scholars able to share with us lessons and insights unique to women; creating new role models and allowing to be heard—often for the first time—the stories of those whose voices have been silenced for too long, the countless number of women who have enriched our people from biblical times on.

In conclusion, I want to thank my thirty-five classmates in Cincinnati for always making me feel like part of the class. To them I say: I have never forgotten that day of our ordination, when I was called to the bimah, and you very spontaneously stood up to honor this important moment in Jewish history. I think of that often and shall always be grateful for your kindness and friendship.

Rabbi Sally Priesand has the distinct honor of being the first woman rabbi in North America. She is celebrating 50 years in the Reform Rabbinate.

We look forward to celebrating 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2022 in San Diego, March 27-30, 222. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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Student Rabbis

How Times Have Changed: The Student Rabbi Today

In January 2022, Temple Or Hadash in Northern Colorado was led in worship and study by second-year rabbinical student Hannah Bloomberg. Before beginning the lesson, she planned to teach on Sunday morning, Hannah opened up the virtual class by asking if anyone wanted to talk about the hostage situation that had just occurred in Colleyville, Texas. The discussion lasted for twenty minutes, and she handled it with a maturity that belied her youth and status as a second-year student.

I retired in 2017 and within a year accepted a position as a monthly rabbi at Temple Or Hadash. I was really excited to learn that I would be sharing the pulpit with a student rabbi. I travel to Fort Collins and lead services and adult education once a month, and the student does the same two weeks later. In my tenure, I have worked with three different student rabbis, and I am constantly amazed and gratified at their responses to the many events that have happened in the country and the world during their tenure. When I think back to my student-rabbi experience, especially serving my monthly pulpits, it was a totally different experience. The academic workload at HUC-JIR was so demanding that when I returned to Cincinnati after my monthly visit, I did not give the congregation much thought. The world was calm, the congregation stable, and I was never called between visits to deal with emergencies. My pulpit was a one-weekend-a-month experience, and except for the preparation for my monthly visit, I concentrated on my academic work.

The students I have worked with over the past several years have dealt with the shootings at Pittsburgh, Poway, and a kosher supermarket. They have also dealt with the King Soopers Supermarket shooting in Boulder, and the recent devastating wildfires in our area, where over 1,000 homes burned. Finally, all three of them have—and are continuing to deal with—the fallout from the pandemic. Or Hadash decided to have Zoom-only services in March of 2020, and we have not had in-person services since then. Two of the students have never met the congregants in person, yet all three of them offered words of support and made themselves available to the congregation. 

When most of us decided to become rabbis, we did so out of a desire to serve the Jewish people, to teach, and be there for the people in times of sorrow and joy. We did not expect to become security experts, or COVID police, or to master the technology to lead services on Zoom, or to comfort mourners at a Zoom shivah service. It has not been easy for us, and we are experienced rabbis. Our students are expected to fill all these roles sometimes even before they have taken professional development classes. They are in school, and along with increased pulpit demands, they are also adjusting to pivoting from online to in-person classes and sometimes back again. Their resilience and flexibility have been a source of inspiration for me. I wonder often how I would have fared under similar circumstances. 

I believe that in many ways, this trial by fire will only help them become better rabbis.  For me, working with these three students had been a pleasure. I have learned so much from them and look forward to seeing where their rabbinic journey leads them.  

Rabbi Lynne Goldsmith was ordained in 2007 and served Temple Emanu-el in Dothan, AL until her retirement in 2017. She failed Retirement 101 and now serves part-time at Temple Or Hadash in Fort Collins, CO, and works with Adventure Rabbi in Boulder, CO.

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Books CCAR Press Social Justice Torah

Harassment-Free Jewish Spaces: Our Leaders Must Answer to a Higher Standard

In this excerpt from The Social Justice Torah Commentary, Rabbi Mary L. Zamore, Executive Director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, draws on Parashat Vayikra to call for holding Jewish leaders accountable.

Yes, it is awful that he said those things. They are totally inappropriate, but he is a beloved member of our clergy team, a founder of our congregation. We must recognize that he only yells at our professional staff and lay leaders when he is stressed.

She just has trouble with boundaries, but she’s harmless. If we hold her accountable, she may leave the temple, which would be devastating. After all, she donates hours and hours to our synagogue. She is irreplaceable. The staff just needs to avoid her. We will remind her not to go to the staff members’ homes without permission.

We all know his behavior is not right, so we will make sure he does not meet with women alone. He’s going to retire soon. There is no reason to ruin his otherwise stellar reputation. Retirement is just a few years away. Maybe we can encourage him to leave sooner.

He has suffered enough by his sexual harassment coming to light. However, his contributions to the Jewish community are far too numerous not to quote him. Whom else could we cite? And why mention this dark spot on an otherwise sterling career?

Above is a compilation of remarks reflecting many real cases in the Jewish community, conflated here to illustrate a theme. The common thread is a lack of accountability for the productive perpetrator. This is the professional or lay leader in a congregation or institution who is successful in their work, yet has substantiated accusations of sexual assault, harassment, or abusive/bullying behavior against them. They are trusted and beloved, generous with their time and/or money; they excel in their field. And because of their success, their community will never hold them accountable for their bad behavior—even though it endangers the community’s atmosphere of safety and respect—leaving a wake of damage in their path. Often working to keep the behavior and its negative impact unknown to the wider world, community leaders act as if the bad behavior is an unavoidable tax for the benefits the community reaps from the productive perpetrator’s presence and work. However, Parashat Vayikra teaches us the exact opposite, commanding us to hold our leaders accountable to a higher standard.

Vayikra outlines the rituals for different types of sacrifices: olah (עֹלָה), burnt offerings; minchah (מִנְחָה), meal offerings; sh’lamin (שְׁלָמִים), well-being offerings; chatat (חַטָּאת), purgation offerings; and asham (אָשָׁם), reparation offerings. While on the surface this portion reads like a simple instruction book for the sacrifices, it is infused with foundational values. Holding our leaders accountable for their actions is intrinsic to the biblical design of the ancient sacrificial cult and the accompanying priesthood, as we can observe in the parashah’s commandments.

The Israelite sacrificial cult is designed to function in an atmosphere of radical transparency. After the engaging narratives of Genesis and Exodus, it is easy to overlook the revolutionary nature of Leviticus. The laws regulating the sacrifices were given to the entire people of Israel, not just to the elite class of priests. There were no esoteric, secret rituals known only to the kohanim, the priestly class. Furthermore, sacrifices were performed publicly. As The Torah: A Women’s Torah Commentary explains, “Although Leviticus preserves the priests’ privileged monopoly regarding the service at the altar and its sacrifices, these instructions demystify the priests’ role by making knowledge about their activities known to every Israelite.”1 Coupled with the prohibition against land ownership by priests (Numbers 18:20), universal access to the law equalized power in the Israelite community. Kohanim were supposed to facilitate the community’s efforts to draw near to God rather than amass power for themselves.

The public viewing of offerings also created accountability. The Hebrew term eidah, “community,” is related to eid,“witness.”2 If a priest inadvertently made a mistake or knowingly deviated from the prescribed rites, the Israelites would know because they could witness the offerings in real time. The elevated status of the kohanim in the community required that they be held to a high standard. Parashat Vayikra demands a rigorous method of atonement for the priests’ misdeeds, whether they were known to the public (Leviticus 4:3) or not (Leviticus 4:13). It should be noted that the Torah also holds chieftains to a standard higher than that of ordinary Israelites (Leviticus 4:22), but not as high as the priests. This portion clearly teaches that the greater one’s status is in the community, the more accountable they must be for their actions.

The full chapter can be found in The Social Justice Torah Commentary, which delves deeply into each week’s parashah to address pressing contemporary issues such as racism, climate change, immigration, disability, and many more.

1. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, ed. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi and Andrea Weiss (New York: Reform Judaism Publishing, an imprint of CCAR Press, and Women of Reform Judaism, 2007), 571.

2. The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, 580.

Rabbi Mary L. Zamore is Executive Director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She is the editor of The Sacred Table: Creating a Jewish Food Ethic and The Sacred Exchange: Creating a Jewish Money Ethic, both published by CCAR Press.