Tag: 50 year member

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Rabbinic Reflections

Valuing the Torah of My Life: Rabbi Laura Geller Reflects on 50 Years as a Reform Rabbi

There were thirty-nine (or so) men and me in that HUC-JIR entering class in Jerusalem in 1971. Many were there to get out of the draft; I was there to figure out what being Jewish meant to me. I was shaped by the identity politics of the late ’60s at Brown University—civil rights, anti-war, feminism—and the two white male Protestant chaplains who modeled a connection between spirituality and social justice.

That first year was hard: my friends were wives of some of the guys in my class, struggling like me with how one can be both Jewish and feminist. My next four years were divided between Los Angeles and New York—also not easy years. I was singled out for humiliation by Professor Steven Passamaneck, but in those days, challenging a tenured faculty for inappropriate behavior was unthinkable. I knew then of President Gottschalk’s inappropriate relationships with other women students. It was only years later (2021) that HUC released the investigation which revealed the sexual harassment, racism, misogyny and homophobia that had existed for years. I’m proud that HUC committed to do teshuvah. I was moved beyond words by the reordination ceremony when Rabbi Andrea Weiss put her hands on me and blessed me.

What did I learn from those early experiences? Beyond the Torah of tradition that HUC taught me, I learned to value the Torah of my life and to explore how each enriched the other.

My work over the years of my rabbinate was varied, challenging and fulfilling. After ordination, I served for fourteen years as the Hillel director at the University of Southern California. My mentor Rabbi Richard Levy taught that everything a rabbi did was holy, from teaching, to counseling, to empowering student and faculty leaders, to encouraging university officials to pay attention to the role of spirituality in higher education. All holy work—including shlepping chairs.

Next I was the regional director of the American Jewish Congress. I learned during those years (1990–1994) how complicated social justice work can be and that this too was holy work. The Los Angeles uprising was in 1992; what followed were years of intense community organizing and reorganizing. I learned how important it was to listen to the experience of people very different from me, and to recognize the ways in which my own privilege as an upper middle class white cisgender woman sometimes made the work of building coalitions difficult. The issues: police reform, intergroup coalitions, gun violence, pro-choice advocacy, Middle East peace, and economic justice (particularly around sweatshop conditions) opened my mind and my heart. And at the same time, my work to create the first Jewish Feminist Center gave me a safe space to find new ways to celebrate the Torah of my life.

When I was forty-four, Joshua was twelve, and Elana was five, Wilshire Boulevard Temple was looking for a Westside address; Temple Emanuel was facing bankruptcy. The leadership of both temples and the senior rabbis supported a merger. Bylaws required that there be a congregational vote; it was defeated by twenty-six votes. Suddenly Emanuel was looking for a rabbi, and I was looking for a new position. The idea of being a part of transforming a challenged synagogue was exciting to me. Even though I had not one day of congregational experience, Emanuel decided to give me a chance. So I became the first women selected in a national search to be the senior rabbi of a major metropolitan synagogue. The headline was: “Woman Rabbi Smashes Stained Glass Ceiling.” The real headline should have been: you can begin your career anywhere and end up anywhere. Take chances. Follow what you love.

I loved the work. Together with lay leaders and talented colleagues, we created a culture that celebrated our different talents, a web of connections rather than a hierarchical structure. We took chances with innovative programs. During those years I was a fellow at the Hartman Institute, part of the first cohort of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and a trustee on the Corporation of Brown University.  Each of those opportunities helped me become the rabbi that I am. I am grateful that I was so often in the right place at the right time.

A few years after I came to Emanuel I found my soulmate, Richard Siegel, z”l. We worked together on a project that became the book Getting Good at Getting Older. Together we were cofounders of the first synagogue village, a partnership between Temple Emanuel and Temple Isaiah for active older adults who want to age in place. Chai Village LA is now in its ninth year.

I became the rabbi emerita of Temple Emanuel in 2016. I consider this stage not retired but rewired, asking the question: Now that there are more years added to our lives, how do we add more life to our years?

What I look forward to now is continuing the conversation about growing older through my new book, Moments that Matter: Marking Transitions in Midlife and Beyond, coauthored with Rabbi Beth Lieberman. And I look forward to the unfolding of my journey, wherever it leads.

Rabbi Laura Geller is Rabbi Emerita of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Making a Difference in Israel and Throughout the Jewish World: Rabbi Joel Oseran Reflects on 50 Years a Reform Rabbi

Upon ordination in 1976, I knew two things: I wanted to live in Israel. and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of Jewish people throughout the world. Looking back, I am blessed to have done both and to still be doing both. 

My goal of living in Israel was sealed when I met my wife, Rachelle, from Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) who was working in the NFTY office after graduating from the WUJIS program in Arad. I was working back then at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem after my ordination in 1976. I was sure if I met a woman to marry who was already committed to living in Israel, my goal of making aliyah to Israel would become a reality. It did. 

After a few important years of working in the US as a rabbi in Los Angeles, my next goal was to secure a position back in Israel that would enable me to serve the Jewish people both in Israel and around the world. This came about when I met Rabbi Dick Hirsch, Executive Director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, at a UAHC biennial in Toronto in 1985, and asked him if I could come work with him at the World Union office in Jerusalem. He told me flat out that he had no budget for a position. I asked him what if I would bring with me funds to cover my position for two years, would he then have a position for me. Anyone who knew Dick Hirsch would know his answer:  “Absolutely,” he said, “you bring the funding, I will create a job for you.” I did and he did. 

The World Union position became secure after WZO funding began the following year. It was my professional home for thirty years and a source of tremendous pride and satisfaction for my rabbinate. During those years I was able to “make a difference” in Israel, the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and throughout the world. I learned a great deal from Dick Hirsch, which helped me build my symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Diaspora. I worked in both, and I came to appreciate the value and importance of both. 

Arriving in Israel with two small boys (my third son was born in Israel in 1989), I quickly came to see that if there was going to be a school setting that would be the right mixture of liberal Judaism and secular studies, I and other like-minded parents would have to establish it. And so we created a new school in Jerusalem, linked to the TALI educational system (Tigbor Limudei Yahadut) which began using rooms in HUC-JIR and Bet Shmuel in Jerusalem and later blossomed in the neighborhood of Bayit V’Gan (imagine that). Back in the late 1980s, that was a big deal. 

Timing is everything in life: I fell into my World Union position just as the Soviet Union was imploding and Jewish life was, once again, a possibility for millions of our Jewish family members who knew nothing about Judaism, but everything about their deep commitment and sense of belonging to the Jewish people. I helped build Jewish communities in the FSU and raise up a generation of rabbis and lay leaders there, all the while feeling that this work was personal as well as professional. My family roots on both my mother’s and father’s side were from Ukraine and Belarus. What an opportunity to contribute to those family members who were less fortunate than I—who lived through the Shoah and were searching for a meaningful doorway into their Jewish identity. Progressive Judaism provided that doorway and I was there to help open it for hundreds upon hundreds of my family still in the “old country.”

I traveled the world with the World Union, helping to establish and support Progressive Jewish congregations throughout the world, but primarily in Latin America and Europe. The last community I helped establish was in Rome, Italy. When I retired from the WUPJ in 2016, I began serving Beth Hillel in Rome on a part-time basis, and ten years later, I continue to be the rabbi for the community. We have purchased a building in a beautiful neighborhood in Rome and will begin renovations later this year. This is a retirement I never imagined, but one which I highly recommend.

My class of 1976 met in Atlanta at the recent NAORRR conference. What an amazing few days to remember who we were back in 1971 in our first year in Jerusalem and then again, fifty years after our ordination. I am grateful for the opportunity my rabbinic ordination afforded me to help make a difference, both in my beloved Israel and throughout the Jewish world.

Rabbi Joel Oseran serves Beth Hillel in Rome and is the VP Emeritus, International Development of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. He is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis at CCAR Convention 2026.

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Rabbinic Reflections

From Singapore to San Luis Obispo: Rabbi Lennard R. Thal on Serving All Three Reform Jewish Institutions

When I look back on the fifty years since my ordination, I realize that I have been very fortunate indeed. My rabbinic positions, with one wonderful exception, have been most rewarding and all have been within the institutions of our Reform Movement, beginning with nine years at HUC-JIR’s Los Angeles campus, three years as assistant dean, and then six more as associate dean.  

In 1982, I accepted Rabbi Alex Schindler’s invitation to become the regional director of the Pacific Southwest Council of the URJ (then still known as the UAHC), covering congregations from San Luis Obispo, California to El Paso, Texas. When Rabbi Schindler was succeeded by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, I moved to New York and became the senior vice president of the URJ, retiring (or so I thought) in 2008. It was Al Pacino who said in The Godfather series, “Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in” and, indeed, I was asked to serve as the interim director of rabbinic placement, a position I held from 2009 to 2011.  

I may be the only CCAR member who has been on the payroll of all three Movement institutions organized by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise! In any case, I found each of those positions to be fulfilling, satisfying, and growthful—and each produced lifelong friendships with rabbinic colleagues. In each, I came to appreciate the importance of rabbinic-lay relationships, the component parts of rabbinic leadership, and that success in the rabbinate depends less on facility with challenging texts and more on essential menschlichkeit and good old-fashioned “people skills.”  

At the outset of this essay, I referred to a “wonderful exception” to my institutional positions. Through a delightful bit of serendipity, in 1993 I was invited to lead High Holy Day services in a new, not-yet-fully organized group of Jews in Singapore. I went, thinking that it was a one-off opportunity for an unusual experience, never—never!—imagining that it would lead to a twenty-one-year tenure as the visiting rabbi in what would become the United Hebrew Congregation in that fascinating Southeast Asia city-state. Toward the end of those twenty-one years, I convinced the lay leaders that the community’s numeric and programmatic growth required the presence of a full-time, in-residence rabbi, and then had the joy of “installing” my successor. In retrospect, the experience of taking a congregation in its “infancy” through its “adolescence” into “adulthood” brought me a great sense of satisfaction and joy. 

I should mention one other highlight of my years at the URJ, namely the opportunity to develop the newest of the Union’s sleepaway camps in Snohomish County, WA, not far from the city where I grew up (Bellingham, WA). Camp Kalsman, situated on 299 acres in a gorgeous setting, serves Reform Jewish families from Alaska to the Northern California border and from Western Washington through Idaho and Montana. I kvell when I have been able to visit—seeing youngsters benefit from a place where “Jewish identity formation” happens so beautifully! I also am amused to see the signpost naming the main road through the camp in my honor: Lenny Lane (with no apparent apology to The Beatles!).  

All this being said, I do have some significant concerns regarding our Reform Movement and its congregations in the years ahead. It’s not clear to me these days that people care so much about what it means to be part of a “movement.” It’s also not clear about the potentially long-lasting effects of the Covid pandemic on our congregations. I worry about the growth of antisemitism and about distressing political developments in Israel. Worries to one side, I do enjoy retirement and I do look back on my fifty years in the rabbinate with great satisfaction and joy. 

Rabbi Lennard R. Thal is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We celebrate him and all of the CCAR members who reached this milestone in 2023.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Ronald Brown: ‘Life Doesn’t Always Go as Planned. That Can be a Good Thing.’

Before ordination, our class in New York gathered for a luncheon. It would be one of the last opportunities to come together before we embarked on our respective rabbinic journeys. We were asked to speak about our goals and aspirations. As I listened to my colleagues, I realized that I had no clear vision. It reminded me of the question adults often ask a child: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” 

At that point, all I had was a one-way ticket to Israel. On October 6, 1973, the Yom Kippur War broke out. So much for plans! I ended up sitting by the side of wounded soldiers for several months at Hadassah hospital, helping them pass long hours between operations. It was an aspect of bikur cholim for which I hadn’t been prepared. Additionally, I began studies at the Hebrew University. Three years later, my wife, Tsippy, and I, returned to Cincinnati, where I was born there. I finished my doctorate in 1980, the same year my children were born. In retrospect, it was an amazing time in my life.  

At this juncture, I again asked myself the question: “What now?” Do I teach at a university or find a pulpit? A professor at HUC-JIR gave me some advice: do both! In the pulpit, you can publish, you can write, you can teach, you can counsel, you can impact the people in your congregation and well beyond.   

I heeded his advice. I spent three wonderful years in Baton Rouge, then returned to New York (where I had grown up as a child), and stayed at my synagogue for the next thirty-three years. New York offered so many opportunities.

Becoming active in the New York Board of Rabbis, I enjoyed the camaraderie of colleague from all denominations. The experience gave me the idea to create the North American Board of Rabbis (NABOR) which brought rabbis together from all across the U.S. We engaged political and religious leaders across Europe and in Israel. On a smaller scale, the Polish and German governments invited us several times to visit high schools and universities. On one occasion an Orthodox rabbi and I were flying to Poland when we heard the news that Pope John Paul II had died. Naturally we assumed that many of the scheduled events would be cancelled. Were we wrong! For hours, we answered questions in churches and universities before huge crowds. 

Over the years, we worked with interfaith groups (Sufi Moslems, U.S. cardinals, and the Council of Churches) to raise consciousness and funding for the less fortunate on Thanksgiving. We received generous support from individuals and corporations.

Locally, before the widespread use of computers, we set up a job bank for unemployed members of synagogues on Long Island, as well as hosted gatherings for single Jews who wanted to meet other Jews (this was years before JDate). 

We took groups of confirmation classes to Europe to be hosted by local families with kids their own age. They learned more about Judaism and Jewish history in Prague and Budapest than they would have in a classroom. In many instances, those bonds of friendship still exist today.

Another challenge for me were the children of former congregants with whom I had lost contact with after their bar or bat mitzvah. Would they be attending a synagogue for the High Holy Days? I started another project, Synagogue Connect, which offers free access for the High Holy Days to Jewish youth ages 18–30. Over 1200 synagogues from all denominations signed on! Besides some 900 synagogues in the U.S., there were synagogues from over thirty countries (Israel, Europe, South America, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and more) that joined as well. We were supported by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations. Today, Synagogue Connect is run by AEPi fraternity.

The journey in life took many detours: traveling to unusual destinations (like Mongolia), writing a novel, standup comedy, teaching rabbinic students, and so on.  

So what do you want to do after you retire? I don’t know—maybe a little of this, and a little of that. Life doesn’t always go as planned and that can be a good thing as well. 

Rabbi Ronald Brown is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We celebrate him and all of the CCAR members who reached this milestone in 2023.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Finding a Home at Synagogue: Rabbi Robert Orkand on 50 Years as a Reform Rabbi

In 1943, my parents were married and moved to Los Angeles. They, like so many Jews who grew up in the Bronx, travelled as far west as they could looking for economic opportunities and to escape the rigidity of traditional Judaism. Unlike many of those Jews, my parents ultimately joined a synagogue in LA—and a Reform one at that. Temple Isaiah was founded in 1947 and its first rabbi, Albert M. Lewis, z”l, came to the temple in 1948, as did Cantor Robert Nadell, z”l. My sense was that my parents didn’t want to give up on their Judaism, but were looking for Jewish connections in an environment more modern than what they had experienced in New York. I also believe that my parents were attracted to the social activism of Rabbi Lewis. 

My younger siblings and I were sent to religious school at Temple Isaiah, which beginning in 1957, was led by Jack Horowitz, a transplant from Ottawa, Canada. Somewhere along the way he was joined by Sam Lebow, the accordion-playing teacher of music, and later by Bonia Shur, a young Israeli composer, who some years later, taught at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati. 

I mention the staff at Temple Isaiah because they, more than anyone, were responsible for my becoming a rabbi. While Albert Lewis was lacking social skills and wasn’t a terribly good preacher, his involvement in what later became known as social action was inspiring. At the time, I was learning to play the clarinet and was invited by Sam Lebow to accompany him as he went into the religious school classes to teach the songs of the Jewish people. Jack Horowitz’s enthusiasm helped me fall in love with Jewish education, and Bonia Shur’s invitation to play in the little orchestra he was organizing allowed me to not only learn the music of the fledgling State of Israel, but also to appreciate why the founding of the Jewish homeland mattered.  

In short, I came to love the synagogue. It was home away from home. It was a place where one could find common ground with fellow Jews. It was a place filled with Jewish music. It was the place that instilled in me the importance of Jewish education and Jewish identity.  

I never thought of becoming a rabbi until I was a senior in college. My plan was to become a public school teacher, but as I thought about that, I realized that the synagogue was where I wanted to be. By that time, I was teaching in several area synagogues, including my own. How, I asked, could I continue doing that as a Jewish professional? Having come to admire the rabbis with whom I worked, I realized that the rabbinate would allow me to combine teaching with social justice work in a setting that felt so comfortable. 

Excited by this possibility, I spoke with my own rabbi and the two for whom I worked. Rabbi Lewis advised me to choose a different career path because “synagogue boards will eat you alive.” One of the rabbis for whom I worked said that he loved the rabbinate, and then left the profession to do something else. And the third rabbi I spoke to left town soon after our conversation. Given these responses, one would have expected me to abandon my thought of becoming a rabbi, but something compelled me to ignore the advice I was given, and I applied to HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. 

As they say, the rest is history. It was at the required summer ulpan in 1967 that I met Joyce, my wife of fifty-four years, as well as rabbinic students who became lifelong friends. Our year in Israel in 1969–1970 (the year before HUC-JIR’s year in Israel program began), started me down the path of involvement with our Movement there, culminating in my year as ARZA president. I was privileged to serve three congregations in Miami, Florida; Rockford, Illinois; and for thirty-two years, Temple Israel in Westport, Connecticut. And, I was honored to serve on a variety of UAHC and HUC-JIR committees and boards in addition to those on which I served in the communities in which we have lived. 

Yes, there have been disappointments along the way, and yes, the work ethic I adopted for myself took me away from family far too often. And yes, synagogue boards and committees were sometimes filled with people who did not appreciate what I was trying to teach them. But I can honestly say that after a career spanning fifty years, I definitely made the right decision to become a rabbi.

 Rabbi Robert Orkand is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis in 2023.

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Rabbinic Reflections

50 Years in the Reform Rabbinate: Rabbi Paul Citrin on Teachers, Mentors, and Inspirations

While I am not a prophet nor a son of a prophet, at this fiftieth anniversary of my ordination by HUC-JIR, I think of Isaiah. When God sought to recruit Isaiah, and Isaiah demurred, the Eternal One touched his lips with a glowing coal from the Temple altar. It is the metaphor of touch that I use to review five decades in the rabbinate.

I have been touched by several individuals who moved me in the direction of the rabbinate, and whose personal examples guided me:  

—My parents, Herb and Harriet Citrin, were raised in non-observant, unaffiliated homes. When I was in first grade, they joined a Reform synagogue. They became active, and transmitted to me the joy and fulfillment of being part of a community characterized by caring and celebration.  

—Metuka Miliken Benjamin, my first Hebrew school teacher who, just a few years ago, was awarded by the State of Israel, recognition as the outstanding diaspora educator. Metuka touched me with a passion for Hebrew language and Zionism which continues to this day.  

—Rabbi William Cutter, my teacher and thesis advisor, who touched me with his listening skills, his penetrating questions, and his unfailing kindness. 

—Rabbi Isaiah “Shy” Zeldin, my rabbi and a father figure. He touched me with his creative vision, his outreach to people in need, and his skill as a builder and motivator.  

—Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn touched me from the time he invited me to become his assistant, and after three years, his associate. He modeled for me integrity, diplomacy, and unwavering dedication to activism for social justice 

As I review half a century of my rabbinate, I hope I have touched and inspired people in my congregational communities: 

   —Michael Brown, z”l, was heavily burdened with cerebral palsy, yet determined to become a bar mitzvah. With tremendous effort, Michael learned to recite the Torah blessings. On that Shabbat he was glowing.  

—Hundreds of confirmation students continued pursuing Torah study with me to explore matters of theology and concerns about Israel. I continue to receive communications from former students who are now parents themselves.  

—Listening to those who need to be heard, being supportive, and guiding them to find strength in our tradition. 

The focus of my rabbinate has been congregational life. My passions are education, interfaith dialogue, Israel, and social justice. I cofounded the Jewish-Catholic Dialogue of Albuquerque which, over the years, has expanded to include Protestants and Muslims. I served on the board of the Martin Luther King Jr. Multicultural Council, which provided college scholarships to minority students. I served as the president of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis, and as a board member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. During my active rabbinate, I served six congregations, and helped lead two congregations to build new synagogue facilities. 

This is a list of books I have authored over the years: 

  • Joseph’s Wardrobe (UAHC, 1987). A children’s novel about values and identity. 
  • Gates of Repentance for Young People (CCAR, 2002), co-authored with Judith Z. Abrams, z”l. 
  • Ten Sheaves, a collection of sermons, addresses and articles (Amazon, 2014). 
  • Lights in the Forest: Rabbis Respond to Twelve Essential Jewish Questions  (CCAR, 2014). Volume conceived and edited by P. Citrin. 
  • I Am My Prayer (Resource Publications, 2021). 
  • Unpublished Master’s thesis, the Arab in Hebrew Literature since 1948, shelved in the Klau Library at HUC-JIR. 

I am blessed and touched by my family: my wife of forty-one years, Susan Morrison Citrin, our four children, and eight grandchildren. We are retired in Albuquerque where I continue to teach adults. Hiking, biking, travel, and writing continue to touch my life. 

Rabbi Paul Citrin is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis in 2023.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Sacred Reminiscences: Rabbi Fred N. Reiner on 50 Years in the Reform Rabbinate

My father did not have much advice for me, but there was one message that I remember. He told me to choose work that I loved, and then it wouldn’t seem like work. I am sure that in his business career, he never really had a job he loved. My rabbi, Herman Schaalman, talked to me about the rabbinate for many years, and in the end I decided to try out Hebrew Union College. Both of these mentors were right. 

When I think back on my career, I focus on the many varieties of rabbinic experience, on the different ways I have served. My first rabbinic job was National Director of Admissions and Director of Student Services at HUC-JIR, an administrative post in Cincinnati. I have served three very different congregations, I and was a part-time chaplain at several hospitals along the way. I have had the opportunity to teach in congregations, in universities and seminaries, and in the community. I have advocated for social justice and supported important causes, as we all have. I have led committees and boards in the communities I served, in the Reform Movement, and in my religious communities. I have had the time to study, to write, to present academic papers, and to create new knowledge. All this has been deeply gratifying and enriching for me. 

I am so grateful to have had the honor of serving and leading in the Jewish community. It has been a privilege to know so many colleagues and to work with them in strengthening the Jewish people. And I have witnessed great changes in the rabbinate and in the Jewish community over the years. The impact of women in the rabbinate, and the great diversity of today’s rabbinate, enriches all of us. It has been so gratifying to see young people drawn to rabbinic service, including my son, and I have been privileged to guide some of them. 

I often think we do not recognize the impact we make on the people we lead and serve. We are planting seeds: seeds of Jewish life; seeds of pursuing justice; seeds we hope will grow and flourish. 

I remember Mike, who first came to see me when he was in high school, telling me that he wanted to have a bar mitzvah. Only one of his parents was Jewish, and the family had no religion. They never belonged to a congregation, and Mike never attended religious school. He wanted to be Jewish, and his hope to have a bar mitzvah was deeply sincere. There was something else—Mike had a terrible stutter, which became worse under stress. We worked together, and I marveled that his stutter disappeared when he chanted. As he chanted Torah, his parents and family were so deeply moved at his transformation and at his determination and commitment. Would that all our impediments could be removed by studying Torah! 

Once at a Union Biennial, a man I did not remember approached me. He needed to thank me, he said, for officiating at the funeral of his mother. It was a routine lifecycle service, to be sure. But he went on to explain, “We had terrible disagreements in our family for years, and I was so afraid that this animosity would mar the service and detract from the love and honor we needed to feel for our mother.” What he thanked me for was not the service, but the meeting with the family, where they were able to come together to grieve and celebrate her life. 

It was years later that this man approached me, and it is often many years later that we learn of our impact or success. All of us have stories to share, I am sure, and all of us recall on this anniversary the peaks and valleys of our rabbinic careers. How good it is to remember and to share these sacred reminiscences. 

Rabbi Fred N. Reiner is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis in 2023.

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Joel Levine on 50 Years in the Reform Rabbinate: Reflecting on What I Have Learned 

Psalm 90 includes one of my favorite lessons in all of Torah: Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. 

As a rabbi for fifty years, I have taught hundreds of souls from preschool to older adults. However, what I want to reflect upon is not what I have taught, but what I have learned. 

I have learned from my students and congregants that Reform Judaism is a giant tent; embracing with utter respect, the unique diversity of our growing community. I have learned to honor the humanity of my congregants; sharing with them poignant moments of joy and sorrow. I have learned from my congregants how they understand God, Torah, and Israel; how they feel comfortable in Reform Judaism; and how they welcome souls from a diversity of backgrounds and beliefs. 

What I have accomplished 

My greatest achievement as a rabbi was not only to be a founder of Temple Judea, but to become an integral part of creating what our members call the “Miracle on Hood Road.” Our congregation began with one hundred and fifty families and struggled for many years in West Palm Beach. I located land and an empty building in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida owned by the Church of Latter-day Saints. With the help of our lay leadership, our congregation purchased the land and the building, and transformed it into a tribute to both the Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions. What is even more special to me is that my successor is not only a dear friend but a dynamic spiritual leader who has grown Temple Judea to close to seven hundred families with no mortgage and a healthy endowment fund. 

What I continue to look forward to 

One of the greatest gifts I have given my successor is moving 3,000 miles away to West Hollywood, California. Here, Susan and I can experience the unique feeling of being members of two congregations—Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills and Temple Isaiah of Los Angeles—as well as a new organization for older adults, ChaiVillageLA. Since moving to West Hollywood, I have volunteered to be a spiritual counsellor at Beit T’Shuvah and a volunteer at the food pantry of the Karsh Center of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple. 

As I reflect on my fifty years as a rabbi, I feel that as a teenager I made the right choice, a wonderful choice for my life’s work. Although I expected that fulfillment would come from teaching. Instead it has come from learning. 

Rabbi Joel Levine is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis in 2023.

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CCAR Convention Convention

Celebrating Joys, Sorrows & Deepening My Faith: Rabbi Paul (Shaul) Feinberg on 50 Years in the Rabbinate

My rabbinate in North America and Israel has given me opportunities to share in the joys and the sorrows of others. Moreover it has enabled me to learn and teach our religious heritage. My rabbinate has helped me to deepen my faith in God; my family, my teachers, and colleagues have guided me in this path.

In 1981, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion invited me to join the faculty of the Jerusalem School and thus enabled us to make aliyah. I became an integral part of the developing narrative of our people, while strengthening the Reform Movement in Israel.

For three decades, I engaged with students in their quest to develop religious leadership wherever they were to serve. During these years, my rabbinate facilitated my travels throughout the world to teach Judaism, Israel, and education. All along I was deepening my own religious faith, refining the understanding of Judaism as an ever changing way of life. My rabbinate continues to connect me with former students, now colleagues and leaders, in their own communities.

In all facets of my rabbinate, education has been a key empowering factor of living the values of tikkun olam b’malchut Shaddai. As Tania always says, the Jewish community begins at home; in this spirit we are grateful to see our children teaching their children values they hold dear as each one of them continues on her or his own path.

My credo is shlichut—being on a mission which as a parent and as a rabbi continues to unfold to this day.

Today, fifty years from our Ordination is a milestone, even as we remember dearest friends and classmates who have gone to their Eternal Rest.

“This is the day the Eternal has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu v’higianu laz’maan hazeh.

Rabbi Paul (Shaul) Feinberg is celebrating 50 years in the Reform Rabbinate.

We look forward to celebrating 50- and 51-year rabbis when we come together online at CCAR Convention 2021, March 14-17, 2021. CCAR Convention 2021 will strengthen us spiritually, emotionally, and professionally, bringing us together at a time when we need it more than ever. CCAR rabbis can register here.

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CCAR Convention Convention

A Scholarly Rabbinic Career: Rabbi Roy Furman on His 50 Years in the Rabbinate

During my years at HUC-JIR, my expectations of a future rabbinate were vague, at best. What 50 years after ordination actually held were beyond what I could then have imagined. It would certainly prove to be a multifaceted rabbinate, one which extended the boundaries of how I would be a rabbi and what sort of congregation I would serve. It has been an interesting journey to say the least. 

That journey first took me to Los Angeles where I served as Hillel director on the campus of the University of Southern California. There I immersed myself in the creative challenges and rewards of working with students developing a vibrant campus Jewish community. Four years later, I decided to enhance my counseling skills by studying for and obtaining an MSW, followed by another four years practicing clinical social work at Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. 

By the ten-year mark after HUC-JIR, I sought congregational work for the first time, moving with my wife to Portland, Oregon to work with a small, participatory, egalitarian, and very spiritual chavurah. The five years with that community were my idea of rabbinic heaven. I would still be there, I imagine, if my wife did not need to relocate to pursue her academic aspirations.

If Chicago did not readily yield to my rabbinic needs and aspirations, it did provide me with the opportunity to work with a gay and lesbian community, with a suburban congregation in an assistant rabbinical position, and another two years as interim rabbi for a large Reconstructionist shul.

Through the years, I took great pleasure in doing scholarly work, including PhD studies in ancient Judaism and early Christianity. Having served as a rabbi on a college campus, at Jewish family service, with a chavurah, and with three Chicago-based Jewish communities, I now entered the academic part of my rabbinic journey. Some twenty-three years after ordination, I began teaching comparative religions and Jewish studies at DePaul University, an adjunct position I held for twenty years, along with part-time work as campus rabbi. 

At the forty-sixth year post ordination mark, I entered a year-long training program in clinical pastoral education and continued working as a chaplain in an acute hospital setting until the Spring of 2020 and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

And through all of these years, my rabbinate has been expanded and enriched through interactions with Jews in congregations, both old and newly emerging, in Russia, Germany, Poland, Spain, France, Chile, and Morocco.

From the time I left HUC-JIR until the present, I have been active as a leader, facilitator, and member of chavurot and minyanim. That aspect of my journey reflects much of what has come to be important and meaningful for me as a rabbi and as a Jew, as I have met, taught, counseled, comforted, andlearned from many, many wonderful people along the way. I continue to write divrei Torah for my minyan, study Hasidic and Mussar literature with Rabbi Richard Hirsh, my long-time chevruta and dear brother-in-law, and to be challenged by the likes of Maimonides, Heschel, Buber,  Hartman, and the Baal Shem Tov.

Rabbi Roy Furman is celebrating 50 years in the Reform Rabbinate.

We look forward to celebrating 50- and 51-year rabbis when we come together online at CCAR Convention 2021, March 14-17, 2021. CCAR Convention 2021 will strengthen us spiritually, emotionally, and professionally, bringing us together at a time when we need it more than ever. CCAR rabbis can register here.