Tag: 50 year rabbis

“Every rabbi has 3,000 years of intelligent ancestors. If you do not become increasingly more a learned rabbi, you betray the heritage of those who gave you birth… Count that day lost in which you have not opened a Jewish book. If you do not learn, you cannot lead…”

Such is but a sample of Dr. Jacob Rader Marcus’s sermon, “The Larger Task,” which he delivered at our ordination on June 1, 1974. I met Dr. Marcus in 1966 when I was registering for the pre-rabbinic program sponsored by the University of Cincinnati and the HUC-JIR. He was my beloved mentor, and I am proud to say that due to my personal intervention, Dr. Marcus decided to accept our class’s invitation to be the speaker on ordination day. Many times, throughout these past 50 years, I have reread the text of his inspiring charge to us. 

We were the largest and perhaps one of the most theologically disparate classes in the College’s history. I was one of the two “Classical Reformers,” though I grew up in a traditional Jewish household, located in, of all places, Glen Burnie, Maryland, where my father’s parents settled in 1914. I say “of all places” because the Cohns made up the entirety of Glen Burnie’s Jewish community. We were members of Temple Oheb Shalom on Baltimore’s Eutaw Place, about an hour’s drive away. 

According to my mother, as a child I only behaved when I was being fed and, remarkably, when we were at Temple. I vividly remember as a six-year-old being transfixed by the sound of the temple’s cantor and choir accompanied by the pipe organ. One of my major regrets is the current “exile” of the pipe organ and the replacement of the majestic and distinctive music of our Reform tradition in favor of sing-along camp music! I am very grateful that the majority of my rabbinate was happily spent with fabulous congregations which were welcoming and understanding of my left-of-center liturgical preferences! 

Taken as a whole, I believe that the overwhelming majority of our congregants from these historic temples I have been honored to serve in Atlanta, Macon, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, and now as a biweekly in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, will remember me as a warm, intelligent, and approachable rabbi, an articulate preacher, a creative and impassioned teacher of both children and adults, one who enthusiastically endorsed the welcome of LGBTQ+, interfaith, and Jews by Choice, and who never hesitated to share his faith, his hopes for our Jewish people, and his dream of Prophetic justice for all of God’s children. There were surely instances when this audacious welcome was not appreciated by all our members, but I held firm. 

I was honored to publicly represent our faith at the local, state, and national level. I was privileged to be founder and chair of the New Orleans Human Rights Commission for many years, and I was selected by MSNBC as an ethics consultant and a panel member of the internationally televised show “The Ethical Edge.” My dream of creating a New Orleans Holocaust Memorial was in fact realized with the support of our congregation, Temple Sinai, the New Orleans Jewish Federation, and the Holocaust Survivors organization. Designed by the world-renowned artist, Yaacov Agam, the memorial in Goldring/Woldenburg Park is visited by 700,000 visitors a year. 

Well, these are those “high places along the way” as our colleague, Rabbi Alvin Fine put it in his wonderful poem “Life Is a Journey.” 

Surely the greatest accomplishment, which I cherish above all others, is 52 years of loving marriage to my best friend, without whom my dream of a worthy rabbinate would never have been possible—Andrea Levy Cohn. She has been my partner, my critic, and my strength all along the way since we met in Cincinnati as undergrads. Together, we can be proud of the family we have raised: daughters, Dr. Jennifer Cohn Kesselheim and Debra Lynn Kraar; their devoted husbands, Aaron and Eric; and our five loving grandchildren, Maxwell, Ryann, Sydney, Noah, and Leo.  

Fifty years in the rabbinate—truly a shehecheyanu moment! 

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Rabbi Edward Paul Cohn is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

My path to HUC-JIR and the rabbinate began at the age of nine, when I wrote my first letter of application to the admissions department, asking what I needed to do to prepare for what was, even then, very clearly—and what remains—a sacred calling. I began in 1967, the last year of the old undergraduate program, immediately after high school, and when we were ordained in 1974, I was 24 years old, the youngest ordinee in the College’s history, aside from Nelson Glueck, who was 22. On that memorable day, following the magnificent ceremony at Plum Street Temple, my mentors Jake Marcus and Sam Sandmel called me aside and presented me with that handwritten letter, which had been kept in my file all those years!

Those of my Cincinnati classmates who remember my stubborn advocacy of Classical Reform during our student days, will at least see a thread of unwavering consistency in the path my rabbinate has taken since then. It began with my fourth-year student internship at Har Sinai in Baltimore, as the proud successor of David Einhorn, and then on through my first position at Temple Emanu-El in New York. Following, came my twenty years at Chicago Sinai Congregation, bearing the mantle of Emil G. Hirsch, and then over the past twenty years, my time as Founding Rabbinic Director of the Society for Classical Reform Judaism (SCRJ). The last chapter has been the subsequent organization of congregations in Boston, all embracing a contemporary vision of our Movement’s historic minhag and heritage. Through each of these milestones, I have devoted my career to the preservation and renewal of our shared spiritual tradition as a vital and viable option within the diversity of today’s Reform.

I have continued my work in interfaith dialogue, as well as the full pastoral support of interfaith families, which I embraced at the very beginning of my career. These, as well as my commitment to working for same-sex marriage equality, as the first rabbi to be married, legally and with federal recognition, in 2004, have all been natural extensions of this grounding understanding of the Prophetic tradition of Reform Judaism.

The opportunities that I have been most grateful for over the course of my career include the designing and guiding of the new home of Chicago Sinai in 1997. As a lifelong student of synagogue architecture, this was a unique chance to translate my ideals into a sanctuary that would symbolically embody and proclaim Classical Reform’s spiritual ideals. I have also been deeply gratified by my years of teaching at HUC-JIR’s campuses in Cincinnati and Jerusalem over the past decade, under the auspices of the SCRJ. This has been a deeply meaningful opportunity to share our Movement’s historic liberal principles and liturgy with a new generation of our colleagues. I am also proud of the publications I have written or edited: the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Plaut’s Rise and Growth of Reform Judaism; co-editing the Union Prayer Book, Sinai Edition; and most importantly, The New Union Haggadah, a contemporary, inclusive-language revision of the beloved 1923 classic, published as one of its official liturgies by CCAR Press.

I am grateful to our loving God for the privilege of having been able to touch many lives, and hopefully, making a difference in Jewish life over the past fifty years. My greatest support has come from my beloved husband of twenty years, Steven Littlehale. His own deep Jewish faith and commitment, and his sharing of my spiritual vision, have made him the perfect “rebbetz-him.”

Rabbi Howard A. Berman is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

My first CCAR Convention included the celebration for that gathering’s 50th year class. And for the moment, that memory seems less than a blink of the eye ago. Tempus fugit.   

In that flight of time, I imagine that we in the class of 1974 have had significant moments of impact and meaning. And while we didn’t change the world, I have no doubt we managed a few moments of clarity, joy, comfort, change, and meaning in innumerable encounters. In fact, I’m confident many share the experience of someone suggesting, “Rabbi, do you remember when you said…? It changed my life.” 

Ironically, you may have no recollection of saying anything of the kind. But some bon mots attributed to me, even without a confident memory of ever having suggested, include: “There are only two movements in Judaism, toward God and away from God.” Or this one, “There is no place where God is not, and where God is, all is well.
  

My favorite involves philanthropy and a family who attribute their tzedakah efforts in part to me: Once, the Jewish Federation asked me to recruit said family’s husband to lead our campaign, after which he told many this anecdote, about which I have no recollection, save his telling. Two weeks later, he recalls we saw each other. “Rabbi, what have you done? My friends see me coming and run down the alley screaming, holding onto their wallets.” He claims my response: “Isn’t it tragic that the only way they think they have it is if they hold on to it.”   

And I would never have had that impact, or be part of our Jubilee, were it not for an older colleague. I had been a rabbi all of three years and was thinking of quitting. After all, it’s a crazy “job.” The congregants will never do all we hope. We’ll never get to do all we want. His response, “Michael, what makes you think you should be a better failure than Moses?“

That wisdom was liberating, for it’s not about success or failure. Rather, it’s about being faithful to a vision, a calling. And 50 years insist that our perspectives embrace an honest appraisal. To paraphrase Rabbi Elimelech, when I die and stand before the heavenly court, they will ask: “Did you study enough?” I’ll have to be honest and answer, “No.” “Pray enough?” Again, true testimony: no. “Did you do enough for social justice?” Once more, my response is no.   

As metaphor perhaps, the court will determine at least you’re honest, for this you deserve admission to the heavenly realm. And such calls to mind a long-ago homiletics class in which one of our classmates—a shared anxiety on display— inquired, “Dr. Mihaly, how do you come up with a sermon every week?”  ”That’s not the problem. You really only have one or two sermons. The important thing is to know what it is.” And as I consider these 50 years, he was right. My sermon: there is holiness all around us; a sacred dimension in us; now get to work. Alas, we didn’t finish the work, but, thankfully and as you know, we were not obligated to finish it. However, forthrightly, fortunately, none of us is finished yet. As to the assignment, even in retirement, there no doubt is a plethora of ways to describe or define it. 

And such brings to mind an enduring image our tradition offers the world and implanted in us: Consider Jacob’s dream and the challenge of his Anochi/ his ‟I-ness”/ his ego getting in the way of the awareness (Genesis 28:16) that God is in this place. And surely our vulnerabilities and strengths, our Anochi’s may get in the way of realizing moments of the holy, of holiness. For this is nothing less than Beit Elohim/a house of God—this one and that one and the next and the next.   

Or, to suggest another of the vital images from our tradition, there are burning bushes scattered randomly, extensively through every day, and because of our work and what we have yet to do, others will, if only metaphorically, take off their shoes. And we occasionally may do so as well.

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Rabbi Michael Zedek is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and more of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.

In rabbinical school I never heard the word self-differentiation. I wish I had! Ten years out from rabbinical school, and the term was mentioned in a lecture. For me, it was an “a-ha” moment. I was now able to describe what defined me as a rabbi, how I looked at my faith, my “calling,” my career, my vision.   

My mentors, my teachers, my counselors had always been strong and determined leaders: I think that is what attracted me to them and why I wanted to emulate their style. But when I discovered that their skills and style were all because they were self-differentiated, that is when I truly learned what it means to be a rabbi.   

I believe that a rabbi must be well self-differentiated in order to be successful. Success is measured not by how others see us, but by how we see ourselves, knowing what we want to be, and how we can become what we want to be. For me, that has been the success of my rabbinical career. I didn’t seek approval, nor love from others. I wanted their respect. I didn’t ask “What do you want me to do?” I asked myself, “What do you see, and what needs to be done?” From there, I created a vision for the future and sought to shape that vision into reality.   

My fifty years in the rabbinate were all based in one congregation, Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. I “served there” as assistant rabbi, acting rabbi, young senior rabbi, leading senior rabbi, mentor senior rabbi, seasoned senior rabbi, “wise” senior rabbi, and now rabbi emeritus. I only had two official titles: assistant rabbi and senior rabbi. The first was to serve the youth and young families of the congregation; the second, was to create vision and develop leadership, teach, and preach, and motivate the congregation to see a bright future.   

As rabbi, I understood that my role was to bring the congregation and its people closer to Am Yisrael. I wanted to help lead them to understand that they (we) are part of the next chapter of the historic story of the Jewish People and its encounter with the Divine, going back in time to our ancestors and through their experience in each and every generation since Abraham responded to the call from God with the single word: Hineni! 

For me, I understood that being a rabbi meant serving a specific congregation, a community, the Jewish People, and all of humanity. I believe that is what makes the rabbinate such a unique calling, and such a challenging career. Mine was certainly filled with challenge, with reward, with fulfillment, and with touching so many lives.   

In addition to my service to congregation and community I was privileged to serve the larger Jewish community through my leadership in ARZA, in national leadership positions, in teaching at HUC-JIR. I was also privileged to help create a dynamic Department of Clinical Pastoral Care at RWJ Barnabas Hospital. How blessed I was to be able to do it all, and how fortunate I was to serve a congregation that understood and supported my determination to do all that I have done.   

My life in the rabbinate has been richly rewarding. I trust that I made a difference in the lives of many. I hope that my contribution to our people’s story adds to the meaning of our story and to the sacred mission that we carry out every day, here, in Israel, and throughout the world.   

I could not have done it all without learning the art of being well self-differentiated. I am grateful to my teachers who showed me the way, gave me the encouragement and strength to discover the me that I wanted to be, and to my students through whom I have seen the true measure of what I have accomplished.  My life as a rabbi—a blessing, an honor, a gift. I will be forever grateful!    

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Rabbi Bennett Miller is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2024.