Tag: 50 years in the rabbinate

There is an instructive comment in the Talmud that one should not profit materially from imparting Torah. Torah was given freely by the Eternal, and therefore one cannot charge for what was given at no cost. Hence, we rabbis cannot be paid to be teachers of Torah! If that is the case, then what are rabbis paid for?

In my forty years as an active rabbi, I found out. I had the opportunity to work in small, midsized, and large congregations, direct Hillel Foundations and a region of the URJ, and teach a number of university courses. My favorite story regarding how a rabbi earns a living arose when I spent a morning at the Hillel House at the University of Buffalo fixing a stubborn leak in one of the bathroom sinks. As I went outside to get some lunch, I bumped into a professor I knew who was walking his dog. We chatted a bit, then the professor commented, “I always have wanted to know just what a rabbi does.” At that point, all I could think of was some light plumbing.

There are numerous activities and events of those years for which I am proud—and quite a number I regret. Focusing on the positive, let me mention two particular highlights: 

As the URJ regional director in Canada in the late 1990s, I had a significant role in establishing Camp George in Ontario, culminating an effort that had been in place for over a decade. The need for a Reform Movement camp in Canada was reflected by having all its beds filled in that first summer of 1999. Further, it posted a first-year operating budget in the black. I had been a camper, counselor, and faculty member at Union camps since 1959. Almost nothing in all those experiences compare to getting a successful camp off the ground.

From 2013 to 2018, I had the honor of being the editor-in-chief of the Reform Jewish Quarterly. With the withdrawal to digital-only format or outright disappearance of many publications, the RJQ remains a critical outlet for modern liberal Jewish scholarship and expression. I am delighted to have had a part in producing and promoting so many thoughtful essays, poems, and reviews.

My fifty years as a rabbi (plus four as student at HUC-JIR) would have been greatly diminished without the love and care of my wife, Debbie. She has been my severest critic and my steadfast support. Any success I have had is at least in part due to her. Although she had a legal career as a litigator and mediator, she served—as do most rabbi spouses—as an unpaid employee of the congregation; a task that can be as socially and emotionally demanding as any profession. As I achieve honorary status in the CCAR, I extend all my honor and love to Deborah Grand Golomb.

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 Rabbi Paul Golomb is senior scholar at Vassar Temple in Poughkeepsie, New York and 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 2025.

Spring of 2025—50 years since ordination in Cincinnati (and further memories of five previous years of HUC-JIR with student pulpits, and two and a half years of serving/training as “pre-rabbinic intern” at my home congregation in Cleveland). It has been an entire lifetime of identifying and finding fulfillment as a rabbi.

When asked why this was my chosen lifestyle, I inevitably respond that I never seriously considered doing anything else; teaching, working with youth, supporting those in need, being on the stage, helping the Jewish people, repairing the world, and wrestling with God. I knew that I could do all of them—praying that I would be successful in at least some of them—in the role known as rav. Gratefully, my mentors and family have all lovingly been with me on my journey.

I take great pride in knowing that I have had a positive influence on many people in the communities which I have served. I am humbled that many have overlooked or forgiven my faults and mistakes. I look back with fondness and approval at the number of my former students and campers who have chosen to devote their lives to Jewish professional life. B’kitzur, I have immense satisfaction and contentment in what I have accomplished. Ani samei-ach b’chelki.

From the pulpit, I have tried to instruct and interpret Torah. In the university classroom, I have tried to represent our tradition and history in such a way as to further interreligious respect and understanding; and (in the happiest experiences I have shared) working with NFTY teens in their leadership development, I have tried to be a role model and guide, while at the same time, relishing in the ruach that recharged my soul’s batteries.

What do I look forward to? Im yir’tzeh HaShem, I will continue to be a “part-time” rabbi to my community of seniors and retirees. And hopefully, being blessed with the strength, health, wisdom and love to be a better husband, father, father-in-law, and zayde.

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Rabbi Norman Roman is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. He is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Kol Ami in West Bloomfield, Michigan and also serves Beth Shalom Temple Center in Green Valley, Arizona. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2025.

As I look back on fifty years, I reflect on how my life has gone in two different directions, frequently simultaneously—pulpit and college teaching. As I have made my way through these years, I have kept in mind the advice of two treasured colleagues and teachers, now sadly both in the yeshivah shel maalah. One was to remember the beloved Jacob Rudin’s advice to me and my classmates to always find time and a way to study. The other, which at times could be understood as humor and at others in a far more serious vein, was our cherished Lenny Kravitz’ dictum, “If you don’t like Jews, don’t go into this business.”

There is the title of a book I will never write:  B’nai Mitzvah and Other Natural Disasters: My Life Throwing the Knuckleball from the Bimah. We find ourselves in pursuit of teaching and touching lives, with some great successes and yet other occasions where things don’t go as planned or hoped, or events when the saving grace was having a sense of humor and seeing it in the most unanticipated situations, like a Kol Nidrei where a senior colleague failed to check with the organist about the length of Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei”rhapsody, or a Kol Nidrei where a 10-year old burst into the sanctuary to proclaim how the home baseball team had been saved by a dramatic home run. 

We all know that there are times when uneasy lies the head that wears the crown—or the kippah and tallit. There are times when I found myself feeling as if I was in an episode of a series that could have been called Tales of the Unexpected—situations our education never taught us about or that we often felt would not happen to us. But those times of challenge were more than compensated for by the times of knowing that I had made a difference in someone’s life, sometimes in very unexpected ways. Three examples in brief: finding a way to reunite a guilt-ridden teenager with her parents; learning that a simple statement of reassurance to a college student had made all the difference to her in her studies; and when a simple sermon about the significance of nerot Shabbat led a woman to start lighting them again after many years of not having done so. The rewards remain so fulfilling—touching lives, and the relationships that now continue long after leaving the pulpit.

Nine years ago I retired from the pulpit and focused on college teaching—ironically, what I thought my goal would be when I entered college. At the time, several people asked me if I was still going to be a rabbi. My response was a reference to the exclamation by a Marine general in Korea when the Chinese came pouring in and the Marines had to move south. A reporter asked the general how it felt to be a Marine and retreating. Replied the general, “Retreat? Hell, we’re attacking in a new direction!” In other words, I was just “rabbi-ing” in a different direction, and on campus I frequently found myself both teacher and counselor.

All told, these years have been quite a ride, and I am eternally grateful for the friendship of colleagues and the love and support of my wife, Barbara, and our children, Amy and Daniel and their families, who have been on the ride with me. Let me close with some excerpts from Tennyson’s “Ulysses” (with fond thoughts for classmates sadly gone, along with a heartfelt d’rishat shalom and y’yishar kochachem to those still here):

“I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone…
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move….
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts…strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

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Rabbi Benjamin Lefkowitz 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 2025.

I can think of few less compelling subjects than recalling, examining, and documenting my fifty-year rabbinic career. That my wife, Ziva, and I spent twenty-three and a half years in the United States Air Force and another ten years serving three very differing congregations probably would not inspire others to follow in our footsteps.

I belonged to a small rabbinic dynasty. My father, Dr. Rabbi Sylvan D. Schwartzman, z”l, used to teach a practical rabbinics course (“Ed 7”) at the Cincinnati campus of HUC-JIR. It involved techniques and insights that would enable a rabbi to not only to survive but to prosper in congregational life. He offered information on parsonage and other financial subjects.

I have thought that imparting some of my own derived lessons would be of greater interest than explaining my approach to the rabbinate, which I will say centered around building community, deeply immersed in the practice of Jewish life and the study of Torah, offering a fierce defense of Israel, and celebrating involvement in klal Yisrael. Practically speaking, then, here is my list of learned and now suggested pointers for congregational rabbis:

1. Be deliberate about who may serve on the temple board. Accepting volunteers is unwise. Prospective board members need to be vetted and trained in various aspects of board service. Taking just anyone very often winds up creating problems.
   
2. Be deliberate about the board’s evaluation of the rabbi. That which doesn’t move the congregation forward is not germane and ought not be permitted.  The process can become a grab bag of complaints and negative observations that only serve to undermine the rabbi’s position and places negative, resentful thoughts in the rabbi’s head. Taking a firm stand on this process is a self and congregational preserving necessity.
   
3. Mutually protecting and honoring each other is a critical part of the relationship between the congregational president and the rabbi. If the president doesn’t support the rabbi publicly, it may well be time to consider entering placement. Operating in a hostile environment threatens a rabbi’s role and exacerbates problems all around. 
   
4. Document! Documenting when synagogue employees fall down on the job or when a situation seems volatile is just good self-protective policy. Details that aren’t recorded often become vague and cloudy. Better to make notes at the time of the incident rather than to depend upon memory.
   
5. Exercising daily is important for one’s mental and physical health. It is a great stress reliever and also offers time for reflection. I believe that physical activity need not be overly strenuous, but it does result in a healthier lifestyle.
   
6. Never take your frustrations into your sermons. They will only serve to come back to undermine and bite you. Speak positively in public and be mindful of your goals for the congregation and community.
   
7. Do not be reluctant to find more experienced colleagues who may provide a good sounding board, solid advice, and supportive counsel. A good shoulder to lean on and, perhaps, even study with can be a God-sent. In lieu of, but part of this package, maybe a therapist who has some understanding of clergy life, its vagaries and challenges.

There are myriad other areas and approaches that an essay like this could cover. But one final observation may be the most valuable. In my experience, it is that the rabbis who genuinely care for their congregants, and go the extra mile to demonstrate that care, who are the ones who best succeed in the rabbinate. These individuals also practice self-care, not allowing themselves to fall victim to exhaustion (because there are always pop-up exigencies that will require attention and energy). The true mensches in our profession are more often than not the ones whose rabbinates become shining examples.

Some of us are better programmers than others. Some have other strengths. We each try to serve the Jewish people and it is hopefully our legacy that we shall have sustained and nurtured Jewish life in significant and satisfying ways. It is my wish that through my service to our people I have gained some wisdom that, through these words, will enhance and enlighten your path as well.

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Rabbi Joel Schwartzman is celebrating 50 years as a Reform rabbi. He is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation B’nai Chaim in Morrison, Colorado. We look forward to celebrating him and all of the CCAR’s 50-year rabbis when we come together at CCAR Convention 2025.

My experience in the rabbinate reflects the fact that I was one of those people who never decided what they wanted to be when they grew up. I majored in biochemistry in college, but decided that Jews seemed more interesting than molecules, so I enrolled in HUC-JIR. I became frustrated with my studies there, so I took a year off to work in an environmental physiology lab in Beersheba, but came back to finish ordination. I had a wonderful three years as intern and assistant (and mentee) to Martin Rozenberg, but decided I wasn’t suited to the pulpit rabbinate, so moved on to spend ten years as a day school educator (teacher and principal). I had the opportunity to obtain a PhD at the Hebrew University as a Jerusalem Fellow—another wonderful experience with two important mentors, Professors Seymour Fox and Immanuel Etkes—but decided that academia was not for me. And after we made aliyah, my fourth life-shaping mentor, Rabbi Bob Samuels, tried to draw me into the team at Leo Baeck School, but I felt that the Israeli educational bureaucracy was too much for me. 

Meanwhile, thirty-five years ago, we settled in Moshav Shorashim in the Galilee, where I continued my zigzag career, including creating a Jewish-Palestinian youth circus; facilitating hundreds of encounters between diaspora Jews and Palestinian Israelis; developing educational tourism programs in the Galilee; but also, consulting for the Melton and Mandel Institutes, and six satisfying years as director of the Israel Rabbinic Program at HUC-JIR. And since retiring, I’ve had the chance to pursue the other interests I never had time for: carpentry (a highlight was a Sephardic Torah case for our synagogue, made of maple and walnut); and writing (Turning Points in Jewish History and Contested Utopia have been published by JPS); and last year I went back to blogging on the Times of Israel site. And most recently, I’ve learned welding, which is great fun.

A kind of strange, unsettled rabbinate; varied, interesting, and most days, satisfying. But I suppose it suffered somewhat from the syndrome of “jack of all trades, master of none.” Whatever. Still, I like to think that through the various students I taught, encounters I facilitated, words I wrote, and institutions I led, I did manage to teach some Torah, and to model that Torah as I performed those tasks. 

In one year’s b’rachah for the ordinees at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem, I remember advising them to never mind the destination, what is important is to enjoy the journey, and never stop looking out the window. 

So, what have I learned? That it’s time to give up on trying to figure out what I should be when I grow up.

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 Rabbi Marc Rosenstein 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 2025.

My long tenure in the small community of Terre Haute, Indiana taught me the singular importance and religious value of interfaith dialogue and friendship. We challenged each other to affirm the meaning and value of being a “believing” Jew and Christian, striving to read Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament with a single voice.

They helped me to understand and appreciate the New Testament, building upon the excellent foundation of New Testament classes at HUC-JIR. My teaching “A Rabbi Reads the Gospels and Paul” in adult Jewish and Christian communities has been a hallmark of my career.

I’ve always wanted to, and have been able to, reach beyond the sanctuary and classrooms of the synagogue. I’ve been fortunate to have found Christian colleagues who were comfortable with my preaching and teaching to their folks, and university department chairs who thought my reading of Hebrew Scripture and explication of the Jewish heritage were worthy of new courses added to the curriculum. And in “retirement,” I found an additional home in a small Christian university where I teach courses on Genesis, Exodus, K’tuvim, and even Introduction to Judaism, in addition to courses at a large state university.

My years of teaching Genesis at the university and to adult members of the Jewish community led me to publish last summer Reading Genesis Again for the First Time—A Radical Commentary. I think of it as written in the spirit of Rashi and ibn Ezra, closely examining the p’shat of the Genesis text, free from the traditional bias of what Genesis is “supposed to say.” (Reading Genesis is available through Amazon Publishing.)

In the congregation, I have always tried to teach “differently,” so I regularly included a semester study of the New Testament Gospels in the confirmation program, and used magic to express the meaning and message of monthly Shabbat and festival services.

Looking back, I realize that while I certainly learned so very much at HUC-JIR, the real gift from the school was teaching me the best way to be a teacher. I learned from my professors (well, most of them) how to prepare and present, the value of handouts and testing, to teach with challenging questions, and to reward thoughtful responses. More than my undergraduate university experience, my five years at HUC-JIR taught me how to be a good student and then to be a worthwhile teacher.

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Rabbi Joe Klein 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 2025.

On July 28, 2006, a deranged antisemitic man with a gun entered the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and murdered my congregant and dear friend Pamela Waechter. She was one of a handful of American Jews who have been murdered for being Jewish.  

The Islamic terrorist was found to be sane by the jury and sentenced to life in prison. Pam‘s life was over in a bloody barrage of gunfire. 
 
At her funeral, our temple was filled with fellow Jews and many government officials and others, well over a thousand people who were still in shock. That was most traumatic and yet most important day in my life as a rabbi, when it fell to my shoulders to bring comfort to her family and to the community. Pam’s memory will stay with me forever. She truly died al kiddush HaShem—for the sanctification of the God and the Jewish people.  
 
When she converted many years prior, I am sure her rabbi reminded her that historically being a Jew can be a source of personal danger and persecution (as is required in the Talmud), but no one could have imagined that it could lead to her being gunned down in cold blood just for being a Jew or working in a Jewish setting. 
 
Fifty years of thousands of funerals, weddings, bet mitzvah, and other life cycle events. All meaningful at that moment, most of them forgotten in the details. 
 
But every once in a while, having served in the same community all fifty years—and I pray more to come—someone will see me on the street and say something like, “Rabbi, you really made a big difference in my life.” 
 
These are the moments in which I know I made the right decision fifty-five years ago when I entered HUC-JIR in Los Angeles with a college degree in philosophy and a hundred dollars in my checking account. What a journey. I have been blessed in so many ways.  

Baruch HaShem.

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This year at the CCAR Convention 2024 in Philadelphia, we celebrated all of the CCAR rabbis celebrating 50 years in the rabbinate. We are honored to include Rabbi James Mirel in this year’s 50-year rabbis and ordination class of 1974.

On page 14 of Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar, Alan Morinis writes, “Achieving our potential for wholeness—sh’leimut—is not so much a reward as it is the fulfillment of the purpose of our lives.” I believe that is indeed the purpose of our lives, of religion, and of my rabbinate. Aiding others in the pursuit of sh’leimut unifies every good thing I attempted to do each day from ordination onward.  

While a great many of my teachers at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion had especially powerful influences on my rabbinate, Dr. Alvin Reines’s teachings impacted me most of all. He challenged us to go forward to assist individuals and communities to move toward wholeness as Jews or in accord with whatever were their beliefs. I tried to do so as a congregational rabbi, as a US Navy chaplain, as a civil rights agency executive director, leading philanthropic pursuits and much more. I have always seen myself as a servant and derived great satisfaction doing so. Let me add here how honored and proud I am to be a member of the class of 1974!  What great classmates!    

US Navy Chaplain Corps (twenty-eight years, mostly as a reservist): Twice, I attended Naval War College. I served briefly on many of types of ships and served at USNA and USCGA. I was three times a unit commanding officer, and I was Regional Command Chaplain. I led services the first time a Jewish worship pennant flew on a ship underway. I officiated at the burial of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, and I was at sea on the submarine Rickover when the producer and screenplay writer for The Hunt for Red October were on board in preparation for making the movie. I was activated on 9/11. On October 11, 2001, I was the only Jewish chaplain co-officiating in 9/11 memorial service at Pentagon. I retired in 2002, and was recalled in 2003 and sent to the Iraqi Theater during High Holy Days and Sukkot. In 2014, I was the only rabbi to testify before a congressional subcommittee on religious accommodation in the military. I have held commission for fifty-four years.  

Pulpits: 

• Congregation Or Ami, Richmond, VA, 1976–1980: Congregation doubled in size. I served with denominational judicatory heads to advocate for social justice in Virginia legislature, where I got to meet Jacques Cousteau. And I began my decades-long involvement in fair housing. 

• Temple Shalom, Chevy Chase, MD, 1980–present (solo rabbi, senior rabbi, rabbi emeritus): I separated tenth-grade graduation from confirmation service, making confirmation voluntary. 80 to 90 percent of b’nei mitzvah youngsters continued through tenth grade. 85 to 100 percent of confirmands continued in post confirmation. I established culture so that whatever a member’s need, help from within Shalom could be found. Many members went to HUC-JIR or other seminaries. I began a dozen cutting-edge programs. Shalom commissioned the writing of a sefer Torah in honor of my service there—I still don’t believe it. I was also presented with Shalom Lifetime Achievement Award. (Received two other lifetime achievement awards from other organizations.) My beloved wife Toby was given a Shalom award bestowed only twice before.
  
  In recent years, I am thrilled to be a member of Zoom Gali Gali, a group of over a dozen retired Reform colleagues living in the area. 

Soviet Jewry:  As a Washington Board of Rabbis leader in support of Soviet Jewry, I helped plan eight peaceful arrest demonstrations in front of Soviet Embassy. With four colleagues, I served twelve days in federal prison. The US Supreme Court later overturned the law used to convict us.    

Civil Rights:  I was a founder of the Fair Housing Council of Greater Washington and the Equal Rights Center. 2004–2008 served as ERC Executive Director. Among many other things, we brought actions that led to a nationwide end to the crisis in accessible housing for people with disabilities.     

Amcha for Tsedakah: In 1990, I founded a small tzedakah collective that over time raised two million dollars for especially worthy NGOs in Israel, America, and elsewhere.   

Camp Airy: I was involved there since 1957. In 2012, Airy dedicated a new Shabbat siddur “In loving honor of Rabbi Bruce E. Kahn, D.D.”  

Every year I am privileged to remain involved in a great many rabbinically connected volunteer efforts. One example: for the past eight years, I have raised essential funds for and worked almost daily with impoverished families; first one family in Baltimore, and then a family in DC.    

Most important to me, before and through these past 50 years, are my wife Toby and our family, my faith in God, and helping folks move towards sh’leimut.     

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Bruce Kahn 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.

A true story: I was in the third grade, or maybe fourth, and I went to Shabbat services with my friend Gary at his Orthodox shul. We are both children of Holocaust survivors. While his family clung to tradition, mine tried to escape it. I was trying to follow the service, but to this day I remember that uncomfortable, sinking feeling of being totally lost and confused—being a stranger in a strange place. I also had this growing awareness that the older kids sitting near me were pointing at me, talking about me and laughing, or so it seemed.  Just then the gabai towered over me, grabbed my siddur, and turned it right-side up! “Here, try this,” he barked. 

I swore then I was not going to remain stupid in my own Judaism. My grandparents were killed because they were Jewish, and I didn’t know the first thing about it. I prevailed on my parents to join a synagogue—a Reform temple, where my rabbi served as a mentor and role model. At my bar mitzvah, the rabbi commented to the congregation, “We now know where our future rabbis are coming from.” A seed was planted. 

I’ve thought a lot about the trajectory of my own life, having recently returned from my high school reunion. 

I thought about how I could have predicted so little of it. If you would have told me when I was a fifteen-year-old kid at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio that I would be here with you, now, celebrating my fiftieth anniversary in the rabbinate, and fifty years at one congregation, I’m not sure what I would have said. 

Could I, arriving at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill, New Jersey in the summer of 1974—my sideburns long, my Midwestern accent thick, my experience non-existent—could I have known that I would stay, not the two years prescribed by my initial contract, but fifty years in the end, through generations, through upheaval, through change, moving from Cooper River to the promised corner of Springdale and Kresson, unifying with M’kor Shalom and becoming Kol Ami?

In the words of our son, Rabbi Ben David, “We all have examples too. I know we do.” You didn’t think it would go this way. You weren’t expecting it either: the news, the sickness, the sadness, the surprises, the professional and personal transitions one after another. Who would ever have imagined? 

One unexpected consequence is how agreeing to pilot the Introduction to Judaism course in the winter of 1979 would turn into a lifelong passion. I’m still teaching the course and so many of my cherished graduates are members and leaders of our congregation. This journey remains a labor of love for me—not only have I instructed, I have learned volumes and have been truly inspired by my students.  

One might say that the prevailing philosophy of my rabbinate is to “meet people where they are and grow together.”  

I am still growing, reaching, climbing, and hoping. 

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 Rabbi Jerome David 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.