Rabbi Jason Miller

Friday, March 11, 2005

Mazel Tov Rabbi Roston!

From JTA.org

Large Conservative synagogue names
female rabbi in 'groundbreaking' move

By Chanan Tigay

NEW YORK, March 10 (JTA) -- Twenty years after the Conservative movement began ordaining women as rabbis, a large New Jersey congregation has chosen a woman to fill its top rabbinic post, a development movement leaders are hailing as "groundbreaking."
The board of Congregation Beth El in South Orange voted on March 7 to appoint Rabbi Francine Roston, 36, as the synagogue's spiritual leader.

The shul boasts 575 families.

Once it becomes official -- the contract has not yet been finalized -- Roston's appointment as senior rabbi will be the first of a woman to such a post at a Conservative synagogue with more than 500 families.

"We see this as groundbreaking," said Rabbi Perry Raphael Rank, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement's rabbinical arm.

"It's groundbreaking from the perspective that we have been talking about a glass ceiling, and she has broken that glass ceiling and risen to a much larger congregation than women have risen to until this point," said, Rank, who is the spiritual leader of Midway Jewish Center in Syosset, N.Y.

Roston, who since 1999 has been rabbi of Congregation Beth Tikvah in New Milford, N.J., will be replacing the synagogue's longtime rabbi, Jehiel Orenstein, who held the pulpit for some 35 years.

Roston is married and has two children.

"Our feeling was, all things being equal, we would probably have hired a male rabbi -- but all things weren't equal," said Aaron Nierenberg, co-chair of Beth El's search committee.

"Rabbi Roston impressed us with her knowledge, sense of energy, sense of humor, warmth. Most specifically, she has a record of achievement. When she sets her mind to doing something, she makes it happen."

Asked whether the committee views itself as having done something pioneering in hiring Roston, Nierenberg said, "We really don't see it that way. We really don't."

Beth El received 20 applications for the position, and offered 10 of the initial applicants telephone interviews. Of this group, three were women. The list was then narrowed to three finalists, each of whom visited the synagogue for a weekend to lead services, lecture and meet the congregation. Of the final three, only Roston was female.

Women now constitute roughly 11 percent of the nearly 1,600 members of the Rabbinical Assembly.

According to a Conservative movement survey released over the summer, 83 percent of the assembly's 177 women pulpit rabbis lead congregations of fewer than 250 families, while 17 percent lead shuls of between 250 and 499 families.

By contrast, 27 percent of men lead congregations of less than 250 families, 48 percent lead mid-size congregations and 25 percent lead congregations of more than 500 families.

In 1994, after she served as its assistant rabbi for some four years, Chicago's Am Yisrael synagogue -- which has 500 member families -- appointed Rabbi Debra Newman Kamin as its sole rabbi.

At that time, Am Yisrael was the first congregation in the Chicago metropolitan area to be headed by a woman, and, until now, was the largest Conservative congregation in the country to have a woman rabbi at its helm.

"It's been 20 years now that we've had women ordained as rabbis from within our movement and they've proven themselves to be extremely capable," said Rabbi Reuven Hammer, immediate past president of the International Rabbinical Assembly.

"I think we're reaching a new period of time now when congregations are no longer looking at women rabbis as strange and something that they're not interested in."

Still, Roston's appointment comes as questions about gender equality in the Conservative rabbinate linger.

According to the movement survey released over the summer, Conservative women rabbis are paid less, occupy fewer senior positions and are more likely to be unmarried than their male counterparts.

The Reform movement, which began ordaining women in 1972, has at least 15 women serving in senior rabbinic positions at congregations with 500 or more households as members.

Since 2001, for example, Rabbi Marcia Zimmerman has been senior rabbi at Temple Israel in Minneapolis, a congregation of over 1,900 families.

Rabbi Janet Marder, president of Reform's Central Conference of American Rabbis, has been the top rabbi at Congregation Beth Am is Los Altos Hills, Calif., a congregation of almost 1,300 households, since 1999. In 1988, Rabbi Emily Lipof was appointed senior rabbi at Temple Ohabei Shalom in Brookline, Mass., a congregation of more than 600 families.

Of the twelve largest Reconstructionist congregations in the United States, four have women as their senior rabbis, and one has a female assistant rabbi. These shuls range in size from 1,000 member units at the high end down to 237 members on the smaller side. Twenty-four of the movement's 106 total synagogues have women as either senior or assistant rabbis.

Roston, for her part, told the New Jersey Jewish News that as a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1990s, she did not consider herself a pioneer.

"In rabbinical school, my classmates and I saw ourselves as the second generation," she said. "We weren't among the first who broke the doors down in '84 and '85, who had been there fighting the battles."

Still, she added, once she had graduated from JTS in 1998, "we realized that in the Conservative movement, we were the first generation."

That, she said, was because, though the heated clash over whether or not to ordain women as rabbis roiled the seminary, it hadn't very deeply affected the movement's congregations.

But today, Hammer said, women rabbis have left their mark on the movement.

"Once it's demonstrated that it can work, the opposition to it becomes much lees than it was before -- and I think we've reached that point," he said.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

State of Conservative Judaism - Miami Herald

From the Miami Herald

Conservative Jews fleeing to other movements

RACHEL ZOLL
Associated Press

The branch of American Judaism that occupies the middle ground between those who buck tradition and those who fully embrace it have been confronting the dwindling appeal of their movement in a meeting this week in Houston.

Members of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly, at their annual convention, say their seminaries and day schools have been educating more and more Jews, only to see them flee to other Jewish movements.

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, the leading Conservative school, said the exodus of young Conservative Jews with strong religious educations is a key reason the movement is floundering. "I deem that to be the most critical loss," he said, in a phone interview from the meeting, titled "Reinventing Conservative Judaism."

Schorsch partly blames the trend on the poor quality of worship in Conservative synagogues, which he says are so geared toward "entry-level Jews" that those with more religious knowledge leave for the stricter Orthodox congregations. Schorsch says he often worships at an Orthodox synagogue on Friday nights, the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath, because of the beauty of the service.

"There is really a fatal disconnect," he said. "There is not enough attention being paid to advanced Jews."

The Conservative movement teaches a traditional Judaism that is moderately flexible. For example, Conservatives allow members to drive on the Jewish Sabbath if necessary and let men and women sit together during services. However, unlike clergy in the more liberal Reform stream, most Conservative rabbis will not officiate at interfaith weddings. The Orthodox movement has the strictest adherence to Jewish law and tradition.

Conservatives have resisted pressure to liberalize core teachings to prevent less observant Jews from leaving for Reform synagogues, which generally give a greater role to gays and to Gentile spouses of congregants.

Although exact numbers are hard to calculate, Jewish leaders now agree that the Reform movement has overtaken Conservative Judaism as the largest North American branch - in members and in number of synagogues. The total number of Jews in the United States is estimated at between 5 million and 6 million.

However, these are not the losses that preoccupy most Conservative thinkers. Instead, many want to retain the more observant congregants - a strategy they believe will revitalize synagogues.

"If a person decides that they are really not interested in observance, then the Conservative movement is really not the place for them," said Rabbi Reuven Hammer, a Conservative leader from Israel who attended the Texas meeting. "But sometimes we lose people who become very observant. If we don't have enough observant people in our congregations, then they will look for a place they will feel more comfortable."

Jonathan Sarna, an expert on American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said the Conservative branch began faltering when it decided to more rigorously define itself, narrowing its appeal. Synagogues that once felt welcome, believed they didn't fit in anymore and broke away.

Among the issues that drove some out: The movement's decisions over the last two decades to ordain women and to not ordain gays, although the role of homosexuals is once again under review by the movement's Law Committee. The Reform movement ordains gays and women, while the Orthodox do not.

"Some left because the Conservative movement wasn't liberal enough and some left because it was too liberal," said Sarna, who spoke at the assembly. "The tent has become smaller and smaller."

Sarna said the Reform and Orthodox movements have succeeded partly because they are tolerant of a spectrum of practices in a way that the Conservative branch is not.

Reform leaders have recently encouraged their members to embrace traditions they once deemed meaningless, such as learning Hebrew and keeping kosher. As a result, a wide range of worship styles can be found in Reform congregations.

The Orthodox stream, which encompasses a small percentage of North American Jews, have successfully played down internal differences, between the more adaptable modern Orthodox and the ultra-Orthodox, for example - and have focused on what unites them instead, Sarna said.

Sarna noted that many Conservative-trained leaders have started creative programs that have enjoyed great success - such as small prayer groups that are popular among young people. However, he said these leaders do not affiliate with the movement and he urged the Rabbinical Assembly to honestly consider why.

Said Sarna: "The Conservative movement needs to keep people with those new ideas in the tent, rather than believe in order to make those innovative ideas happen, they need to go outside the tent."

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

More energy to Conservative Synagogues - that's the Ikar!

Written from the Rabbinical Assembly convention in Houston Texas

Below is an article from JTA. I was literally exhausted after listening to Rabbi Sharon Brous speak in a session yesterday here at the convention about her new endeavor called Ikar. She is a talented, dynamic and super-energetic rabbi who is transforming this new spiritual community in Los Angeles. Hadar in NYC and now Ikar in LA... if only we could create such kehillot (communities) between the two coasts!

-------------------
Conservative synagogues need to be reinvigorated, the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary said.

While Jewish education and teacher training are dynamic and strong, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch said, many of the movement’s best and brightest are “often off at Orthodox shuls.” Schorsch made the comments in an address Sunday at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly in Houston, a spokeswoman for the movement’s rabbinic arm told JTA. Much of the substance “in our shuls is geared towards ‘entry-level’ Jews and not ‘advanced’ Jews,” he said. And while these “advanced” Jews remain intellectually Conservative, he added, they have trouble finding satisfaction at Conservative shuls. Schorsch suggested several remedies, among them that the movement must become more entrepreneurial and should reaffirm the validity of halachic boundaries.

Citing both Chabad and the Reform movement, Schorsch said that American Jews are hungry for charismatic leadership and new ideas.

© JTA

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Kol Hakavod to Dani Wohl

When I helped coach my little brother Jake's little league baseball team many many years ago, I knew that Dani Wohl was a good athlete, but I just didn't realize how good!

He's much older now and has done what very few Jewish kids from West Bloomfield, Michigan get to do in college -- start as the point guard for the University of Michigan varsity basketball team.

The Michigan Daily published a great article about Dani today that even quotes his dad Milt (my CPA!). With Rabbi Danny Nevins in the crowd during one of his final games in a U-M jersey, Dani had 6 steals almost tying the all-time Michigan record (the most for a Wolverine in the past 10 years).

Now Dani will play for the U.S. team in the Maccabiah Games in Israel. I'm very proud of Dani.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Mazel Tov Rabbi Roston!

Thursday, March 10, 2005

State of Conservative Judaism - Miami Herald

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

More energy to Conservative Synagogues - that's the Ikar!

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Kol Hakavod to Dani Wohl

Search Blog

About

Rabbi Jason's Links

Previous Posts

Archives

Dictionary