Rabbi Francine Roston
June 26, 2008
Fourteen pulpit rabbis from across the country have been selected to participate in the first cohort of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s new rabbinic training project. Among them are two area Conservative rabbis: Rabbi Mark Biller of Adath Shalom Synagogue in Parsippany and Rabbi Francine Roston of Congregation Beth El in South Orange.
The Legacy Heritage Rabbinic Enrichment Initiative, as it is called, is designed for mid-career pulpit rabbis, those with eight to 15 years of experience in small to medium-size congregations.
“The goal is to take mid-career rabbis and give them the management and leadership skills they need to be very successful congregational rabbis,” said Rabbi Marc Wolf, director of LHREI and senior director of community development at JTS.
“Education at the seminary is one thing. It brings them through the first part of their rabbinate,” said Wolf. “But as they start to take on more areas of responsibility and leadership becomes more demanding and congregations have more demands, the needs of their skill sets change.”
The two-year program begins and ends with summer retreats at JTS in New York. It also includes video conferences, mentoring, and paired study throughout the year.
The 2008 LHREI Summer Institute will concentrate on developing management skills — from managing day-to-day demands to building productive relationships with professional staff and lay leaders. But the July 21-30 program will also include sessions that focus on how rabbis can manage their own spiritual lives and deal with stresses particular to pastoral care, such as “compassion fatigue.”
Biller said he hopes to establish a network of other rabbis dealing with the same issues. He also wants to focus on creating “a vision for the congregation and the tools to implement it” as well as establishing a way “to measure how that vision is coming to fruition.” A rabbi for 11 years, he said of his participation in the initiative, “What could be more exciting for a rabbi who loves his congregation and wants to take it to the next step?”
Roston said that she likes the combination of text study and professional issues “that meets me where I’m at.” She’s looking forward to the program’s camaraderie, the weekly study, and the access she’ll have once again to JTS professors. “The pulpit can be very isolating. This gives me the opportunity to be with people doing the same work.”
Her particular area of focus is reenvisioning the synagogue. “There’s a certain exhaustion with the normal structure. The way we engaged volunteers in the past is no longer working. When people engage in synagogue work, they should feel energized, not drained. There must be a way to give people the opportunity to do what they are passionate about and do it in a way that honors their life style.”
Rabbi Mark Biller
In addition to Roston and Biller, the 2008 LHREI fellows include, in New Jersey, Rabbi Michael Pont of Temple Beth Ahm in Aberdeen and Rabbi Melissa Crespy, Lakeland Hills Jewish Center, Ringwood; and Rabbi Charles Arian of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Norwich, Conn.; Rabbi Edward Bernstein, Congregation Shaarey Tikvah, Beachwood, Ohio; Rabbi David Glickman, Congregation Shearith Israel, Dallas; Rabbi Felipe Goodman, Temple Beth Shalom, Las Vegas; Rabbi Joel Levenson, Congregation B’nai Jacob, Woodbridge, Conn.; Rabbi Neal Loevinger, Temple Beth-El, Poughkeepsie, NY; Rabbi Michael Singer, Temple Beth David, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; Rabbi Michael Stanger, Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation, NY; Rabbi Michael Ungar, Tifereth Israel, Columbus, Ohio; and Rabbi Jeremy Wiederhorn, Conservative Synagogue of Westport, Conn.
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