by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

December 25, 2008

Rabbi E. Noach Shapiro announced just a few weeks ago that he will be leaving Congregation Shomrei Emunah. Rather than disappointment, everyone offered expressions of good will and congratulations.

Shapiro is leaving Montclair in August with his wife, Monica Rawicz, and their four children not to take another pulpit, but to move to Israel.

If congregants, who welcomed Shapiro in 2004, were surprised at the announcement, so was the rabbi.

“We went on a family trip to Israel for a couple of weeks last summer. We’ve been there a bunch of times. It was supposed to be a vacation like all the others. But something happened,” he told NJJN in a telephone interview. “Pieces fell together. We did not even know there were pieces floating, and then they fell together.”

Shapiro announced his decision to the congregation in a letter to the community dated Nov. 18.

“It is so hard to convey the swirling mix of emotions that surround our decision,” he wrote. In Israel, “for the first time, the loud and persistent question for both of us became, ‘Why aren’t we living here? Why aren’t we bringing our kids up in a culture and environment that rewards independence and initiative, all the while inculcating the deepest values of community? Why aren’t we raising our children where their Jewish identity is bound up, seamlessly, with their everyday living?”

Leaving was not an easy decision, said Shapiro, not only because of his bond with Shomrei Emunah. Conservative, or Masorti, rabbis have fewer work options in Israel, where the movement is small and an Orthodox rabbinate is firmly in control of the state’s sanctioned religious functions.

“The notion of my work and career being the same thing is on hold. Now there are two different pieces: earning a living and reinventing a career of meaning,” he said.

Shapiro isn’t sure what he’ll be doing, but imagines it will involve his ability to speak English, working with the Masorti movement, or serving as a scholar-in-residence from time to time back in the States.

He and his family plan to live in Eshchar, a community in the western Galilee, about 45 minutes from Haifa. It’s an intentionally pluralistic community where Orthodox and non-Orthodox residents live together. It’s also a place where people buy a plot of land and then build their own home, so Shapiro and his family will rent an apartment for their first year in Israel.

Shapiro arrived in Montclair in August 2004. At that time, everyone at Shomrei Emunah, including Shapiro, felt they had made a lasting match.

In conversations with NJJN at that time, he articulated his long-term vision to create a kehilla kedosha, a holy community and strengthen the congregation’s interfaith relationships. His immediate goal was to help “heal” the congregation, which had been divided over Shapiro’s most recent predecessors.

“Rabbi Shapiro has been amazing at bringing us together,” Renata Worob, head of the search committee, said at the time.

‘Absolutely thrilled’

Synagogue leaders are balancing their surprise at having to say goodbye with pride in the family’s decision to move to Israel.

“We are absolutely thrilled for him and his family,” said congregation president Jay Sabin. “It’s been an honor for us to have been with a rabbi who makes the ultimate decision for a Jew in the Diaspora. As much as everyone was surprised by the decision, we are all thrilled.”

Shapiro, in turn, described his own surprise at the outpouring of good will. “I have been very moved — people are really touched by where we’re going,” he said.

In what will be five years in Montclair, Shapiro has managed to leave what congregants are calling “a legacy.”

“He has brought tremendous strength to community building,” said Sabin. He and Shapiro both pointed to two congregational retreats, one local and one in Israel, that helped pull the congregation together through reflection and shared activities. He kept his promise to expand interfaith relations in the Montclair community, specifically through a growing relationship with Saint Paul’s Baptist Church. The congregations enjoyed a pulpit swap, a joint Passover seder, and work together on behalf of children displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

As he departs, Shapiro said he has unfinished plans, like the joint trip to Israel he had talked about with the pastor of Saint Paul’s.

Today, said the rabbi, he thinks he has at least succeeded in creating a kehilla kedosha, measured not in terms of programming but something less tangible.

“It’s a feeling, or atmosphere in tefilla [prayer], or just in the hallway. It’s an atmosphere that’s nourishing, of welcome, ease. There’s a lot of laughter — in services, in meetings.

“It was grim when I arrived for a variety of reasons. But people have exhaled. They have poured positive energy into doing things together and enjoying being together.”

Shapiro’s departure has also placed the issue of aliya squarely before the community. The rabbi’s decision “has generated so much interest and excitement,” said Sabin, that the congregation is planning to hold a series of programs about aliya.

As they looked forward, both rabbi and congregation hope to maintain their ties. “We’ll work it out together,” said Shapiro.

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