To the Editor:
There is no rabbi crisis. Jack Wertheimer, who has my genuine respect and with whom I generally agree, has unfortunately presented us with a flawed analysis [“The Rabbi Crisis,” May]. The shortage of rabbis in my own (and Mr. Wertheimer’s) Conservative movement is real and is of concern. But none of the other movements—Reconstructionist, Reform, or Orthodox—has reported a major shortage, much less a crisis.
It should be noted at the outset that the actual number of Conservative rabbis has increased year by year over the past decades. So why is there a need for more Conservative rabbis?
Because, as Mr. Wertheimer notes, even congregations of moderate size often seek to engage more than one rabbi, and congregational leadership has become more aware of the need to relate rabbinically to multiple constituencies; because there has been a large increase in the number of Jewish schools with a demand for faculty able to teach sacred texts and serve as role models; because of the growth of the Conservative movement outside North America, especially in Israel, and a call for rabbinic service in Europe, the former Soviet states, and Latin America; because the rise in the status and professionalism of the chaplaincy has encouraged rabbis to serve in hospitals, hospices, and senior residences; and, finally, because the Conservative rabbi is often sought after by Jewish communal agencies and private foundations. All of these developments speak to strengths within the Conservative rabbinate and the Jewish community. Hence, there is a shortage of our rabbis but not a crisis in the rabbinate.
Mr. Wertheimer’s comment that during the 1990’s, 25 to 50 percent of ordained students did not enter congregational life is not accurate. For as long as the Rabbinical Assembly has maintained records (nearly 100 years), approximately 60 percent of ordainees have entered the pulpit and 40 percent have pursued other areas of rabbinic service. Some years more ordainees enter pulpits, some years fewer do—but the ratio has remained the same.
Also puzzling is Mr. Wertheimer’s insistence that the definition of the role of the congregational rabbi has changed over time and that what a congregation expects from a rabbi today is qualitatively different from what a congregation once expected. It just is not so. Congregations searching for a new rabbi, whether in 1910 or today, inevitably have desired the same qualities: a religious role model who does every possible task—teaching, preaching, administering, counseling, programming—exceptionally well, and relates to every age group. No matter how unrealistic it may be, this composite expectation is the image that congregations have always had for their rabbis.
Finally, while I agree with Mr. Wertheimer that rabbinic authority is a subject of prime importance, there are clear differences among movements that must be taken into account. Within the Conservative rabbinate, three factors contribute to the tension and concern surrounding the subject of rabbinic authority: the shift from a hierarchical to a cooperative model of leadership and religious decision-making; the availability in English of all kinds of halakhic material that unfortunately leads a religiously uneducated person to assume that by reading a single chapter he becomes an expert in interpretation of halakha who can challenge his rabbi; and (unique to the Conservative synagogue) the diversity of congregants, from those of total religious commitment to those of minimal commitment—which makes exercising rabbinic authority a more complex matter.
Mr. Wertheimer implies that one way to increase the number of individuals studying for the rabbinate is to reassert rabbinic authority. Hopefully, one is not influenced to become a rabbi because one can exercise authority. If asked why they chose the rabbinate, I believe my colleagues would respond that they did so because of a deep love for Jewish learning and the Jewish people, a desire to assure the Jewish future, and above all because they were drawn to devote their lives to further God’s work. By helping people discover that commitment, we can increase the number of rabbis more than in any other way.
Rabbi Joel H. Meyers
Executive Vice President
Rabbinical Assembly
New York City
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To the Editor:
Since Jack Wertheimer saw fit to quote from both a document I authored (“The Rabbi-Congregation Relationship: A Vision for the 21st Century,” the report of the Reconstructionist commission on the role of the rabbi) and an interview in which I was (incorrectly) quoted, I trust I may be allowed a few brief observations in response to his challenging article.
Rabbinic authority does not exist in a vacuum; in America, it is merely one more refraction of a diminution of authority that can equally be observed with regard to teachers, politicians, and physicians. Restoring old models of rabbinic authority is as unlikely to succeed as would be attempts to reinstate other earlier models of authority.
Moreover, decision-making about consequential matters has become increasingly decentralized. As my colleague Rabbi Hayim Herring points out, patients today do not merely accede to a doctor’s directives—they expect to be partners in the decisions that involve their own health. We should not be surprised that individual Jews expect to be partners in the decision-making that involves their spiritual health. One does not have to celebrate this fact in order to acknowledge it, although I would like to think rabbis would welcome such engagement.
Authority cannot simply be asserted in a setting like a synagogue in which a rabbi is both leader and employee. Rabbis who assert their authority in a way that offends or alienates can expect at contract-renewal time to be unemployed.
Mr. Wertheimer misreads the Reconstructionist movement’s emphasis on including Jews in the religious decision-making process (as, admittedly, do far too many Reconstructionist synagogues). Rabbis are leaders, communities need leadership, and a rabbinic voice is generally both more Jewishly informed and more influential in congregational discussions than the average congregant’s. But there is nothing inconsistent in affirming a central and leading role for rabbis along with an affirmation of including the voices and needs of those who comprise a community. Since leadership (a more productive term than “authority”) is not a limited resource, presumably there is enough to go around for rabbis and lay people alike.
Simple appeals to authority will not appeal to contemporary Jews. If we are seriously to engage Jews with Jewish tradition, we are more likely to do so by instructing rather than imposing, by educating rather than enforcing, and by provoking rather than policing. When I teach future rabbis, I try to convey one of the thoughts that inheres in Mordecai Kaplan’s entire Reconstructionist enterprise: “Convince, don’t coerce.”
Rabbi Richard Hirsh
Executive Director
Reconstructionist Rabbinical
Association
Wyncote, Pennsylvania
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To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s article is a cogent and provocative analysis of the state of the contemporary rabbinate, but I am afraid the problem may be worse than he says, and his proposed solution difficult to achieve. Mr. Wertheimer correctly notes that rabbis themselves have participated in the “assault” on hierarchy and authority, with its problematic consequences for rabbinic work.
But this is not just a sociological matter; it is a theological one. Rabbinic authority cannot be understood as directly grounded in normative religious truths when rabbinic education and denominational ideology in the liberal movements privileges pluralism above the very concept of truth.
I refer not only to the casual acceptance of a wide variety of religious practices within the typical Reform or Conservative synagogue, but to the fact that we—rabbis educated in accredited seminaries by professors with Ph.D.’s—are trained to be attuned to the multiplicity of possible meanings that could be assigned to the Torah, Talmud, or other rabbinic text. (I wonder whether a firm believer in “Torah from heaven” would even get admitted to a Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist seminary.) Quite frankly, I would not know how to recognize the authoritative meaning of a given text, much less expound upon it in public.
Furthermore, it is hard to reclaim authority in one synagogue when the shul down the street makes life easier by demanding less. And since the decorum of pluralism demands that we never criticize or delegitimize another rabbi or synagogue (lest we be accused of parochial denominational politics), we do not come across as believing there is much in Judaism worth fighting for.
These messages are hardly lost on our congregants, who cannot be expected to look to rabbis for halakhic or religious guidance when the source of our “authority”—sacred text—comes across as something subordinate to the perceived needs of the day. You cannot uproot the plain meaning of one verse and insist that you derive authoritative norms from the next—at least, not without a graduate-level class in denominational ideology.
The undermining of rabbinic authority, then, is not limited to synagogue governance; it is an inevitable outcome of a postmodern age that makes truth a matter of “perspective” and textual study a matter of discussing an author’s “agenda.”
Rabbi Neal Joseph
Loevinger
Temple Israel
Swampscott, Massachusetts
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To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s important article on the “rabbi crisis” falls short in its treatment of the movements outside of Conservative Judaism. There is, today, much noteworthy fermentation and activity within the Reform movement. Ironically, this may be the result of both the anarchy that is the bedrock of Reform—whereby every rabbi is free to do as he or she wishes—and the fact that Reform has hit such a nadir that there is nowhere to go but up. On the Orthodox end of the continuum, the problem of the tail wagging the dog has never been an issue, since Orthodox rabbis, whatever their shortcomings, have few qualms about asserting their leadership and drawing clear lines in the sand. Their authority remains unquestioned.
The real problem is within Conservative Judaism, which from the outset has claimed to adhere to a halakha that is by now a distant memory for the majority of its members. The halakhic authorities of Conservative Judaism have consistently done little more than rubber-stamp as de jure what had already been de facto, from mixed-sex pews and driving on Shabbat, to the counting of females in a minyan, to ordaining women as rabbis (a monumental decision to pander to the zeitgeist) and—coming soon—the acceptance of homosexuality. The constant attempt to shove a square Torah into an ever-rounder hole has made Conservative Judaism a mockery of itself.
J.J. Gross
Riverdale, New York
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To the Editor:
As Jack Wertheimer notes, “Many American rabbis [have] used their pulpits as platforms for engagement with national or international causes,” but he fails to develop the point. In fact, the politicization of the non-Orthodox rabbinate lies at the heart of the rabbinical malaise. The great majority of non-Orthodox rabbis are, and for at least the last 40 years have been, little more than leftist political activists.
Mr. Wertheimer mentions one rabbi who, while admitting he does not teach Torah, still seems focused on trying to convey some spirituality to his congregants. Even such a rabbi is more beneficial than the run of the rabbinical herd, who are as bereft of spirituality as they are of Jewish substance, and who offer only a soulless, secular political correctness.
A more searching examination of the “rabbi crisis” would have asked what impact our politicized rabbinate has had on the disproportionately large number of Jews who have sought spiritual and emotional satisfaction in cults; also, to what degree our politicized rabbinate has contributed to the rise of a Jewish demographic mainstream that consists so largely of terminally assimilated, universalistic liberals.
Bruce J. Schneider
Irvine, California
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To the Editor:
The crisis in the rabbinate described by Jack Wertheimer is nothing less than a crisis in kedusha, holiness. At risk is any kind of sacred depth or purpose.
Nowhere is this scandal of the holy more evident than in rabbinic evaluation. As the Reform movement has made clear, such evaluations should emerge from clearly defined goals. But much of what a rabbi does is hidden from the eye and cannot be evaluated, at least by human interlocutors. There is simply no way to measure the power of moments that save people from suicide, give meaning to the dying, or profoundly shape a young life—or to gauge the influence of a carefully crafted word that raises a congregation to moral integrity. Blessed are those lay leaders who know that you cannot judge an I-Thou profession (as Martin Buber might have put it) by the criteria of the I-It.
I fear that some of my colleagues are at least partially responsible for our profession’s failings. We are increasingly and vocally zealous about maintaining our personal time. We do not read books. We are afraid to take unpopular stands, forgetting that Zionism and civil rights were once the provinces of fearless pulpit voices. Our people want connection to texts and to values. They have the right to expect it—to expect their rabbis to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin
The Temple
Atlanta, Georgia
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To the Editor:
Once again Jack Wertheimer has cogently and perceptively addressed the reality of American Jewish religious life. But his conclusion that rabbis themselves can “turn this around” by the adoption of “more proactive postures,” the “reassertion” of “their authoritative role,” and the “reeducation” of “their congregants to think beyond their immediate personal needs, their inchoate yearnings for ‘spirituality’ and their consumerist notions of religious life” is remarkably sanguine.
The consumerist culture and its obsession with entitlements have bred a personality type known as the pathological antagonist, or “clergy-killer.” These are vicious, unusually duplicitous people who see clergy as the legitimate object of derision and public attack. Every church or synagogue has one or two, and some have many more than their share. Thriving on compliant synagogue leadership, they induce intense institutional and personal stress and cause serious damage.
Is it any wonder that our seminarians are seeking to avoid being placed in pulpits?
Rabbi Clifford E. Librach
United Jewish Center
Danbury, Connecticut
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To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s timely analysis of the shortage of pulpit rabbis for small and medium-sized congregations in America’s hinterland invites elaboration. For Conservative Judaism, with which I am most familiar, several problems need particular attention.
First, it is time to assess the career path of present and future women rabbis. Nearly a generation after the initial ordination of women for the Conservative rabbinate, alarmingly few female candidates under forty serve for substantial periods of time in congregational careers. Sexist biases in hiring practices, as well as perceived incompatibilities between motherhood and the pulpit, must be addressed.
Complex family issues also work against choosing rabbinic careers in the small congregations of America’s interior. My contemporaries at the seminary generally married Jewish women willing to subordinate their own career choices and approaches to Judaism to the needs of a rabbinic career. Today’s rabbinic households are structured around two careers, often limited to urban areas that offer day-school education at both the primary and secondary levels. The spouses of recent rabbinic graduates consciously seek to avoid any expectations that might be placed upon them by congregations. Again, we must find ways to balance these family concerns with pulpit careers.
A further problem is the post-denominationalism prevalent in the current student body. Students in the Conservative movement often marry individuals devoted to other approaches to Judaism, notably rabbis or rabbinical students from other movements. These ideologically diverse households try to avoid public scrutiny that would hold them up as role models. They seek rabbinic service in communal life apart from what they regard as the parochial nature of the Conservative movement. These students frequently view themselves as part of an amorphous “liberal Judaism” that encompasses all non-Orthodox streams. The Conservative rabbinate needs to find techniques to train students to be passionate Conservative Jews.
Rabbi Alan Silverstein
President
World Council of Conservative
Synagogues
Caldwell, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s explanation of the current state of affairs in the rabbinate is predictably solid. But his summary conclusions leave us merely with some hopeful remarks about a possible turnaround, banking on the ability of future rabbis “to take their own role seriously, accepting the burden and the challenge of their calling.” Surely Mr. Wertheimer, as provost of the Jewish Theological Seminary, has had earnest discussions on these subjects with his colleagues there, and they must have developed some contingency plans for programs to deal with the “rabbi crisis.” It would have been of considerable interest to readers to hear about such discussions and the recommendations that resulted.
Rabbi Herbert Rosenblum
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Jack Wertheimer writes:
If some of my critics contend that I have fabricated a nonexistent crisis, others believe that I am too “sanguine” and that the “problem may be worse” than I say. I think I was right in the first place: the crisis is real, but there are grounds for hope.
Rabbi Joel H. Meyers acknowledges a shortage in the Conservative rabbinate but not elsewhere. Two years ago, however, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations and the highest-ranking leader of Reform Judaism, declared the shortage in his movement “the most serious issue facing Reform rabbis now” and, to his credit, went on to create a partnership of rabbis and congregations to address it.
The Reform movement, pace Rabbi Herbert Rosenblum, also understands that this crisis is not a problem for any single seminary to resolve by itself. Rather, it needs the coordinated efforts of all denominational bodies. Nor, for that matter, is the problem limited to rabbis. As some far-sighted philanthropists are beginning to understand, a larger personnel crisis—of educators, communal workers, and the like—besets American Jewish institutional life, and dealing with it is similarly a job for all.
Are Orthodox congregations a separate world unto themselves, as several of my correspondents seem to believe? It is true that the Orthodox community produces large numbers of rabbis, but one important sector within it—“modern” Orthodoxy—relies increasingly on rabbis who have been trained elsewhere than at its flagship institution of Yeshiva University. I suspect this is due not only to shifting ideological currents within the modern-Orthodox orbit but also to Yeshiva’s inability to produce a sufficient number of qualified rabbis who are interested specifically in pulpit careers. The dean of Yeshiva’s rabbinical school admitted as much two years ago.
Other correspondents manifest different concerns. Bruce J. Schneider attributes the “rabbinical malaise” to “the politicization of the non-Orthodox rabbis.” I sympathize with Mr. Schneider’s dismay over the positions espoused by some non-Orthodox rabbis, but a surfeit of political involvement is not the primary source of the “malaise” I was discussing. Nor is he correct to assume that Orthodox rabbis stay out of politics, whether the issue is the “Who is a Jew” controversy that has rocked Israeli and American Orthodox circles for over twenty years, the efforts of some hasidic and haredi rabbis to deliver bloc votes, or the pronouncements of Orthodox rabbis on the Arab-Israeli peace process or on domestic-policy matters like faith-based initiatives, school vouchers, and the like.
J.J. Gross takes the occasion of his letter to lambaste Conservative and Reform Judaism on matters far removed from my article. But I was particularly struck by his sweeping assertion that Orthodox rabbis enjoy “unquestioned” authority, an assessment that would surely come as a surprise to many of them. In Mr. Gross’s own community of Riverdale, New York, the rabbi of the largest Orthodox synagogue was publicly challenged a few years ago by congregants who disagreed with his lenient ruling on a matter of synagogue ritual; ultimately, the rabbi was forced to back down. For a pithier and more accurate view of the situation than Mr. Gross’s, here are the words of the past executive of the Orthodox Union on the lot of rabbis within his world: “It is a pressure-packed position.”
According to Rabbi Richard Hirsh, I have “misread” his movement’s emphasis on “including Jews in the religious decision-making process.” But he concedes that “far too many Reconstructionist synagogues” have likewise “misread” that process. If things are not working out on the ground the way he would like, perhaps that is because lines of authority and responsibility are so vaguely defined. In other words, perhaps I and many Reconstructionist synagogues have read the situation correctly.
I am particularly grateful to Rabbis Meyers, Loevinger, Salkin, Librach, and Silverstein for adding important nuances to the discussion. Their letters illustrate the multiple ways in which the relationship between rabbis and their congregants, especially their boards, has deteriorated. Rabbi Meyers may be correct that congregants have long expected their rabbis to do “everything,” but that the number of tasks has multiplied out of all proportion is evident in contracts listing page upon page of “performance expectations.” Moreover, as boards increasingly adopt corporate models, synagogue members come to judge their rabbi not for excellence as a teacher and religious role model but for efficiency as a CEO.
Finally, as Rabbis Salkin and Librach observe, an improvement in the condition of the rabbinate will depend upon actions taken by rabbis themselves and their congregations. In my article I emphasized the need for rabbis to reassert their authority. Even though their job security is in the hands of their congregants, it is for them to point the path. Congregational leaders, who have their own responsibilities, must begin by respecting the prerogatives of the rabbi in the religious sphere.
Paradoxically, the declining pool of rabbis may aid in this process, as congregations discover that judging their rabbis primarily by the bottom line and viewing them as easily replaceable employees are recipes for perpetuating today’s critical shortages. In this sense, at least, I am indeed sanguine about the possibility of improvement.
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