Book Review: The New Rabbi

Rabbi Melanie Aron

October 4, 2002

Picking up the book The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader, by Stephen Fried, for some relaxing reading during Succot, was a bit of a busman's holiday. But I enjoyed it. Fried was successful in describing the real life workings of a congregation and aside from a few digs at Reform Judaism, I found myself mostly in synch with his analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Jewish communal life.

After returning to the synagogue to say Kaddish for his father, investigative journalist Stephen Fried decides to follow Har Zion, a major Conservative congregation in Philadelphia through the final year of service of their long time rabbi Gerald Wolpe and the long and drawn out process of finding his replacement. Wolpe had been Fried's rabbi as a child in a different congregation in a different city before coming to Har Zion and I think that connection is important to the author still dealing with his father's death. As Fried follows the rabbinic search process, he also provides some insights into the meaning of synagogue life for its participants, the challenges of the contemporary American rabbinate, and the generational changes, which are shaping Jewish life today.

On the whole I felt that Fried was sympathetic in his portrayal of the various rabbis who are part of his story. Rabbi Wolpe, the retiring senior rabbi, is somewhat old school and at times pompous and egocentric, but Fried also recognizes his devotion to his congregation and the Jewish people, and the sacrifices he has made through the years for the community. He is interested in Wolpe's internal theological struggles particularly those that resulted from Wolpe's loss of his own father at a young age. He compares the maturing of a rabbi into the rabbinate to that of a young parent, who comes to realize that their baby's needs take precedence over their own exhaustion and their former taste for recreational activities. In times of crisis, untimely death in particular, all of the rabbis presented come through for their congregants, and interestingly, we are also shown times when congregations play a supportive role for their rabbis. Rabbi Wolpe's wife became suddenly and desperately ill, at a relatively young age, and the congregation helps the rabbi through her illness and long years of partial recovery. We also see members of the congregation acting in a sympathetic way when the assistant rabbi's father-in-law is dying and the younger rabbi is overwhelmed by communal and family demands.

Fried values the teaching role of rabbis and the importance of their sermons as a way of tying communities together and helping people find meaning in the events of their day to day lives and in world affairs. We also get the sense that for the regulars, listening to sermons is a sport, with its own point system and handicapping.

Fried notes the changes in the role of the rabbis as American Jews became better secularly educated and more sophisticated. Sometimes he seems to long for the rabbis of the past generation who tended to have better classical educations and to be more cultured in their references and sermon illustrations. I get the sense he prefers illustrations from 19th century poetry to analogies from baseball or contemporary movies. On the other hand, he also sees benefits in informality and in the rabbi being more of the specialist in Judaism rather than an interpreter of current events. Fried successfully captures some of the realities of everyday life for rabbis and rabbis' families, and the ways in which this works better for some individuals than for others.

The book begins with Rabbi Wolpe's self-described worst Bat Mitzvah ever, a service in which the young girl delivers a speech, which her father had written for her and which was not the one approved by the rabbi at the rehearsal the day before. The girl's parents are divorced and the speech is very painful for the mother. This is unfortunately an experience that I and many of my colleagues have had. We also get a glimpse of the problems of High Holidays tickets in an institution with assigned family pews, a system like that of Temple Emanu-El of San Francisco, whose High Holiday tickets were selling on ebay this fall.

In the course of the search process we see the congregation's search committee lurching from one favorite son to another. They seem to latch on to a particular solution to their problems, run into a setback and then abruptly switch to another solution. There is very little malice in the system, but there is rushing to judgment, impatience, and many decisions seem to be made for superficial reasons. Lay leaders are part time directors and bring their own personal agendas and life experiences to the decision making process. They defer to others because of history and status and not usually because of expertise or training. He notes the dynamics on the committee between the old guard, two of Rabbi Wolpe's long time inner circle, and a young couple who though fond of the retiring rabbi would like to see some changes in the congregation.

Fried is quite the participant observer as we feel that, along with sneaking a tape recorder into his tallit bag, and discretely, he thinks, taking notes on the service handout, he is also praying and seeking spiritual sustenance himself. At one point, he gets caught taking notes in the back rows during services, which is a rude violation of synagogue norms and Conservative halachah. When he next comes to services, he is seated way up front, and wonders if this is so the rabbi can keep an eye on him. Fried seems able to recognize and accept strengths and weaknesses in rabbis and to seek out as rabbi for himself, a number of very different types of people. Through the book, we meet not only the retiring rabbi and his two rabbi sons, one of whom, David Wolpe is extremely charismatic, prominent and controversial in the Conservative movement, but also the not so young second career assistant rabbi, the various candidates for the senior position, and an interim rabbi, a scholar and non-conformist from Israel, who because he is not seeking a permanent pulpit, operates with a great deal of freedom.

In the course of telling the story of Har Zion, Fried also fills in some of the history of congregations on the east coast and particularly the challenges many communities faced with changing neighborhoods. Rabbi Wolpe originally comes to the congregation to heal the wounds created by the congregation's decision to leave their historic building in the city and come out to the suburbs, the Philadelphia Mainline. As his years with the congregation are celebrated, the community also gains an opportunity to reflect on the decisions made in past years and the way they have shaped the community. Har Zion struggles with the tension between its desire to be "the place to be", for a wide variety of people who are comfortable under the Conservative umbrella, or being a more committed and observant congregation, with stronger demands for Conservative practice among its congregants and leadership.

The book concludes with Rabbi Wolpe coming to terms with his retirement, becoming more comfortable with his status as rabbi emeritus in his old congregation, and enjoying the release from the pressure of seeing world events through the prism of "how will I discuss this with the congregation." It ends with Rabbi Wolpe sitting in the pews, praying, a reminder that the rabbi is, when all is said and done, also a Jew, with the same religious needs and obligations, as the lay members of his or her congregation.