The William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary was created to prepare and support the professionals who shape Jewish life. Over the past several years, we’ve taken note as a troubling pattern emerged across the field: talented, committed people struggling with burnout, career stagnation, a loss of hope and confronting communal and organizational challenges that their training never prepared them for.

Two major 2025 studies gave shape and scale to the problem. The Hope Study, conducted by M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education, surveyed nearly 950 Jewish communal professionals. While 73% reported strong connection to the Jewish people and 55% felt energized by their work, only 24% reported feeling hopeful about the future. At the same time, “From Calling to Career: Mapping the Current State and Future of Rabbinic Leadership,” a landmark study of the U.S. rabbinate led by Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation, found that 97% of rabbis experience their work as deeply meaningful, even as burnout and practical barriers drive exits and discourage entry. 

Across both studies, the findings are consistent: the calling remains strong, but the structures supporting it are insufficient. The studies also clarify where that structural gap is most acute. While rabbinic education offers established pathways and infrastructure, other Jewish professionals shoulder comparable intellectual and moral responsibility without equivalent support. The absence of rigorous, professionally relevant advanced degree pathways leaves too many leaders without the preparation they need, whether they are just entering the field or seeking to deepen and sustain careers they have already built.

Against this backdrop, we took an honest look at our own programs and whether we were truly meeting the moment. We started with our flagship offering, the Executive Doctoral Program, and undertook a fundamental redesign. This was not a branding exercise but a deliberate response to a documented, field-wide need, guided by five commitments that reflect the research findings.

Leadership and scholarship must develop in tandem

Traditional doctoral education was designed to prepare scholars, and most programs still reflect that assumption. But most Jewish communal leaders are not pursuing academic careers. They need scholarly rigor and sustained leadership development, and the two should not be pursued in isolation from one another. 

In our redesigned program, scholarly and leadership training are deliberately integrated, each deepening and informing the other. Students develop the habits of mind of serious researchers while also building concrete leadership capacities, particularly in areas the research identifies as urgent: facilitating difficult conversations and navigating organizational complexity and uncertainty.

Scholarship must be embedded in practice

Research on professional learning consistently shows that development is strongest when embedded in the work people actually do. Both the Hope Study and “From Calling to Career” confirm this: professionals report that what sustains them are practical, job-relevant supports, while structural barriers like workload and competing obligations make traditional academic forms of advanced study difficult for mid- and senior-career leaders to pursue. 

With this in mind, we shifted to the Carnegie Foundation’s Dissertation in Practice model. Students investigate a “problem of practice,” an authentic dilemma in their own organizational context. Their workplaces become sites of inquiry, and their research immediately informs their leadership and organizations.

Completion is a design responsibility

The studies point to the same reality: the primary obstacles to sustained professional development are practical. Schedules, workload, financial pressures, and family responsibilities shape who can enter advanced training and who can persist. Programs built on assumptions of unlimited discretionary time fail to reflect how mid- and senior-career professionals actually live and work; if the field values experienced leaders, program design must take these realities seriously. 

Our redesigned doctoral program is therefore intentionally scaffolded. Three methods courses and four writing seminars move students from problem formulation through data collection and analysis to field-facing recommendations. Students develop their research in small, advisor-led groups, with intensive feedback and peer accountability at every stage. Completion is not framed as a test of individual perseverance but as a structural outcome, shaped by coherence, intentional sequencing, meaningful feedback and sustained guidance that make steady progress possible alongside full professional and personal lives.

Professional community must be central

Collegial support emerged in both the Hope and Atra Studies as one of the strongest sources of resilience for Jewish professionals, even as both studies underscore the toll of carrying complex responsibility without durable peer networks. Many respondents describe professional isolation and the absence of sustained spaces for reflection with colleagues who understand the pressures of their roles.

The cohort model responds to this gap by creating an intentional professional community over three years. Early observations from our first cohort are encouraging: Students describe the experience as a refuge, a space where they feel seen, supported and challenged in ways they do not consistently experience in their workplaces. The cohort also cultivates a sense of professional identity and agency that is not tied to any single role or institution but grounded in shared practice, inquiry and mutual responsibility.

Pluralistic engagement must be practiced

Jewish life is profoundly diverse, yet sustained spaces for meaningful engagement across differences are rare. The Hope Study found that internal communal divisions, not external threats, were the greatest challenge professionals face, cited nearly twice as often as other concerns. Atra’s research similarly documents how leaders regularly navigate conflicting expectations and tensions within and across organizations.

The cohort is a concrete effort to create this kind of sustained space. It brings together professionals from across institutional, religious and political contexts and sustains their learning together over three years. Participants study alongside peers whose perspectives differ from their own, confront disagreement in real time and practice sustaining serious conversation across differences. The cohort experience aims to sharpen attentive listening, develop reflective judgment through ongoing engagement with multiple perspectives and cultivate shared responsibility as participants hold one another accountable for respectful dialogue, equipping students to foster pluralistic engagement within their own organizations not as an abstract commitment but as a practiced leadership capacity.

Why this matters now 

The challenge facing Jewish communal life is not a lack of talent or commitment. It is the absence of coordinated structures that prepare leaders for complexity and support continued development. Research highlights these gaps as structural and therefore addressable.

Redesigning a single doctoral program will not resolve systemic challenges. But building serious pathways for advanced professional formation is one part of the infrastructure the field requires. This work emerged from listening carefully to practitioners, reflecting honestly on where existing designs fell short, and aligning program structures with the realities leaders face.

If Jewish communal leadership is to meet the demands of this moment, the field must invest not only in inspiring people to lead, but in the structures that allow them to prepare, persist and grow in their work.

Abigail Uhrman is director and associate professor of Jewish education in the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary.