Over the past year or so, much has been written about rabbis — their spiritual development, how they view their preparation, their career paths and the increasing diversity of their professional pursuits. As is the custom among Jews, all of this study has provoked commentary; and like most Jewish commentary over the millennia, most of it has been offered by rabbis. 

I write from a different vantage point. With fewer than 10,000 rabbis in the United States, I am among the 6 million Jews they are seeking to serve; and while I’m not speaking for anyone else, I also have some thoughts about the rabbis we need. 

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A synagogue pulpit.

We are communities, not congregations

To say that we are in a post-denominational era recognizes an evolving landscape, but not its nuances. It may be helpful to overlay that shift with the reality that we are also in a post-congregational era.  

According to the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Jewish adults for whom Jewish religion is important at all shrank from 71% in 2014 to 57% a decade later, and that number drops to about 35% when it comes to the percentage who join a congregation. That means that despite the perception that pulpit rabbis lead much of American Jewry, for every Jew who is connected to a shul, there are two who are not. 

While the “Surge” in Jewish engagement spurred by the Oct. 7 attacks and rise in vicious antisemitism provided a welcomed bump in Jewish communal participation, that bump is already deflating, with organizations recognizing “slippage” in the number of people who continue to participate. The surge was initially greatest among those not previously engaged; this is the group where slippage is the greatest now. Even as antisemitism grows, it is an unreliable accelerant for sustained Jewish communal interest. Indeed, any plan that relies on Jew-hatred to engage more Jews would be macabre.

The supply-and-demand equation within the rabbinic profession reflects changing participation patterns. An increasing percentage of recently ordained rabbis are seeking roles on campuses, in chaplaincy, social service agencies and classrooms; while on the demand side, the strain to fill pulpits with qualified candidates is growing.

It is in those very places beyond the pulpit where rabbis will provide lasting and meaningful new direction to our Jewish community as our teachers, leaders, role models and confidants. It reminds me that one of the most challenging situations we faced at Hillel International was moving the culture of some Hillels away from encouraging students to “become members of Hillel,” towards embracing all students who, just by being Jews on campus, were already valued residents of a precious Jewish community. We needed to coach the staff to move away from a work style based on their enticing students to come to Hillel, towards one where they would take their professional Jewish knowledge, pride and skill and go out of the Hillel to be among the students.

These are the kind of rabbis we need today. Rabbis in living rooms, playgrounds and the workplace, because those parents and those children and those professionals are not coming to them. We need rabbis out in the community, even if they are professionally anchored in a pulpit, a school or an organization. 

I once shared a cup of coffee with a distinguished, tenured pulpit rabbi who was invited by another congregation to speak there one Shabbat. While he was eager to do so, his synagogue’s president vetoed the idea. “You belong to us,” he was told. He was distraught to learn that while others in the community thirsted for knowledge, his Torah was constrained by the walls of his shul.

I recognize the economic challenges to actualize the idea that rabbis should have the flexibility to move beyond their traditional boundaries. The modern congregational business model depends on membership dues, not on maximizing Jewish participation, and the funding for this formula is increasingly uncertain. But rather than consider this initiative as a burden on the budget, think of it as a communal demonstration of congregational pride. 

In communities where multiple institutions adopt this commitment, the compounded impact would strengthen all of them. What if three hours a week of every rabbi’s time, no matter where they worked, was freed up for them to go elsewhere — anywhere — to fulfill the charge given to every rabbi in their ordination certificate: to be a rav or a teacher, “among the Jewish People.” There is a shade of difference in the word choice of each seminary, but the sentiment is identical: the individual is to be a rabbi for all of us — not limited to any stream, not restricted to any synagogue.  

Rabbinic training shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all

In virtually every profession, graduate students choose a specialty and enter a course of study with classes and clinics concentrating on that specialty in addition to a curriculum that is core to the profession. Rabbis who seek to lead our congregations should identify that path as their specialty and pursue that course of study. A pulpit rabbi should not be regarded or trained as a “generalist,” but as a skilled professional with that chosen specialty, and with that earned expertise.  

For the growing number of rabbinical students choosing a non-pulpit path, the case for modifying the rabbinic preparation program is all the more imperative. Seminaries should expand their core curricula, partner with professional schools or otherwise ensure that the rabbis they graduate have the credentials in their chosen specialty that are recognized as equivalent or superior to those of their non-rabbinic peers. A rabbi who specializes in youth work requires different preparation than one who will serve a congregation, or counsel high school students or be a college professor, hospital chaplain, family life mediator, mental health worker, nonprofit executive, political lobbyist or interpreter of Jewish learning for a sophisticated organization. These are not specialties where one dabbles or acquires the requisite skills through osmosis; these professional skills and practices should be acquired in tandem with the core rabbinic requirements, and with academic rigor attested to through certification and maintained through continuing professional education. In addition to our expectation that rabbis be masters of Judaics, we should expect them to be masters of their chosen specialized rabbinic field.

Rabbis as thinkers

This new aspect of the modern rabbinate that I propose may be the most difficult to implement because it requires a shift in the way we think about rabbis and an even further evolution in the way they are trained and ordained. There is a hierarchy in Western education that generally recognizes the baccalaureate as conferred upon one who can explain established knowledge; the master’s to one who can apply that knowledge to real-world problems; and the doctorate to one who contributes to the creation of new knowledge.   

It seems to me that most rabbis operate successfully at the MA level: After several years in rabbinical school, they are prepared to apply textual knowledge and emotional intelligence in response to questions or dilemmas posed by congregants, to teach at a sophisticated level and to bring relevant Jewish perspective, learning and experience to bear upon the communal agenda. 

What we need are more Ph.D.-like rabbis, and I do not mean rabbis who hold Ph.D.s in various disciplines. I mean rabbis who have demonstrated an ability not only to master the material, but to shape it in novel ways; not to break it, not to discard it, but to bring an understanding that, while bounded by whatever guardrails are erected by that stream, offers a new idea, a unique understanding that has not been suggested before. This is the traditional concept of a chiddush, a novel interpretation of a text, prayer or practice that adds new dimension, meaning and relevance for those who encounter it. Often a chiddush is an idea that has been embedded in ancient texts or traditional practices, only to be unearthed now and revealed in a way that brings it new luster. Chiddushim emerge from the minds of curious, creative, independent thinkers. 

While many students may meet the requirements to graduate from rabbinical school, some distinctive title should be reserved for those who crown their learning with new Torah insights. Rabbis whose learning and teaching inspires us to live lives of wonder, to explore deeper Jewish meaning, to discover knowledge that moves us to be generous and kind. We need rabbis who will entrust us with Jewish knowledge that endures, knowledge that expands and secures the fragile platform of Torah upon which the world rests.  

Leadership for a Living Torah

It was the rabbis themselves who crafted a lovely Talmudic tale about Moses, the paradigmatic rabbi, transported by God to visit the future study hall of Rabbi Akiva (Menachot 29b). Moses takes a seat in the back and listens to the proceedings; he is flummoxed — he can’t follow the variety of ideas, the patterns of logic, the dialogue and debate occurring among the students. 

It’s only when Rabbi Akiva, who is at the center of this whirlwind of Torah, explains that the particular position under question is grounded in “Torah l’Moshe mi’Sinai” that Moses was comforted. 

Our communities should be filled with rabbis who bring different professional skills, distinctive communal experiences, unique scholarly perspectives and creative thinking; who share ideas with each other and challenge and support one another. When that happens, their teacher Moses will smile, and the communities that yearn for Jewish wisdom, courage and imagination will thrive. 

Robert Lichtman has devoted his career to securing a vibrant future through Jewish leadership, learning and community, serving in senior roles at major Jewish organizations including UJA-Federation of New York, Hillel International and Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest NJ, where he founded The Partnership for Jewish Learning and Life and later served as the federation’s chief Jewish learning officer. Now an essayist, mentor and teacher, he explores the challenges and possibilities of Jewish communal renewal in his writing and teaching.