See this article in its original form in Hebrew College Alumni magazine.

By Mark Dwortzan

They came with diverse backgrounds—in carpentry, law, Russian literature, matchmaking, psychology, social work, education, micro-finance, international service and sociology. But all eleven harbored a single dream: to make the Jewish world a more welcoming and engaging place for individuals and communities in the United States and beyond. Now, after devoting five years to rigorous study and community involvement at Hebrew College, the Rabbinical School’s first graduates are about to realize that dream in manifold ways. Ordained at HC’s 83rd Commencement on June 1, 2008, were rabbinical graduates Alison Adler, Michael Cohen, Judi Ehrlich, Hannah Gershon, Randy Kafka, Chaim Koritzinsky, Stephen Landau, Jim Morgan, Elaine Pollack, Shayna Rhodes and Sonia Saltzman.

"They are a diverse group, but they share a vibrant optimism about the Jewish future, a deep commitment to klal Yisrael and a passion for the sacred work of building a more just and peaceful world." —Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Dean of the Rabbinical School

According to Rabbi Dan Judson, placement consultant at Hebrew College, demand for the transdenominational program’s first graduates was brisk and widespread. Calls for program graduates came not only from pluralistic institutions such as Hillels, community day schools and chaplaincy settings across the United States, but also from synagogues that put less stock in denominational affiliation. “Many congregations are more interested in rabbis who are grounded in text and can lead services that are spiritually engaging,” Judson observes, “than whether they are trained at a Movement seminary.”

Where Our Rabbis Are Going Hebrew College’s first class of ordained rabbis have found a variety of placements in congregations, Jewish education, chaplaincy, and community outreach and organizing. Assistant Rabbi and Director of Education, Congregation Mishkan Israel, Hamden, Conn. Bet Midrash Instructor, Hebrew College Chaplaincy Training, Hebrew Senior Life-Orchard Cove, Canton, Mass. Chaplaincy Training, New York Methodist Hospital, Brooklyn, N.Y. Director of International Partnerships, Jewish Community Relations Council, Boston Program Manager and Educator, Congregational Education Initiatives, Hebrew College Rabbi, Congregation Ruah Ami, Santiago, Chile Rabbi, Congregation Shaarei Shalom, Ashland, Mass. Rabbi, Congregation Tikvoh Chadoshoh, Bloomington, Conn. Rabbi, Temple Israel of the South Shore, North Easton, Mass.

Hebrew College-trained rabbis meet these criteria, Anisfeld maintains, because they reflect the core values of the program: inclusiveness, dialogue, serious study, social justice and vibrant spiritual practice. “We watched with great pride as they served in local communities and institutions during their student years—striving to share a vision of Judaism that is intellectually compelling, ethically grounded and spiritually alive,” she says. “As they go on now to pursue different professional paths—in Hillel, chaplaincy, congregational work, education and more—we see the enormous potential for personal and communal transformation.”

By June, ten graduates had already secured positions that promise to effect such transformation. Among them, Chaim Koritzinsky has become the first rabbi to lead an emerging independent, traditional egalitarian congregation in Santiago, Chile; Judi Ehrlich has begun chaplaincy and rabbinic work at Hebrew Senior Life’s Orchard Cove facility in Canton; and Stephen Landau has assumed the pulpit of a Conservative congregation in Connecticut.

Koritzinsky came to the Rabbinical School with years of community development, social justice and teaching experience at Jewish organizations in the United States, Israel and the former Soviet Union; a passion for havruta-style learning; and a desire to serve a wide spectrum of Jews, drawing on a solid foundation in Jewish texts and educational expertise. He says the program exceeded many of his expectations, particularly in shaping prayer leadership skills. “In five years, it’s become second nature to think creatively about how to build a dynamic, engaging service that addresses as wide a spectrum of daveners as possible while still being authentic to yourself,” he says.

The Rabbinical School Class of 2008 (L–R): Front: Shayna Rhodes, Sonia Saltzman, Elaine Pollack, Jim Morgan, Dean Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld; Middle: Alison Adler, Michael Cohen, Hannah Gershon, Stephen Landau, Rector Arthur Green; Back: Randy Kafka, Judi Ehrlich, Chaim Koritzinsky

Koritzinsky has strived to do just that in his internship this year at Congregation Kehillath Israel (KI) in Brookline, where he strengthened community and energized the learning experience for a daily Ma’ariv minyan composed of KI members and residents of a nearby senior housing complex. In each service, he not only presented compelling aspects of the weekly parasha, but also invited participants to introduce themselves and share how they connected to the theme of the discussion.

Rabbi Chaim Koritzinsky

“Chaim’s readiness to lend confessional, deeply personal insights to sources in the siddur and the Torah serves to pry open others to their journeys, advancing a setting that invites authenticity,” KI Rabbi William G. Hamilton observes. “He inspires deeper bonds with the texts of our people, for all (including myself) who are privileged to share in minyan with him.”

Koritzinsky will build on this work—as well as other community-building internships in Central and South America—as spiritual leader of Congregation Ruach Ami (spirit of my people) in Santiago. An offshoot of a Jewish Community Center congregation that closed last year, Ruach Ami consists of a small group of families seeking to develop a synagogue community rooted in tradition and open to innovation. Drawn to the core values championed at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, the budding congregation found in Koritzinsky a perfect match.

His charge is to build a vibrant, inclusive prayer community that reaches out to youth, singles and families currently unaffiliated or underserved by the organized Jewish community. “There is tremendous potential to reach out to hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of Jews who haven’t yet found their place in the Jewish community of Santiago,” says Koritzinsky. “Many have expressed a real hunger for something new—something grounded in the tradition that also touches the soul.”


Fellow student Judi Ehrlich enrolled in the Rabbinical School primed to engage in serious text study, learn about practical rabbinics and experience a diverse, transdenominational community. A South African native, counseling psychologist and matchmaker, who for 14 years directed New Possibilities, a dating service of the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Boston, Ehrlich sought a new career that, like Jewish matchmaking, centered on people’s essential values and Jewish identities. When a teaching opportunity to engage both elements arose during her fourth year as an HC rabbinical student in Israel, she seized upon it.

	Rabbi Judi Ehrlich

Over the course of four months Ehrlich trained a group from two congregations in Beersheva in the art of bikur holim—visiting the sick. She prepared a curriculum and co-led an experiential eight-session course aimed at sensitizing participants to illness and associated loss. “We did exercises to explore, for example, how a person who can come and go at will and make plans might meaningfully interact with someone who is immobilized and facing mortality,” Ehrlich recalls. “By the last two sessions, many participants had already volunteered to visit fellow congregants in their homes, local hospitals and senior living centers, and felt more confident to engage them and be good listeners.”

Ehrlich lauds the Rabbinical School for its focus on serious text study and the spiritual dimensions of Jewish prayer and learning, and for its transdenominational approach. “The diversity of the school was its greatest strength,” she says. “I learned to have a greater respect and appreciation for different affiliations and for the unaffiliated.”

Informed by both the program and four years of concurrent part-time chaplaincy work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Ehrlich joins Hebrew Senior Life as a chaplain and chaplaincy supervisor-in-training. She’ll serve residents and their families, provide informal Jewish education to non-Jewish caregivers and offer spiritual support to non-Jewish staff members who carry a significant burden in eldercare. “I see myself offering support just by being present and helping people to draw on their own strengths and their tradition to cope with the adversity they face,” she says. Ehrlich, who currently serves as the part-time rabbi for Temple Tifereth Israel in Winthrop, plans to continue as a part-time pulpit rabbi as well.

Many of the program’s other graduates have attracted strong interest from Jewish institutions across the United States. A case in point is Stephen Landau, who was pursued by four congregations from coast to coast, and accepted a position with Congregation Tikvoh Chadoshoh in Bloomington, Connecticut.

Landau, a former carpenter in New Mexico, spent many years studying Eastern meditative practices and mysticism before embarking on a Jewish learning trajectory. The more he learned about his own tradition—from sources ranging from a Reform bet midrash to a modern Orthodox minyan—the more he felt impelled to pass it on as a rabbi. And to train at Hebrew College.

Rabbi Stephen Landau

“I wanted an academically rigorous, full-time, traditional yet progressive learning environment with financial support, close proximity to a spiritual community and a serious component of Jewish mysticism,” he says. “There was only one place to go.”

Landau recalls highlights of text study at Hebrew College with delight. These include Jane Kanarek’s contribution of a feminist perspective to his class’s reading of Talmud, Judith Kates’s “brilliant” teaching of humash and a “powerful” first year of exposure to classic Jewish texts. “Our introduction to rabbinic text, led by Jonah Steinberg, taught us in a systematic and passionate way to crack these texts,” he says. “Ebn Leader was a never-ending font of knowledge and willingness to teach in myriad ways. And Art Green’s divrei Torah were jaw-dropping. I now feel very well-prepared in rabbinics and classical Jewish texts.”

Landau looks forward to applying both textual and practical knowledge gained in the past five years to realizing his dream of serving a congregation for the rest of his life where there is a mutual fit. As a rabbi, he aims “to mediate the tradition for congregants, helping them to learn it for themselves and make meaning out of the small, daily moments of life that may seem meaningless at times.” He is also drawn to helping people navigate lifecycle moments from the tragic to the celebratory.

For example, during Landau’s second-year internship at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, he helped a congregant prepare for his bar mitzvah, and his mother, a highly-educated rabbi’s daughter, who wanted to learn to chant Torah for the occasion. “In teaching her three or four psukim, something happened where she got on fire about learning Torah and commentary,” he recalls. “We studied together and it became significant to her life to the point where she’s still leyning and giving divrei Torah. In a moment of somebody’s lifecycle, we have the opportunity to help them make new meaning out of their lives.”

Five years ago, Rabbinical School Rector and founding Dean Art Green joined with former Hebrew College President David Gordis to create an institution that would make new meaning out of the word “rabbi.” Inspired by the success of community day school and adult education programs, he envisioned a rabbinic training program that would “bridge once-rigid denominational lines and find innovative ways to deliver Judaism’s message to an increasingly diverse Jewish community.” The transdenominational program he had in mind would combine rigorous Hebrew text study with a respect for students’ personal stance on faith, practice and how best to revitalize the Jewish future.

Today Green believes that the Rabbinical School’s first graduates and their fellow students have already begun to realize this two-pronged vision. “The School’s essential values—love of Torah (in the broadest sense), commitment to the entire Jewish people and the transformative power of approaching people with an open heart—have all been well communicated,” he says. “We have built an amazing community of over 50 full-time students and their teachers, a community that will serve as a model for those our graduates will help create, wherever they serve.”

Elizabeth Rahaim contributed reporting to this article.

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