Kolot’s Rabbinic Transition

Rabbi Search Updates

Update as of November 2024/Cheshvan 5785

The Rabbinic Search and Community Engagement Teams have been hard at work gathering and analyzing responses to the recent congregation-wide Survey and developing a process for vetting rabbi candidates. We were pleased to have had 256 individuals respond to the Survey, including more than 100 people who gave us narrative responses to open-ended questions. We are planning to present the Survey results to the entire congregation on January 11, 2025 and we will solicit questions and suggestions from attendees to help shape an evaluation tool that we can all use to assess the best fit once we meet the finalist candidates at Shabbatons (weekend Shabbat events) in the Spring. Please hold the tentative dates - March 22 and April 5!

In addition, the Membership Engagement Committee and the Israel/Palestine Task Force have asked that we discuss the survey results with them before the end of the year and we expect to schedule those discussions. If you're part of a group of members that would like to schedule such a discussion between now and the end of 2024, please contact RabbiSearch@KolotChayeinu.org.

The deadline for submission of rabbi candidate applications is January 1, 2025. We have worked with anti-racism, anti-bias consultants to ensure we’re living our Kolot values as we develop our candidate screening process, including tools to screen applicants to be sure they satisfy the basic requirements of the job description. As we meet with members of the congregation in December, January, and beyond to discuss community input, we will conduct interviews with qualifying candidates after January 1st with an eye to choosing a few of them to lead Shabbat services (Shabbatons) in the spring. Watch the Weekly for further information. And in the meantime, please use the job description and the congregational profile to help spread the word to potential rabbi candidates!

Update as of September 2024/Elul 5784

1. Thanks to the contributions of 200+ Kolotniks, we have a position announcement and a congregational profile! 

2. All hands are needed for recruitment! Please find sample recruitment language and our visuals for Kolotniks to invite applications by email and social media here. Let us know how it’s going or if you have questions, complaints, or concerns here (we’ll check this weekly) — and stay tuned for some Kolot-wide conversations after the High Holy Days.

Update as of August 2024/Av 5784

1. We are blessed by the continuing leadership of Cantor Lisa B. Segal, a founding member of Kolot and our lead clergy member; we are also so blessed that our full clergy team for 5784 includes: Rabbi Abby Stein, Student Rabbi Hadar Ahuvia, and Student Rabbi Madeleine Fortney. Working alongside and in support of them all is Kolot’s Rabbi Emerita Ellen Lippmann.  

2. From mid-May through mid-July / Nissan/Iyar through Sivan/Tamuz, the Community Engagement Team developed, received training for, and supported a community engagement plan that included listening sessions, which reached over 100 participants, and a survey that engaged more than 250 individuals. This “all hands” endeavor succeeded thanks to the generous efforts of the hosts, facilitators, participants, members of the Rabbi Candidate Search Team, clergy, and Board. At the Annual Meeting, members of the Community Engagement Team presented a very preliminary summary of the listening session feedback. You can review that presentation here. If you are interested in reviewing a complete summary of the survey data let us know in this form. Please use the same form to request access to the survey data and to let us know if you are interested in being part of the ongoing “deep dive” analysis of both the listening session and the survey data to inform our understanding of who we are as a congregation and how to plan for our needs and for the new rabbi in the year(s) ahead. 

3. Using the data and the preliminary findings from both the survey and the listening sessions, as well as comprehensive reading and interview research about the rabbinic hiring landscape, the Rabbi Candidate Search Team is developing the recruitment and discernment process and documents, including the congregational profile (with thanks for the starting draft created by Ellen Lubell and Trisha Arlin) and the position announcement.

Please look for those documents as well as sample recruitment language to join in the announcement in mid-August.

All hands — and also funds — are needed! To support the work of finding a new rabbi, please click here. 

All ideas are needed, too! Send us yours at RabbiSearch@KolotChayeinu.org.

Update as of June 2024/Sivan 5784

At Kolot’s Annual Meeting on June 9, 2024/3 Sivan 5784, members of both rabbinic search teams presented the process as of that date. The slide presentation about the Listening Sessions and search process plans can be found here.