Rabbinic Search Committee Committee Members & Updates |  Notes from the Chronicle
Welcome
Congregation Begins Plans to Welcome Rabbi Gil Steinlauf   After a year-long rabbinic search with the involvement of hundreds of congregational members, the Adas Israel Board of Directors approved the recommendation to select Rabbi Gil Steinlauf as our new senior rabbi, effective August 1, 2008. Rabbi Steinlauf is currently serving Temple Israel and Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and previously served as assistant rabbi at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio. We look forward to welcoming Rabbi Steinlauf, his wife Rabbi Batya Steinlauf, and their three children, Elana, Noah, and Meirav. The Rabbinic Transition Committee is planning a series of congregational programs to welcome the Steinlauf family, culminating with a Week of Welcome in mid-September. Welcoming Rabbi Steinlauf Full Bio From Robert Peck, Search Committee Chair & Ed Kopf, President In Appreciation to our Rabbinic Search Committee: Robert Peck, chair; Alan Bubes, Jamie Butler, Eric Fox, Joseph Herson, Michael Leifman, Judie Linowes, Jennifer Mendelson, Jonathan Meyer, Margie Siegel, Michael Sloan, Dale Sorcher. Ex-officio: Russell Smith, Ed Kopf, Staff Liaison: Glenn Easton
Share your thoughts with the committee, email search@adasisrael.org.
Search Committee Members & Updates
Robert Peck, chair Alan Bubes Jamie Butler	Eric Fox Joseph Herson Michael Leifman	Judie Linowes Jennifer Mendelson Jonathan Meyer	Margie Siegel Michael Sloan Dale Sorcher

Updates from the Committee

2008 January 2008 2007 December 2007 November 2007 September 2007

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Notes from the Chronicle

January 2008 | December 2007 | November 2007 | September 2007

January 2008 (excerpted from the Chronicle)

As I write this in early December, the congregation has received eight resumes for our senior rabbi position, to begin after the retirement of Rabbi Wohlberg on June 30. This is about the number we were advised to expect. We have interviewed four of the applicants and have invited two to return for a weekend so we and other members of Adas Israel can meet them in varied formal and informal settings. We may invite one more, but more about the visits below. My colleagues on the committee and I are excited about the rabbis with whom we’ve met. We have walked out of each lengthy interview energized by what we’ve heard. All of the candidates bring a passion for fostering community and collaboration, and most have experience with multiple styles of services under one synagogue roof and regard our diverse practices and membership as positive elements of a vibrant modern Conservative synagogue. We have learned from them about different practices and programs we might use to bring diverse minyanim together and to engage congregants, potential congregants, and youth more enthusiastically in Jewish life and the life of the synagogue. They have told us something else that we perhaps knew but had overlooked: Adas Israel is rich in resources and has a reputation and potential to be envied. The Gan HaYeled Nursery School; our lectures and expanding youth activities; our urban location, unusual in Conservative Judaism; our staff across the board—all have drawn their raves. As it has been for so long, ours continues to be a premier and desired Conservative rabbinical post. That is not to say that we do not have to put our best foot forward to attract the best candidates: there is competition for these up-and-coming Conservative rabbis.  <Notes from the Chronicle> <back to top>		Our first candidate to visit for a weekend visit, Rabbi Neil Zuckerman, currently one of the rabbis at a large congregation in White Plains, NY, will be at Adas Israel the weekend of January 4–6 with his wife, Rabbi Rachel Aranoff. There are several opportunities for you to see Rabbi Zuckerman in a variety of settings. (See candidate visist section for schedule) Our second visiting candidate, Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, currently one of the rabbis at a large congregation in Chicago, will be with us for the weekend of February 1–3, 2008 along with his wife, Deborah Cosgrove. (See candidate visits section for schedule). Please join us for one or more of these opportunities to meet our visiting rabbinical candidates. This is a very important moment in the long history of Adas Israel. Your feedback, now or after the visits, will be most welcome through our special email box (search@adasisrael.org) or by phone. If additional candidates are invited for a weekend, we will send a notice to the entire congregation. We hope to make a recommendation to the Board of Directors in February. As one of the candidates said, this process is like making a shidduch—arranging a romance, finding the right match for Adas Israel, and choosing the rabbi who will most like making his or her home at Adas Israel. We feel like we’re on the right track; come and see for yourself. --Robert A. Peck
December 2007 (excerpted from the Chronicle)
By the time this issue of the Chronicle is in your hands, our Search Committee will have met with three of the six candidates who have applied to date. We anticipate receiving a few more candidates before the end of November. Each of our three candidates has spent a full day at Adas Israel and seen our synagogue and schools in operation. They have all had lunch with our senior clergy and staff and have met our other staff members during a dessert reception. Each candidate participated in our daily minyan, received a tour of the neighborhood, and had a two- to three-hour conversation with the Search Committee over dinner. The committee will invite the top candidates back to the congregation for a full weekend in which all members are invited to participate. The candidates and their families will join us for Shabbat dinner, participate in Shabbat services, teach in our religious school, lead an adult education class, meet with our Trustees, past presidents, and Board members, and have an extensive interview with our committee.  <Notes from the Chronicle> <back to top>		Ed Kopf, synagogue president, and executive director Glenn Easton, spent a full day at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York with the heads of the Rabbinical Assembly Joint Placement Commission, where they met the other large congregations searching for a senior rabbi. They also met with a consultant who is available as a resource to our committee and congregation during our transition process and participated in an afternoon discussion about the “dos and don’ts” in a rabbinic search. The rabbinic search process is still on schedule to have a recommendation ready by March. As always, we welcome your thoughts, questions, and feedback through our dedicated e-mail address (search@adasisrael.org) or via phone message at the synagogue office, 202-362-4433. My continuing thanks to the members of the Search Committee for their diligent work and to Glenn Easton and his staff who make the logistics of the visits seem simple. —Robert Peck
November 2007 update (excerpted from the Chronicle)
The High Holy Days this year were a time of reflection for the Rabbinic Search Committee, as they were for the Adas Israel community as a whole. We were all aware that, ba-shanah ha-ba’ah, next year, Rabbi Wohlberg will no longer be our senior rabbi, and we will, if all goes well, have anew rabbi. This is an important transition for Adas Israel, and the Search Committee has been meeting throughout the summer to prepare for the selection process ahead. As we reported last month, based on the Transition Committee’s findings, we discussed and agreed on the general characteristics we are looking for in a candidate. We have spent a good deal of time sifting through and agreeing on the kinds of questions we want to ask and the kind of interview we want to conduct. We have agreed that we want to let the candidates express their vision, not just have them answer narrow questions, and we intend to leave time for the candidates to ask questions of us, too. We met with Rabbi Wohlberg to learn more about what the job entails and what we can all do to welcome a new rabbi and help him or her get off to a strong start. We were told that we would probably not receive applications until after the end of Sukkot, given how busy rabbis are until then. We are happy to report that, nonetheless, we have already received five applications from a mix of senior and assistant rabbis. They appear to be very strong candidates; in fact, a few have been described to us as among the strongest available. We expect to receive at least a few more this month. We are reviewing the applications, discreetly inquiring about the applicants, and reading their writings. The Internet age makes that last task very easy, almost too easy: a number of rabbis post their weekly sermons and divrei Torah on their synagogues’ websites, so there is a lot to read. We will invite strong candidates to make a first visit to the synagogue on a weekday. They will visit Gan HaYeled and the Religious School, lunch with the senior synagogue staff, have a meet-and-greet with the other staff, meet with Rabbi Wohlberg, daven mincha/ma’ariv, and have dinner and an interview with the entire Search Committee, at the beginning of which they will give a brief d’var Torah. We will not announce these first visits or the identities of the visitors in advance. This conforms to common practice and helps to preserve confidentiality for the candidates. These visits will begin in October.		Later, the committee will ask two to four finalists and their families, if they have ones, to return for a weekend, and each of those visits will be a very public event. We have not settled on the schedule yet, but it will definitely include the candidate giving sermons, being guest at a large dinner and a brunch, and teaching a class to our youth. Following the visits, the Search Committee—with input from you, past presidents, and trustees—will recommend a final candidate to the Board of Directors for its approval. We are keeping in mind that, to select a wonderful new rabbi, we have to convince candidates that we are a wonderful community to join, something that should not be hard to do, given all that Adas Israel and its members are and do and given our long history as a major center of Judaism in the nation’s capital. Yet one other very large, prestigious Conservative congregation is searching for a new senior rabbi, as are a number of small and mid-size congregations. So we will be in “sell” as well as “select” mode when we talk to candidates. Rabbi Feinberg has been a wonderful addition to our congregational family, and a number of members have asked if he will be considered for the senior rabbi position. He has indicated that he will not apply to become senior rabbi. This is consistent with the intent when he was hired last year as interim rabbi. After the new senior rabbi has settled in, there will be a reevaluation of Rabbi Feinberg’s position and status in the congregation. In any case, Rabbi Feinberg’s current contact provides for his services as interim rabbi through 2009, with an option to extend one additional year should both he and Adas Israel wish to do so. This year will be a year of reflection for our congregation as we find a new spiritual leader to assimilate into Adas Israel and guide us through inevitable change at the same time. The Search Committee members recognize that this is a solemn task and, at the same time, a very uplifting one: we have been very encouraged by the interest so many congregants have expressed in our work. —The Search Committee
<Notes from the Chronicle> <back to top> September 2007 update (excerpted from the Chronicle)
In preparation for what promises to be a busy time beginning in the fall, the Rabbinic Search Committee has begun meeting. At our first meeting, following a d’var Torah by Rabbi Wohlberg, we went over some rules of the road—the rules of the Joint Commission on Rabbinic Placement, an arm of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. The Joint Commission certifies candidates to us—they must be in the final year of a contract and have certain experience for their applications to be forwarded. A number of committee members had lunch with Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg, director of the Placement Commission, who was able to share a number of best practices gleaned from working with dozens of Conservative synagogues on rabbinic searches. One bit of advice was to communicate along the way with synagogue clergy and staff, with the candidates, and with the congregation’s membership. Hence this message to you. We will keep you posted via the Chronicle, e-mail, our website, and, perhaps, shofar blasts for the ultimate selection. At our first meeting, we heard a detailed report from the Transition Committee on the results of its exceptionally fine membership survey. Reported in a previous Chronicle issue, the survey formed the basis for much of the formal application we filed with the Joint Placement Commission. The application describes Adas Israel today and our most important priorities for the future. The application is meant not only to inform but also to entice applicants to our congregation, which we are told currently may be one of the foremost opportunities in the country for a Conservative congregational rabbi.   <Notes from the Chronicle> <back to top>		The survey was also the basis for our deliberation at a subsequent meeting on the traits we are looking for in the candidates we will review. There seems to be a congregation-wide consensus on the most important traits and, guided by this consensus, we translated the traits into criteria by which we can begin to judge applicants. We have begun to discuss the questions and framework we will use to promote productive conversations with the rabbis we invite to speak with us. While it will depend on how many applications we get that seem worth pursuing, it is our intention to invite as many as 10 applicants to meet with the committee and staff on a weekday, and then to have three or four visit for Shabbat, to participate in our services and meet our members. Applications do not usually come in until after rabbis have gotten through the High Holy Days and Sukkot—although we have already received two. We hope to have rabbis visiting for Shabbat before the end of the year and to recommend our choice to the Board of Directors in early spring. We will not divulge the names of applicants except for those who visit during Shabbat, but if you have questions about any other aspect of this process, please do not hesitate to e-mail search@adasisrael.org. I or another member of the committee will answer you by phone or e-mail. I am honored to chair this committee and delighted to serve with members who represent the diversity of our community and who are smart, committed, and fair-minded. Adas Israel has had only 11 senior rabbis since its founding in 1889, and we are aware that, while a congregation is and has to be much more than its clergy, our choice will help guide and define us for many years to come. —Robert Peck
Last updated June 11, 2008

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