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Nov. 15th, 2016 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe New Rabbi by Stephen Fried
This book is everything I aspire to in my own personal writings about Jewish community- though it is in a completely counterintuitive shape.
It is ostensibly the behind-the-scenes saga of a messy Rabbi search committee at a large, wealthy Conservative Jewish synagogue in the Philadelphia suburbs. In practice, it's a powerful exploration of the force of ritual in Judaism and the different kinds of inspiration that Rabbis can provide to their congregations.
Fried grew up in a small Conservative shul in central Pennsylvania and drifted from his faith as an adult. His father's death pulled him back: Even though his father had no expectation that he would say Kaddish for him, Fried felt the need to do so, and so he found himself initiated into the secrets of the minyanaires, hopping all over Philadelphia in search of the elusive tenth man. When Fried learned that the Rabbi of his childhood shul, having moved to the aforementioned large Philadelphia shul, was retiring, he decided to cover the Rabbi search for a potential magazine article or book. In the process of conducting interviews, (and Fried does get a lot of fascinating insider detail about the ugly parts of the process) Fried finds himself drawn into participating in the community, and discovering for the first time the difference a Rabbi can make in someone's life, and the different kinds of difference different Rabbis can make.
The combination of the reportorial style and the personal journey is really, surprisingly compelling.
This book is everything I aspire to in my own personal writings about Jewish community- though it is in a completely counterintuitive shape.
It is ostensibly the behind-the-scenes saga of a messy Rabbi search committee at a large, wealthy Conservative Jewish synagogue in the Philadelphia suburbs. In practice, it's a powerful exploration of the force of ritual in Judaism and the different kinds of inspiration that Rabbis can provide to their congregations.
Fried grew up in a small Conservative shul in central Pennsylvania and drifted from his faith as an adult. His father's death pulled him back: Even though his father had no expectation that he would say Kaddish for him, Fried felt the need to do so, and so he found himself initiated into the secrets of the minyanaires, hopping all over Philadelphia in search of the elusive tenth man. When Fried learned that the Rabbi of his childhood shul, having moved to the aforementioned large Philadelphia shul, was retiring, he decided to cover the Rabbi search for a potential magazine article or book. In the process of conducting interviews, (and Fried does get a lot of fascinating insider detail about the ugly parts of the process) Fried finds himself drawn into participating in the community, and discovering for the first time the difference a Rabbi can make in someone's life, and the different kinds of difference different Rabbis can make.
The combination of the reportorial style and the personal journey is really, surprisingly compelling.