Announcing the inaugural cohort of Fellows for CRI’s Fellowship for Rabbinic Innovation
Adapted from E Jewish Philanthropy, Oct 8, 2021
The Center for Rabbinic Innovation, has named six clergy to a new, mid-career fellowship in which they will seek to engage members of the Jewish community in new or expanded initiatives that don’t use a traditional synagogue membership model, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the group’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy.
The fellowship consists of a yearlong course of seminars combined with work on the clergy’s individual projects. Fellows will receive a $10,000 stipend, be eligible to apply for modest seed funding and be given guidance on how to seek external funding. Rabbis understand that membership rates in the institutions that employ them are declining, and they need to think differently in order to reach out, Epstein explained. “They want to serve people.”
Projects include Rabbi Susan Goldberg’s Nefesh, a spiritual community on Los Angeles’s Eastside, and Rabbi Dani Passow’s initiative that will seek to create Jewish community for young Harvard University alumni, with the goal of replicating the model for use by Hillels at other schools. Rabbi Miriam Cotzin Burg’s Hava NaBaby is a Jewish Childbirth Education for participants to travel the path of parenthood together and Rabbi Josh Lesser is launching Attune, offering Jewish contemplating and meditative opportunities. Rabbi Jen Gubitz’s Modern JewISH Couples encourages couples to explore how Judaism shows up within life’s essential questions and decisions and Rabbi Ezra Weinberg, seeks to offer on-ramps into Jewish life for those outside the typical normative family structure such as divorced families, single parents and recent Jews by choice.
The creation of the program was driven by demand from rabbis who had already been in the field for more than five years. The center offers a similar fellowship for clergy who are in the early years of their career.
Some 40 people applied for the fellowship, which is open to all denominations and was made possible in part by a challenge grant from an anonymous donor, Epstein said.