Hiring a new half-time Assistant Rabbi for our community

We are excited to announce that a search committee is now being formed to recruit, interview and select a candidate to fill a new halftime Assistant Rabbi position, intended to start July 2020. As Kehilla has continued to grow, so have our needs for clergy. We have decided to hire a new rabbi to meet those growing needs and relieve the load that Rabbi Dev and Hazzan Shulamit have been carrying.

Our new rabbi will join our spiritual leader team and depending on their specific skills, their duties will likely include: (1) leading Bar/Bat Mitzvah services for our growing Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program; (2) joining with other clergy members in pastoral care work; (3) working with clergy on organizational systems that engage members to find their place in Kehilla; (4) working on administrative systems for clergy planning, scheduling and serving congregational needs; (5) supporting the growing number of young adults and families with young children in Kehilla’s membership; and (6) working on our conversion and adult B’nei Mitzvah processes.

We are thrilled to have the experience and insights of a group of diverse Search Committee members: Karen Cohn, Howard Hamburger, Ruby Cymrot-Wu, Bracha Stone, Mark Schlosberg, Ruth Minka and one or two others still to be confirmed. This team includes those who’ve participated as lay Spiritual Leaders and as Spiritual Life Practices Committee members, served congregant Chesed and Chevra Kadisha needs, furthered Kehilla’s culture of radical inclusion or are younger members, raised children in our religious school and/or Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program, as well as a balance of longer-term and newer members.

An in-depth job announcement will be posted to a variety of Jewish communal and educational institutions nationwide in January, including the Jews Of Color Field Building Initiative and the Jewish Women of Color Resilience Circle. Also in January, Search Committee members will meet to be oriented and begin creating the rubric for the interview process.

Once applications have been screened, we will conduct interviews during February and March. A small number of finalists may be invited to lead a Shabbat service. The Search Committee will then conduct follow-up interviews to finalize their hiring recommendation to staff. Assuming that sufficient candidates apply for the job and that the job offer is accepted, we expect the hiring process to be completed during April 2020.

We are looking forward to introducing this new hire to all of you!

Submitted by Karen Cohn, Board of Trustees Co-chair, Assistant Rabbi Search Committee Chair For January 2020 Kol Kehilla issue