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In a sign of the anxious times, growing numbers of congregations opting for 'turn-around consultant.'
Washington, D.C. - In May 1984, the congregation at Kesher Israel, the capital's tony Georgetown Synagogue, suddenly found itself with a rabbinic opening when the congregation's longtime spiritual leader, Rabbi Philip Rabino witz, was found murdered in his home.
For the next few years, a combination of congregants and, for a short time, a rabbi who left for Hillel work, performed the congregation's teaching/preaching/ counseling activities until Rabbi Barry Freundel took over the pulpit in 1989.
He continued until October 2014, when Kesher Israel suddenly found itself with a rabbinic opening again when it fired Rabbi Freundel after he was arrested on multiple counts of voyeurism for spying on women as they disrobed for the mikvah.
This time, the congregation did not look immediately for a full-time rabbi to replace Rabbi Freundel. Instead, after a half-year search, the congregation announced recently that Rabbi Avidan Milevsky, a psychotherapist and associate professor of psychology at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, will serve as interim rabbi until a foil-time replacement, who will begin working next summer, is hired.
In deciding to engage an interim rabbi, the Modern Orthodox synagogue is joining a trend outside the denomination; in recent years a growing number of non-Orthodox synagogues have seen the advantage of putting a "turn-around" or "transitional" spiritual leader in place after a congregation faces an empty pulpit because of death, retirement, or, in the case of Kesher Israel, scandal.
"We've had the same rabbi for 25 years; we couldn't just jump into a process without knowing and understanding how our community has changed over that time," said the synagogue's president, Elanit Rothschild Jakabovics. "Jumping into a permanent search would not have been the right thing to do."
Rabbi Milevsky, who studied at yeshivot in Israel, Chicago and Miami, began working at Kesher Israel in August, giving High Holiday sermons, teaching classes and doing counseling.
In the Reform movement, which utilizes most of the interim rabbis in this country, 16 men and women are serving in those positions this year, said Rabbi Alan Henkin, director of rabbinic placement at the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
"A synagogue's work with a trained interim rabbi allows...