“Rabbis see themselves as teachers and preachers,” says Central Synagogue’s Rabbi Peter Rubinstein. “We’re often not prepared for these aspects of leadership and development.”
by Tamar Snyder Staff Writer
He answers to 1,600 bosses, manages a $7.5 million annual budget, presides over a staff of 12 senior-level professionals and facilitates a payroll of well over 100 employees. Yet Rabbi Jonathan Stein, the senior rabbi at Temple Shaaray Tefila on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, has yet to receive formal training in management. Until now.
“Of course I teach, of course I study,” he says, “But I spend a significant amount of time doing what amounts to management rather than rabbinics.” Rabbi Stein estimates that during the course of a week, close to two days are devoted to administering the work of the synagogue, including three-hour-long Tuesday staff meetings, as well as individual meetings with the two assistant rabbis, the cantor and the executive director
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on a weekly basis, and bi-weekly discussions with program directors, educators and youth directors.
“There’s a push and pull inside every rabbi,” says Rabbi Stein, whose undergraduate degree in economics from Wharton and training at Harvard’s Kennedy School make him a rare breed among rabbis. “How much do you want to be the CEO type? I don’t really want to be. But the contemporary synagogue demands it.” Rabbi Stein is one of 56 rabbis and executive directors who plan to participate this week in the inaugural five-day Kellogg Rabbinic Management Program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in suburban Chicago. The rabbis, with their combined 757 years of rabbinic experience, say they have much to gain from Kellogg, the top-rated business school known for its management expertise (it ranked third on Business Week’s recently released “Best U.S. B-Schools of 2008” list).
In addition to intensive training in traditional B-school areas like the principles of leadership and governance, organizational behavior and financial management, the invite-only group of Conservative, Reform and Orthodox rabbis and executive directors will benefit from advanced courses and innovative research in areas particularly suited to congregational rabbis, such as fundraising, conflict resolution and implementing change. Talks will focus on “best practices” for synagogue boards to understand their role, as well as learning better ways to evaluate a synagogue’s performance in meeting its congregation’s spiritual, programmatic and educational needs.
The Kellogg Rabbinic Management Program is the brainchild of Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, senior rabbi at the Orthodox Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida. At the invitation of synagogue member and mentor Dinah Jacobs, Rabbi Goldberg spent four weeks this past summer at Kellogg immersed in a rigorous executive education program open to executives from Fortune 500 companies. “It was a transformative experience,” says Rabbi Goldberg, the only rabbi or clergy member in attendance.
Imagine how effective and efficient the Jewish community could be if spiritual leaders were equipped with management skills, he thought. And so, he turned to Jacobs, a pioneer in the field of customer satisfaction and service quality who worked for several years at Citibank and regularly invites more than 100 students and faculty to Shabbat dinners with her husband, Donald Jacobs, dean emeritus at The Kellogg School of Management.
“Efrem asked me if Kellogg could help rabbis with a problem,” recalls Jacobs. “Rabbis come out of seminary having learned a lot of Gemara, but end up as leaders of significant not-for-profits and aren’t always equipped with the tools.” Jacobs loved the idea enough to come out of retirement and head The Kellogg Rabbinic Management Program (KRMP).
The initiative comes at a time when more rabbinical schools and rabbinical umbrella organizations are recognizing the need to prepare rabbis not only for their role as spiritual leaders, but also to effectively manage congregations, schools and Hillels with operating budgets that can extend well into the seven figures. In fact, the 2006 Wertheimer Study of Conservative Rabbis and Lay Leaders found that lay leaders want their rabbis “to do more as fundraisers and managers of people.” And this past September, the Jewish Education Service of North America hosted its first one-day National Conference on Continuing Rabbinic Education, in which a large portion of the program was devoted to addressing rabbis’ lack of skills in business leadership and congregational management.
The program at Kellogg, however, is the first ongoing, rigorous executive education program geared toward both rabbis and their executive directors. “When you’re in the field, you’re in a totally different place,” says Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly’s incoming executive vice president. “That’s the beauty of executive education. You take people who are active in the field and give them training, help them analyze what’s going on and support and coach them.”
At the Rabbinical Assembly, rabbis are referred to as CROs, or chief religious officers. “Jewish life is increasingly complex,” says Rabbi Schonfeld. “Synagogues, certainly in American society, seek to offer far more to their members and to the larger community than some of the straightforward, religious needs envisioned and fulfilled by our ancestors.” While many rabbis retain authority on religious matters, they often don’t have the power to hire or fire or directly determine their budget. The management skills gained at Kellogg, therefore, can help rabbis realize their visions and effectively manage the institutions and boards they are charged with leading. “Kellogg has gone to great lengths to create a program that that takes into account the unique culture of Jewish institutions,” Rabbi Schonfeld says.
“It’s an idea whose time has come,” says Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. Taking lessons from the corporate world doesn’t come without some resistance, though, he says. “For so long, congregations have been saying, ‘We’re not a business.’ So people are reluctant to say, ‘It is a business,’ though not in the typical sense.”
Some older congregational rabbis have difficulty embracing the more non-traditional responsibilities that have been thrust upon them, says Rabbi Peter Rubinstein of New York’s Central Synagogue (and No. 15 on Newsweek’s “Top 50 Influential Rabbis in America” 2008 list). “Rabbis enter the congregational world seeing themselves as teachers and preachers,” he says. “We’re often not prepared for these aspects of leadership and development. On some level, it’s perceived as outside the appropriate scope of rabbis. For example, rabbis shouldn’t get involved in the budget. Caring about dollars is below us.” In the real world, however, fundraising and financial management skills have become expected rabbinic duties, he says. For Rabbi Alan Silverstein of the Conservative Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell, N.J., the program offers him and his executive director the opportunity to “take time away from the fray and evaluate effective approaches toward financial planning, marketing, use of technology and personnel issues.” His congregation recently moved into a new, 65,000-square foot synagogue building twice the size of its previous one. Rabbi Silverstein is therefore focused on sharpening his strategic planning and managerial skills while also thinking about ways “to maximize this blessing of a new synagogue facility.” Still, Rabbi Silverstein says, rabbis must be careful not to overextend themselves and lose sight of their vision. “The rabbi is first and foremost the religious leader of the congregation who helps people connect to God and fulfills pastoral needs,” he says.
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