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Title: The New Rabbi : A Congregation Searches for Its Leader by Stephen Fried ISBN: 0-553-80103-1 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 13 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (18 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Heartwarming and Horrifying
Comment: THE NEW RABBI gives us an inside look at the rabbinical search process at a notable North American shul. Though the congregation in question is Conservative, the search process described closely parallels the process of my own Reform movement. The emotions, personalities and politics described certainly reflect universal aspects of synagogue life.
The book is also in part a meditation on being a rabbi in the North Ameican milieu. His examination of the career of the out-going rabbi, Gerald Wolpe, is both frank and compelling. But while the author spends a great deal of time reflecting on the life of R. Wolpe and on his assistant and potential in-house successor, Jacob Harber, he really concentrates on the congregation's perspective in the search. As a result, we do not get a real sense of what the search process feels like to the applicant rabbis. Harber is, in a sense, drafted by the congregation, so his experience is less than paradigmatic. Perhaps, as a rabbi, I over-identify with that aspect. Still, I wish he had spent some time interviewing the rabbinical candidates for Har Zion to include their POV.
Even so, this is a first-rate bit of investigative journalism on a little-know and sensitive aspect of Jewish communal life. While the author writes sympathetically about everyone involves, this work is revealing enough to make me wonder whether he will be welcome back at Har Zion any time soon.
The issues that come up in THE NEW RABBI will, at times, seem arcane to someone totally unfamiliar with synaogues. Nevertheless it is well-done and most readable. Most people involved in organized religion of any sort will get something out of it, and it certainly it should be required reading for rabbis and search committees in shuls everywhere.
Rating: 5
Summary: This Book Reads as Smoothly as a Well-Written Novel
Comment: In this book Steven Fried used his investigative journalistic skill in reporting on the life and world of American Jews. He follows a distinguished rabbi as he finishes his thirty year career in a prominent Jewish congregation in Philadelphia. The account reads as smoothly as a well written novel. Anyone familiar with a church or synagogue will experience a feeling of kinship with the rabbis and their families as the story unfolds. The skillfully drawn portraits of other actors in the drama remind the reader of people familiar in their lives. No one who has served on a pulpit nominating committee or been the object of the committee's investigation can fail to enjoy Temple Har Zion's search for Rabbi Wolpe's successor. The rabbi's devotion to his invalid wife and her determined will to fill her place in life no matter what her physical limitation win the reader's admiration.
Both Jews and non Jews will find this an interesting and informative book.
Rating: 1
Summary: Well-written, but violates candidates' privacy and dignity
Comment: I agree with all the other readers who have posted comments here that the book is well-written and very engrossing.
But no one else seems to be bothered by the fact that Mr. Fried commits the unconscionable and inexcusable sin of using the real names of the unsuccessful rabbinic candidates. They had every reason to expect that their interviews would be confidential. The Acknowledgments section makes it clear that not all the candidates gave permission for their names to used, or that Mr. Fried even thought it necessary to ask them.
A footnote tells us that the name of a millionaire trouble-maker has been changed. But what does it tell us about the author that he felt no such need to conceal the names of rabbis who have now been embarrassed in print and in public?
The book would have lost none of its force if those names had been changed. Shame on the author!
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Title: Three Daughters by Letty Cottin Pogrebin ISBN: 0142003484 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 30 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Rebbe's Army : Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch by Sue Fishkoff ISBN: 0805241892 Publisher: Schocken Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Case for Israel by Alan Dershowitz ISBN: 047146502X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Revenge: A Story of Hope by Laura Blumenfeld ISBN: 0743463390 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 02 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Jane Austen in Boca: A Novel by Paula Marantz Cohen ISBN: 0312319754 Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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