Rabbi-Hunting Season

"Congregations all want to hire the same rabbi," [Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg, of the Rabbinical Assembly] says with a chuckle. "They all want..." and he reaches across his desk to grab a page with "The Perfect Rabbi" printed across the top, "...someone who attends every meeting and is at his desk working until midnight, someone who is twenty-eight years old but has preached for thirty years, someone who has a burning desire to work with teenagers but spends all his time with senior citizens, basically someone who does

well and will stay with the congregation forever.

"We try to tell them, You're not looking for the best rabbi. You're looking for the best

, the best fit. And that's a hard thing for people to adjust to, the idea that the

rabbi may not be the best rabbi for them."

I ask him where the Har Zion rabbi search fits into the international placement picture. How would he handicap the upcoming season for Conservative rabbis?

"Har Zion is one of the great plums," he explains. "It's one of the top ten congregations in the country-if there is such a list. It has only had wonderful rabbis, it has only done wonderful things and it has made major contributions to Philadelphia, to the Seminary and to the country. Still, not everybody wants to be rabbi of a congregation of that size and that magnitude."

[.] The first step in the process, he explains, is that the congregation fills out a questionnaire evaluating itself and its needs. Har Zion's pulpit will not be open for another year, and rabbi-hunting season generally runs from January to April, with the new rabbi showing up in the summer and making the first big splash on the High Holidays in the early fall. This means that Har Zion really shouldn't even bother sending in its questionnaire for another year. But the overachievers have already finished their homework, and they want to know from Schoenberg how soon they can post their vacancy on the "Yellow Sheets," the placement list that is the bible of job-searching rabbis.

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