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Picking a new rabbi? A new novel about a church shows how
(JTA) — About a decade ago, I served on my synagogue’s rabbinic search committee. Normally I am allergic to any activity at which minutes will be taken, but it was a great experience, thanks to the care and intelligence that my fellow committee members brought to the process. Flush with satisfaction for a job well done and probably a little full of ourselves, we even imagined other synagogues might learn from our example. We spoke about putting together a seminar, or perhaps a how-to book.
No one, I recall, suggested turning the experience into a novel.
That’s why I’m not Michelle Huneven, who this year published a novel about a church’s search for a new minister. I’ve been recommending it to anyone who wants to understand shul politics, or wants reassurance that Jews are just like everybody else, no more and no less.
“Search” is narrated by Dana, a 50-something restaurant critic, former seminarian and once-active congregant at a Unitarian Universalist church in Arroyo, California, who is recruited to the search committee when the current pastor announces plans to retire. The book tracks the search process from in-house focus groups to Skype interviews with applicants to the finalists’ “candidating week” — what you and I might call “auditions.”
Despite an unlikely premise for a mainstream novel, ”Search” is a smart, funny and enlightening book about contemporary religion, especially of the liberal, undogmatic variety that is typical of Unitarian Universalism and, well, much of non-Orthodox Judaism. It’s a worthy companion to “The New Rabbi,” Stephen Fried’s 2002 nonfiction book about a Philadelphia-area synagogue and its own search.
Huneven captures the impossible nature of a clergy person’s job, and especially the unrealistic expectation of congregations that want their spiritual leader to be all things to all people. Trying to narrow down what they are looking for, members of the search committee call out qualifications:
“‘Sermons with more spiritual depth and intellectual content,’ said Charlotte.
“‘Someone with an efficient, organized management style,’ said Belinda.”
Wonders Dana: “Who didn’t want a warm presence with a progressive social conscience, the management skills of a corporate CEO, and the work-life boundaries of a New Age life coach?”
As the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly warns in its manual for search committees, searches founder “not because of a dearth of qualified candidates but because the congregation’s expectations of rabbinic candidates is unrealistic.”
Regular synagogue-goers will recognize the tensions in the novel between the older members and the newcomers, between boomers and millennials, between theists and humanists. At one point, the assistant minister remembers when a midweek service led by a student intern began attracting a core of people who weren’t showing up on Sundays.
“You can’t have two congregations, no matter how small one is,” she explains. “It sets up a potential schism.”
Clergy searches are fraught because nearly every congregant regards themself as the rabbi’s boss. On the flip side, members grow attached to longtime rabbis, even when they outlast their changing congregations. In “Search,” the senior minister has been with the church for eight years, but remains under the shadow of his beloved predecessor, who had served for 28 years. (I was married by the “new rabbi” at my wife’s family’s synagogue, who at that point had been on the job for about 20 years.)
“Search” isn’t a satire, exactly, but Huneven has fun with the political and social winds that are blowing through liberal denominations. Some of the congregants are set on hiring a woman after almost four decades of male leadership. “But we can’t say that explicitly,” Dana warns. Another character is angling to be the head of the national church association, “though it’s not such a clear shot for straight white guys these days,” says a church consultant.
Unitarian Universalist, or UU, churches are also staunchly secular, which means the clergy don’t have to express a belief in God, let alone Jesus or a strict theology. That brings with it the paradox of choice: “Our ministers can be gay, trans, Buddhist, atheist, any race, or same-sex adoptive parents with mixed-race families. You name it,” says a member of the committee. “That’s the future. Everybody’s in.”
I would guess that a lot of liberal synagogues would love to be as open and diverse as that, but bump up against the reality that, despite a growing number of Jews by choice and Jews of color, synagogues tend to be white, upper-middle-class and heteronormative. As for theology, rare is the synagogue that doesn’t want its rabbi to “have been inspired to serve God,” as the R.A. handbook puts it; on the other hand, search committees disagree about how much theology and “God talk” they want from the bima.
And yet, even the most secular UU church or most liberal synagogue pursues the sacred in the ways they gather, worship, mourn and serve the community. As the squabbles intensify in “Search,” one older member of the committee laments that they’ve lost sight of their goal: how the search for a new clergyperson is a “a sacred task that will grow us spiritually.”
During my time on the search committee, I saw the sausage-making of synagogue life. Compromise is always hard. Even the most thorough, transparent search process is bound to disappoint someone.
And “Search” the novel can be, at times, as tedious as a real-life rabbinic search, as characters deliberate over candidates at painstaking length. But Huneven understands that holiness is not just a matter of reading from a prayer book or studying from a text, but lives in the way people create communities and choose their leaders. It’s a messy process, but if you do it in good faith and in a spirit of humility, you might end up with a pretty great rabbi.
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Two Men Spit, Say ‘Free Palestine’ as They Attempt to Gain Access to Jewish Center in Dallas
Two young men who attempted to gain entry to a Jewish life center in Dallas by claiming to be window cleaners. Photo: Screenshot
Jewish community leaders on Monday denounced an antisemitic incident in which two men trespassed the grounds of the Olami Dallas Center in Texas and demanded entry to the home of its rabbi by claiming to be window cleaners.
According to StandWithUs, the perpetrators rang the doorbell of Rabbi Yaakov Rubin, who refused to let them, in response to which one of the men spat on the property as the other said “Free Palestine.” StandWithUs added that they also said “fake Jews” during their attempt to gain access to the building.
However, after realizing they were caught on camera, one of the perpetrators then yelled: “I love the Jews.”
StandWithUs shared video footage of the incident.
“There’s much brazenness required to walk up to a house, in an attempt to intimidate a Jewish Life center, and its host family, ring the doorbell, and say, ‘Free Palestine,’” Rubin said in a statement included in a press release StandWithUs issued following the incident. “This requires us to be that much bolder and proud of our Jewishness and Israel, through open pride, a strong sense of identity and nurturing our mission from G-d. We don’t run, won’t hide, we will be a light to the world.”
The incident at the Olami center comes amid a period of anti-Jewish violence in the US that is unprecedented in the country’s history. Since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jews have been murdered on the streets of Washington D.C., firebombed in Colorado with Molotov cocktails, and gang assaulted. In a recent incident just last month, a young man apparently radicalized by the far right set the Beth Israel Congregation on fire over its “Jewish ties,” a catastrophic event which has shut down the Jewish house of worship for the foreseeable future. Another arsonist struck the San Francisco Hillel building in December.
In Monday’s press release, Jordan Cope, director for policy and education at StandWithUs, said this latest incident is a reminder of the degree to which antisemitism is coupled with anti-Zionism.
“The youth’s mention of ‘fake Jews’ before his subsequent ‘free Palestine’ assertion followed by his ‘I love the Jews’ comments, is a clear reminder of how bigots all too often disingenuously disguise their antisemitism as a matter of Middle Eastern politics,” Cope said. “Efforts to intimidate the Jewish people into abandoning their pride of their indigenous homeless ultimately seek to intimidate Jews into silence and submission at a time where antisemitism continues to run rife throughout the West.”
He added, “Antisemitism is an age-old hatred. Anti-Israel sentiment is its newest spear.”
For several consecutive years, antisemitism in the US has surged to break “all previous annual records,” according to a series of reports issued by the ADL since it began recording data on antisemitic incidents.
The FBI disclosed similar numbers, showing that even as hate crimes across the US decreased overall, those perpetrated against Jews increased by 5.8 percent in 2024 to 1,938, the largest total recorded in over 30 years of the FBI’s counting them. Jewish American groups have noted that this rise in antisemitic hate crimes, which included 178 assaults, is being experienced by a demographic group which constitutes just 2 percent of the US population.
The wave of hatred has changed how American Jews perceive their status in America.
According to the results of a new survey commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Federations of North America, a majority of American Jews now consider antisemitism to be a normal and endemic aspect of life in the US.
A striking 57 percent reported believing “that antisemitism is now a normal Jewish experience,” the organizations disclosed, while 55 percent said they have personally witnessed or been subjected to antisemitic hatred, including physical assaults, threats, and harassment, in the past year.
The survey results revealed other disturbing trends: Jewish victims are internalizing their experiences, as 74 percent did not report what happened to them to “any institution or organization”; Jewish youth are bearing the brunt of antisemitism, having faced communications which aim to exclude Jews or delegitimize their concerns about rising hate; roughly a third of survey respondents show symptoms of anxiety; and the cultural climate has fostered a sense in the Jewish community that the non-Jewish community would not act as a moral guardrail against violence and threats.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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In JFNA’s first ‘State of the Jewish Union’ address, security and antisemitism loom large
(JTA) — Speaking from Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, Eric Fingerhut, laid out his assessment of the state of Jewish life in America.
“The state of the Jewish union in America is strong, but it is being tested,” said Fingerhut. “We are united in our commitment to America and to Jewish life, even as we worry about the real threats of violence and the growing acceptance of antisemitic rhetoric.”
During his remarks, which was billed as JFNA’s inaugural “State of the Jewish Union” address ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address next week, Fingerhut issued six recommendations to Congress which centered on increasing security for Jewish communities.
They included providing federal support for security personnel, expanding FBI capabilities to counter domestic terrorism, increasing support for local and state law enforcement, prosecuting hate crimes aggressively and holding social media companies accountable for amplifying antisemitic rhetoric.
“Jewish children and teens are facing growing risks online, including antisemitic harassment, bullying and extremist content,” said Fingerhut. “We recognize the difficulty of legislating in this field, but states are moving forward, and it’s time for Congress to move forward as well.”
Fingerhut also called on Congress to increase funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion annually, and “make the program more flexible and simpler to use.” (This year, the program is requiring recipients to support federal immigration enforcement and avoid programs advancing diversity, raising concern among many Jewish groups, including JFNA.)
At the beginning of his address, Fingerhut also emphasized the ties between the American Jewish community and Israel, which have come under scrutiny since JFNA published a survey earlier this month which found that only one-third of American Jews say they identify as Zionist.
“The focus of today’s talk will be about the state of Jews in America, but it is not possible to have that conversation without acknowledging and addressing the emotional, familial and religious connection between the American Jewish community and the people of Israel,” said Fingerhut.
Fingerhut’s remarks come shortly after Bret Stephens, the right-leaning Jewish New York Times columnist, argued during his 92NY’s annual “The State of World Jewry” speech that groups devoted to combating antisemitism, including the Anti-Defamation League, should abandon their strategy and instead focus on bolstering Jewish education and communal infrastructure.
During Fingerhut’s address, which largely centered on the security burdens placed on Jewish communities and concern for changes to social services funding, he also pivoted to a broader vision of Jewish life beyond the need for protection alone.
“It is important for the Congress to know that Jewish life is not only what we are protecting, but what we are building,” said Fingerhut. “It is Jewish education and Jewish experiences, but it is also human services, dignity and belonging.”
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Trump and Biden officials clash over campus antisemitism actions as federal investigation kicks off
The first hearing held as part of a federal investigation into how the Trump administration has sought to counter campus antisemitism turned into a showdown between Democratic and Republican officials over how civil rights laws are being enforced.
Craig Trainor, who ran civil rights investigations at the Education Department for most of last year, described his predecessors in the Biden administration as unable to stop what he called “coordinated harassment and violence against Jewish students” and said its approach had been “equivocal, craven and pathetic.”
Matt Nosanchuk, who worked in same department under former President Joe Biden, defended his team’s work and said the White House under Trump is no longer concerned with helping Jewish students: “In the name of combating antisemitism, the current administration has built a Trojan horse to unleash a frontal, ideological attack on higher education.”
And Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman from New York and current member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is conducting the federal probe, accused the Trump officials who testified of violating federal law by refusing to turn over documents the commission requested as part of its inquiry. “You have a statutory obligation to comply,” Jones said.
The all-day hearing, which also included dueling analyses of civil rights law from academics and testimony from Jewish college students, is part of the first independent federal investigation into how the government has responded to allegations of antisemitism on college campuses. The bipartisan commission, whose members are appointed by Congress and the president, currently has a narrow Democratic majority and chair.
“When we started this project I thought there was no chance this could be anything other than bipartisan and free from sniping and partisanship about who did a better job,” J. Christian Adams, a Republican member of the commission, said at one point. “Alas, like everything else around here, that dream has died.”
The civil rights commission said it expects to release its findings and potential recommendations in the fall, although by that point it may be deadlocked between Democratic and Republican appointees and unable to reach agreement. Trump has unsuccessfully sought to remove its Democratic chair, Rochelle Garza.
Dueling views of federal actions
Several of the witnesses at the hearing focused on the Trump administration’s diminishment of the federal government’s capacity to investigate claims of antisemitism through its mass layoffs, which took a heavy toll at the departments of education and justice. The Education Department has closed 7 of its 12 regional offices and laid off around half of the employees tasked with enforcing civil rights laws before bringing many of them back to work in January.
Alyssa Lareau, a 16-year veteran of the civil rights division at the Justice Department who left last March, told the commission that the Trump administration appeared to violate federal law by freezing billions of dollars in grants to universities accused of tolerating antisemitism without following the rigorous process required and that courts had ruled several of the freezes to be illegal.
“Title XI has a detailed process for terminating federal funding,” said Lareau, referring to the section of civil rights law that applies to most antisemitism claims. “DOJ appears to not have adhered to the procedures mandated by Title XI or its own Title XI regulations.”
But Trainor argued that the Biden administration had let bureaucracy serve as an excuse for not taking sufficient action against the “mobs” and “hateful hordes” he described as brutalizing Jewish students on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel and subsequent Gaza war.
“The president, when he was campaigning to Make America Great Again in 2024, promised to put an end to this,” Trainor said. “And he did.”
The Trump administration has made countering what it has described as antisemitism on the political left, and especially on college campuses, a top priority. That has included creating a special task force of its own to address it and reaching unprecedented settlements with elite schools that include Columbia, Brown, Cornell and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Some Jewish students have credited the Trump administration for lighting a fire under university administrations they felt had been reluctant to crack down on campus activism they felt created an antisemitic environment on their campuses. Others have described feeling like political pawns.
Sarah Silverman, a Jewish sophomore at Harvard, told the commission that the Justice Department had used the story of a mezuzah being removed from her doorframe as evidence in its attempt to strip research funding from the university and make its students ineligible to receive federal financial aid.
“How does destroying and discrediting educational institutions fight antisemitism?” she asked.
Most American Jews have also expressed skepticism of the White House’s approach. None of its main tactics — including attempting to deport international students who spoke out against Israel during the Gaza war — have received majority approval in surveys of the Jewish community, even as Jews remain alarmed by the level of domestic antisemitism.
Early in the panel, several legal scholars and activists voiced opposite views on whether strident anti-Zionist activism could create the kind of hostile environment for Jewish students that schools are required by law to prevent.
Benjamin Eidelson, an expert in anti-discrimination at Harvard Law School, argued that anti-Zionism could not be treated as a de facto form of antisemitism because “no views about Zionism or Israel are inherent in anyone’s ancestry.”
Eidelson said he was sympathetic to Jewish students who felt alienated by campus protests but “not everything that’s bad is a violation of Title XI.”
Mark Goldfeder, director of the pro-Israel National Jewish Advocacy Center, took the opposite tack. He brought a rock from Mount Zion in Jerusalem to demonstrate that Zionism was linked to the ancestral Jewish connection to Israel.
“Excluding someone based on where their ancestors are from — or based on an identity rooted in where they’re from — is not only wrong, it’s national origin discrimination and civil rights law forbids it,” he said.
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