Rabbinic Transition

As of July 1, 2022, Rabbi Lustig has taken on the role of Rabbi Emeritus. As of August 25, Rabbi Shankman is senior rabbi.

Rabbi Wolfman has a wealth of experience advising many congregations, boards, and clergy as they navigated the transition process.  More specifically, Rabbi Wolfman has been an ordained reform Rabbi for over 35 years and served as the Director of the Reform Movement’s Commission on Rabbi – Congregational Relations for over 15 years.  He authored the widely respected Rabbinic/Congregational Handbook.  He is familiar with Washington Hebrew Congregation and knows Rabbi Lustig and other members of our clergy. 

It is common for clergy members to seek advice or have conversations with people outside of their congregation about the extraordinary challenges or their roles and responsibilities. In fact, the Joint Placement Commission of HUC and the CCAR require all Rabbinic students to have a Rabbinic mentor while in school and during at least the early years of their Rabbinate.  Our clergy have served and continue to serve as mentors to younger clergy.  We also encourage (and pay for) our clergy to consult with others who can serve as a sounding board and be a resource.  In his practice, Rabbi Wolfman consults with both congregations and individual clergy members, and he has consulted with Rabbi Shankman from time to time over the last three years.

Rabbi Wolfman and the Board believe he can and will provide us with objective and professional guidance that will enhance our ability to make an informed and thoughtful decision, notwithstanding his prior consultations with Rabbi Shankman. Rabbi Shankman agrees with this view and Rabbi Wolfman will not have any further individual consultations with any of our clergy.

His role will be to

• Provide us with a framework and guidance to ensure we fully consider our clergy structure and needs.
• Gather relevant information about ourselves and the trends within the Reform movement.
• Train Transition Committee members how to conduct effective and targeted listening sessions with our congregation.
• Consider all options that could best serve our congregation going forward.

In the end, the decisions how we will proceed will be ours.  We are not looking to anyone on the outside to advocate for a particular path for us to follow.

In the first phase of our journey, the Transition Committee will listen and learn about what our Congregation considers essential to future spiritual leadership. We expect discussions to explore many subjects, including

• The role and responsibilities of a senior rabbi.
• Whether future leadership comes from within Washington Hebrew or involves an addition to our community.
• Whether our clergy team should have a traditional or new leadership structure.

Over the next few months, we will offer multiple opportunities for you to share your thoughts and suggestions in whatever way you feel is most comfortable. There will be small group discussions in-person and over Zoom, a confidential email address to which you can send written communications, congregational questionnaires, and more.

The Committee also will solicit input from our clergy and staff and will benefit from the considerable wisdom and resources of our consultant, the Union of Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and other large congregations that have navigated similar transitions. We are open to all ideas.

We expect that the Transition Committee will be ready to share all they have heard, read, and learned with the Board of Directors in the first part of 2022. Using this information, the Board will determine the path forward.

The decisions made in the first phase of our process will determine the direction of the balance of our journey and the specific actions we will take to realize our vision for the future. This second phase may take us through much of the rest of 2022, though the exact timing will depend on the path we choose.

If we decide to conduct a search, we will be ideally positioned to do so, following Phase I as the CCAR’s rabbinical placement cycle occurs during the second half of each calendar year. The Transition Committee would lead any search, and it would involve a broad range of congregants, as well as our clergy and staff, to ensure that anyone we consider will meet the needs of our Congregation and integrate well with our existing team.

Each step we take in the months ahead will lead us to the point where our Board will share its recommendation for the future of our clergy leadership with you.

Then, it will be up to you. Washington Hebrew’s Constitution specifies that the final decision on clergy leadership is to be made by a vote of the membership. So, at the conclusion of our journey, having listened to and learned from each other, we will come together as a Congregation to vote, and we will collectively celebrate and conclude this process of ensuring that our treasured Temple will go, as we always have, from strength to strength.

Article VI, Sec. 2

“The Senior Rabbi shall be elected and the relationship dissolved by a majority vote of the members of the Congregation present and voting at an annual or special meeting of the Congregation, provided that notice that this issue will be presented to the members of the Congregation for consideration is mailed to each member of the Congregation at least ten days prior to the presentation of the question for vote. Voting by the members at an annual meeting or special meeting on any question presented under this Section shall be by secret ballot.”