Jewish Emergent Network Announces New Rabbinic Fellowship
Applications now being accepted for staff and Rabbinic
Fellowship positions at seven innovative Jewish communities across the country.
Contact: Melissa Balaban
Melissa@ikar-la.org,
323-634-1870 x102
LOS ANGELES, January 5, 2016 – The Jewish Emergent Network
(“the Network”), a collaboration between seven path-breaking Jewish communities
from across the United States, announces it is now accepting applications for a
new National Rabbinic Fellowship, which will begin in June 2016.
This Fellowship program will place selected early career rabbis
into one of the seven participating communities for a two-year period. The
communities include: IKAR in Los Angeles, Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San
Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago, Sixth & I in Washington, DC, and Lab/Shul
and Romemu in New York City. All seven communities have individually received
recognition for the impact of their work in the Jewish community on both a
local and national scale.
The purpose of the Fellowship is to immerse talented young
clergy in the work of these thriving communities while providing valuable
training and mentoring. Fellows will be supported in the development of their
rabbinic vision and skills, preparing them to complete the Fellowship as part
of a national cohort of creative, vision-driven rabbis eager to invest in the
reanimation of North American Jewish life. Upon completion of the program, each
Fellow will be poised to educate, engage, and serve an array of underserved
populations, including disaffected and unaffiliated Jews, young adults,
families with young children, and others.
The clergy and executive leaders of the seven communities
have been meeting for the last two years in exploration of collaboration,
mutual learning, deep solidarity and increased strategic impact on the field of
emerging congregational models. These efforts were partially funded by the
Slingshot Fund, the Natan Fund, and the Leichtag Foundation.
Seed funding to launch the Network has been generously
provided through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Additional support is
provided by the Crown Family. Network members are continuing to secure
additional program funding over the next four years.
Through a collaborative process, the seven communities will
hire rabbis toward the beginning of their careers to serve as the inaugural
cohort of Rabbinic Fellows. Once embedded in his or her home community, each
Fellow will take on a variety of independent rabbinic tasks and will receive weekly
supervision and support from leaders within the host organization. Throughout
the two-year Fellowship, Fellows will also meet a number of times as a fully
assembled cohort, traveling to each of the seven Network organizations for
intensive conferences/site visits. The final site visit, planned for June 2018,
will also include a public-facing conference that welcomes clergy, staff, and
lay leaders from across the country to engage one another and the Fellows and
to share best practices of innovation and creativity in Jewish
community-building.
The seven communities in the Network do not represent any
one denomination or set of religious practices. What they share is a devotion
to revitalizing the field of Jewish engagement, a commitment to approaches both
traditionally rooted and creative, and a demonstrated success in attracting
unaffiliated and disengaged Jews to a rich and meaningful Jewish practice.
While each community is different in form and organizational structure, all
have taken an entrepreneurial approach to this shared vision, operating outside
of conventional institutional models, rethinking basic assumptions about ritual
and spiritual practice, membership models, staff structures, the
religious/cultural divide and physical space. With the launch of this new
rabbinic fellowship, the Network hopes to inspire new creative ventures on the
Jewish landscape.
Fellowship Applications are currently being accepted from
recent graduates of rabbinic schools of all denominations. To learn more about
the fellowship and submit an application, please visit the Network’s website at
www.jewishemergentnetwork.org.
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About the Jewish Emergent Network
The Jewish Emergent Network is comprised of the leaders of
seven path‐breaking Jewish communities from across the United States that have
come together in the spirit of collaboration. These include: IKAR in Los
Angeles, Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago,
Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., and Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York.
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