Oak Park Temple
B'nai Abraham Zion

1235 N. Harlem Avenue
Oak Park, IL 60302
(708) 386-3937

Rabbi Search Letters from the Chair

August 6, 2008

August 6, 2008 

Dear Fellow Congregants, 

The summer has sailed by and soon the High Holidays will be upon us. It has been nine months since the Rabbi Search Committee had its first meeting on December 2nd, a week later we held our initial Congregational Open Forum Meeting. Much has occurred along the way. 

In these nine months, the Rabbi Search Committee has had many opportunities to become very well acquainted with one another. Our conversations have been stimulating, thoughtful, at times provocative, and always respectful. It is clear to me that each member of the committee shares in the commitment to find the very best rabbi for Oak Park Temple.

Rabbi Dan Rabishaw, the Director of the Great Lakes Council of the Union for Reform Judaism, predicted that there would be great interest among rabbis in being the new rabbi at Oak Park Temple. He has proven to be correct. As of early August, we have received nineteen (19) applications. We will not be surprised if a few more applications arrive in the days to come.

The Rabbi Search Committee has been very busy this summer conducting teleconference interviews with the rabbi candidates. Each of these interviews has been for an hour and has covered a wide range of issues. We will be requesting further information from some of our candidates and, thereafter, we will invite some of them for face-to-face interviews. We know that you are looking forward to meeting some of the candidates and when we have narrowed the field significantly to those in whom we have the greatest interest, you will certainly have the opportunity.

We have been impressed by the qualities and skills of the candidates and we are confident that we will find an excellent new rabbi. The problem will not be in finding a good rabbi; it will be in choosing the best one for Oak Park Temple from among the very capable and qualified candidates who have applied for the position. In this regard, the feedback that you provided to us during the Rabbi Search Survey process in late 2007 has been, and will continue to be, invaluable in guiding our thinking and decisions.

As this process continues to unfold we will keep you apprised of our progress. We remain appreciative of your interest and support.

May you be inscribed for a year of sweetness! 

L’shalom, 

Jeff Blaine, Chair

Rabbi Search Committee

July 7, 2008

Dear Fellow Congregants,
There is an old Yiddish saying, “Menschen tracht und Gott lacht!” It means, “People plan and G-d laughs!”

When I last wrote to you on April 16th, I said, “…rabbis who are actively involved in seeking a pulpit are more focused on those congregations whose pulpits become available in July 2008. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will be receiving formal applications prior to July.” Well, G-d read my e-mail to you and laughed!

In early May, the Rabbi Search Committee received ten (10) applications from the Central Conference of American Rabbis – Rabbi Placement Commission. Since that time, we have received four (4) more. So, we are currently at fourteen (14) candidates and counting. I am led to believe by our Regional Director, Rabbi Dan Rabishaw, that we can expect to see more applications soon. Apparently, there is a great deal of interest in Oak Park Temple “out there”.

Our initial telephone interviews will be beginning next week and will continue through the summer. Ultimately, from the initial pool of applicants, and those who will probably soon follow, we will narrow the group to those whose characteristics best match the needs that we, as a congregation, identified during our survey process in the Fall. We will conduct further interviews with that smaller group going forward.

So, we are happy to let you know that there is a great deal of activity occurring in the rabbi search process and that we are pleased with the quality of the applicants.

As always, we will keep you informed of developments as they unfold.

L’shalom,
Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee

April 16, 2008

Dear Fellow Congregants,

It has been six weeks since my last communication to you about the Rabbi Search. I would like to give you an update and let you know where we are on our timeline.

As you’ll recall, Oak Park Temple filed its Application For Congregational Search For A Rabbi with the Central Conference of American Rabbis – Rabbi Placement Commission on Tuesday, February 26th. We received confirmation from them that the Application had “been received in good order” and was posted that same day on the CCAR Placement Web Page. Our Application was also to have been in their April 2008 newsletter.

We have received a number of informal inquiries, but up until now, we have not received any formal applications for the post. Rabbi Dan Rabishaw, the Regional Director, Great Lakes Council of URJ, has informed us that this is absolutely to be expected as our pulpit does not officially become available for another fifteen months. He has indicated that rabbis who are actively involved in seeking a pulpit are more focused on those congregations whose pulpits become available in July 2008. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will be receiving formal applications prior to July. Thereafter, we would expect to see an increase in activity in the late summer and early autumn.

So, for now, we can sit back and enjoy the arrival of spring and a Sweet Passover!

As developments unfold, we promise to keep you apprised.

Hag sameach!

Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee

March 2, 2008

Dear Fellow Congregants,

The Rabbi Search Committee is happy to report that our Application For Congregational Search For A Rabbi was completed and submitted to the Central Conference of American Rabbis – Rabbi Placement Commission on Tuesday, February 26th. We received confirmation from them that the Application had “been received in good order” and was posted that same day on the CCAR Placement Web Page. In addition, we were informed that our listing will appear in their April 2008 newsletter. And so, we begin.

As candidates indicate their interest to the Rabbi Placement Commission (RPC), and have been determined to be eligible to apply for our consideration, the RPC will forward contact information to us to begin the evaluation process.

I know that I speak for the entire Rabbi Search Committee when I say that we have all learned a great deal about what Oak Park Temple means to members of our congregation. We have grown in our understanding of the vision that we share, and in the areas in which we may disagree with one another. We are confident that responding to this Application has not only created a product, we have also experienced a process through which our ability to evaluate candidates’ suitability for our pulpit has increased. This will be invaluable going forward.

Finally, we want to share the product of our work with you on the Important Considerations questions from the Application that we submitted. You will find them here.

These responses are a consolidation of opinions and sentiments expressed by our congregation, through responses to the Rabbi Search Survey, phone and e-mail communications, as well as participation in the Open Form meetings. Our thanks to all of you for freely sharing your views with us. We could not have created this document without your participation.

As our search process proceeds, we will continue to keep you informed of our progress.

L’shalom,
Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee

February 12, 2008

Dear Fellow Oak Park Temple Congregants,

It is time to bring you “up to speed” on developments in our Rabbi Search process.

When I last communicated with you in January, there were many important events coming up. We had our second Open Forum Meeting on January 13th and it was attended by more than 60 people. The dialogue was fruitful and helpful to the committee.

Rabbi Dan Rabishaw, the Director of the Great Lakes Council of the Union for Reform Judaism, met with the Rabbi Search Committee on February 3rd to discuss strategies for evaluating rabbinic candidates for our pulpit.

The committee met on February 10th to collate the responses to the Rabbi Search Survey, to which there were 138 responses. The committee extends its deep gratitude to all of you for providing a rich “treasure trove” of input about who we are and what we are seeking in a new rabbi. Your responses significantly facilitated our work and enabled us to synthesize a set of responses with which we were all comfortable and which we felt were truly representative of our congregation. This could not have happened without your help and participation.

I am confident that we will meet our self-imposed deadline of March 1st to submit our Application to the CCAR, Rabbi Placement Commission, for posting on their site for candidates to consider applying for the pulpit of Oak Park Temple B’nai Abraham Zion.

We are pleased that our Application will be the result of our collective thinking and input.

For your help to this point, we extend our gratitude. We depend on your continued participation in this very important work going forward.

L’shalom,
Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee

January 19, 2008

Dear Oak Park Temple Congregants,

The Rabbi Search is proceeding well, thanks to all of you.

I am happy to report that, at the close of the response period, we have had 132 responses from the congregation to the Rabbi Search Survey. The survey has been posted on the Oak Park Temple website and available in the temple office, since Fall 2007. These questions, as a reminder, are verbatim from the Application to the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), Rabbi Placement Commission, which the committee must fill out in order to receive applications from rabbis seeking a new pulpit such as ours. Information that we provide in this application is used by prospective rabbis to determine their interest in and fit with our congregation. The Rabbi Search Committee, armed with the thoughtful, and sometimes provocative, responses that have been provided by members of our congregation, will have an easier time creating a more accurate representation of the person we are collectively seeking to be our new rabbi. There have been times in reading your responses where we have been stimulated to think about other ideas and needs of OPT that some of us had not previously considered. We have also been reassured by the degree of consensus and consistency expressed about certain characteristics that our congregation is seeking. On behalf of the entire committee, I wish to extend our thanks to all of you for your time and thoughtfulness in completing the survey.

On a personal note, I had a transformative experience attending the Union for Reform Judaism’s 2007 Biennial in San Diego, CA, from December 11-16. During my time at the Biennial, I learned a great deal, both about Reform Judaism (in which I was raised) and about important things for us to keep in focus during our Rabbi Search process. Along with other workshops of relevance to our search, I attended a Rabbi Search Luncheon with Rabbi Arnold Sher, the Director of the Rabbi Placement Commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). He and I had previously had a phone/voice mail relationship, but we had never met face-to-face. The information provided was very useful in confirming our understanding of the process and in providing some new information.

The Rabbi Search Committee will now begin the process of analyzing and collating Rabbi Search Survey responses in order to prepare and submit our “Application” to the CCAR on, or about, 3/1/2008. Thereafter, we will be hearing from candidates. Prior to this, the Rabbi Search Committee will be meeting with Rabbi Dan Rabishaw, Regional Director, Great Lakes Council / Chicago, to inform and guide our evaluation process with prospective candidates.
As we continue along the timeline, you will be hearing much more from all of us.
For your on-going input and support, our thanks!

B’shalom,
Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee

##

December 5, 2007

Dear Fellow Oak Park Temple Congregants,

I would like to inform you of current developments in the Rabbi Search process.

The Rabbi Search Committee met for the first time this past Sunday, December 2nd. I’m pleased to report that we covered a great deal of ground in our 3-hour meeting.  We took time to get to know one another better and, in particular, discussed our desires and hopes for the rabbi search process. In addition, we discussed the constituencies that we represent and the need to use the diversity of the committee to best serve Oak Park Temple as a whole.

The committee reviewed the CCAR Rabbi Search process and structure. In addition, the committee felt it important to make the following document available to you:

A Handbook of Placement Procedures:
for Congregational Search Committees
and Searching Rabbis

Rabbinical Placement Commission of theCentral Conference of American Rabbis
Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion
Union for Reform Judaism

We’ve posted it on the Rabbi Search section of the Oak Park Temple website. You can go directly to it from this document, by clicking on the following link: http://oakparktemple.com/rabbisearch/Placement_Handbook.doc

As a member of the Union for Reform Judaism, we are required to follow these procedures. We believe that reading this document will help interested congregants to understand the rabbi search process that we will be following, as well as providing a sense of the timelines involved. We especially encourage, if at all possible, that you read the “Handbook” before the Open Forum Meetings. We think that it will help to make sense out of a complex process.

While the committee hopes that you will be able to attend some of our Open Forum Meetings, there are other ways for you to share your thoughts with the committee:

You can contact the Rabbi Search Committee by sending e-mails to rabbisearch@oakparktemple.com. Your comments, suggestions and questions will be received by the entire committee.

You can speak with any member of the committee. We will be available at various “Rabbi Search Tables” in the rotunda on Sunday mornings, and other times and locations to be announced.

We will be conducting various focus groups to help us to better identify the needs of various constituencies within the congregation.

If you have not already done so, please fill out the Rabbi Search Survey on our website, or ask for a hard copy in the temple office. You can also go directly to the survey by clicking on the site below:

http://fd3.formdesk.com/oakparktemple/rabbisearch

Also, please consult the special Rabbi Search section on our website, for general information and updates.
http://oakparktemple.com/rabbisearch

We are pleased to have begun and we look forward to learning about your vision for Oak Park Temple and our next rabbi.

B’shalom,

Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee 

October 7, 2007 

Dear Fellow Oak Park Temple Congregants, 

I am honored and humbled to write to you as the newly appointed Chair of the Rabbi Search Committee. 

There are few occasions in the life of a congregation that are as important and far reaching as the choosing of a new Rabbi. As a congregation, our decisions will be likely to shape Oak Park Temple for many years to come. Navigating this transition will simultaneously be an awesome responsibility and a fabulous opportunity. 

The Rabbi Search process affords us the chance to collectively reflect upon and to articulate our vision, values, philosophy, history and identity as a part of the Jewish community. While we often engage in dialogue about these important matters, there are rarely times when is it is as essential to clearly delineate and communicate what we believe to be the identity Oak Park Temple, and what we wish for it to become. It is critical for us to find the rabbi who will best serve us and our needs. Your input will be crucial in helping us to clearly define and express the uniqueness of Oak Park Temple to prospective rabbinical candidates. There will be many ways for you to provide your input and to assist in this process.

I appreciate that congregants are eager to learn about the search process and I am committed to providing information about what we learn and our progress throughout the search. We will update the new special Rabbi Search section on our website, http://oakparktemple.com/rabbisearch and there will be regular articles in The Messenger as news becomes available. There will be announcements in the Temple's weekly e-mail updates about “Open Forum” meetings and other opportunities to participate.

Our congregation has a long tradition of hiring rabbis who have been with us for many, many years. Rabbi Gerson will have been our rabbi for 30 years when he retires on August 1, 2009. Our congregation’s size has more than doubled during his tenure as our rabbi. It is my hope that Oak Park Temple will thrive as much during the next 30 years as it has during Rabbi Gerson’s time with us. As we engage in this work, it will be important for us to be thinking about the future as well as about the present.     

Please be an active participant in this vital transition in our congregation’s life. As the Rabbi Search Committee solicits your input, please take the time to share your vision for Oak Park Temple. Together, we can write an exciting new chapter in the history of Oak Park Temple B’nai Abraham Zion. 

B’shalom, 

Jeff Blaine, Chair
Rabbi Search Committee