Empowering the rabbi

Training rabbis and community rabbis – One of Tzohar’s goals is to train a generation of rabbis to fill the role of community rabbi. It is Tzohar’s belief that in a developing world, the rabbis must also develop his spiritual world, as well as the scope of his general knowledge. For this reason, Tzohar is working on an array of training programs for rabbis. These programs are designed to deepen the rabbis’ knowledge on halachic matters, but also places emphasis on other issues, such as communication, developing conversation, listening, and working with groups.

The yeshiva framework in which the rabbis receives his basic instruction is devoted solely to halachic learning, with no study time allotted to the area of the community; one which is developing all the time. The demands made on the rabbi are also increasing, and the role the rabbi is expected to play becomes more and more varied all the time. The community rabbi is asked about educational matters, is turned to as an agent of domestic peace for conflict-ridden couples, is asked to provide financial counseling to families who are in fiscal distress, and he is asked to help young people suffering from any of the myriad afflictions of the teen years. Beyond this, the rabbi is expected to be a gifted orator, an expert user of the computer and other technology, and to have good organizational skills. In the past, the rabbi was much more knowledgeable in a wide variety of topics than his community, today, with the information explosion, members of the rabbi’s community will often be experts in various areas of learning and/or endeavor, and also in Halacha. The rabbi must therefore have a mastery of wide range of topics, and must be able to provide solutions to a wide range of problems, as well as being the one to whom a wide range of groups can turn as situations and needs change.

Tzohar sees the need for preparing its rabbis for all the situations which are required today in working with a community. To that end, Tzohar, together with groups who are expert in their specific areas, sponsors training programs whose goal is to give the rabbi the basics of knowledge and treatment in the issues at hand. Participation in these programs gives the rabbis the opportunity of meeting other rabbis active in community work, and to exchange experiences with them on a variety of phenomena, as well as to broaden and deepen their knowledge in the subject covered by the training program. These programs cover a wide range of topics, so as to provide the rabbi with the tools required to deal with the wide range of issues which arise in the course of his work as a community rabbi. Dozens of rabbis have participated in these training programs to date, on subjects such as bridging and compromise, family therapy, the foundations of psychology, family dynamics, and violence in the family.

The establishment of a center for the empowerment of rabbis

The world of the community rabbinate in Israel operates in a decentralized manner, so that each rabbi functions vis a vis his community, as if their relationship were the only one of its kind in the world. There is no official status of community rabbi. There is no established body which takes care of in-service training or of advancement. These are institutions which are sorely lacking in the rabbi’s work, as are a job description, a code of ethics, the possibility of developing additional areas of activity, and resources for dealing with behavioral questions. Since for the vast majority of community rabbis, this position is a secondary one for them, and not their primary occupational focus, we find that the world of the community rabbinate is shrinking away, and has already arrived at a state of superficiality.

We hope to establish a Center for the empowerment of rabbis, in which would be located a full system of backing and support for the community rabbinate.

The Center would work in several key directions simultaneously, so that a separate branch would be set up to work in each direction:
* The Training Branch
* The Support and Counseling Branch
* The Branch for Practical Pedagogy