By Michael Bloom, Religious VP and Pulpit Committee Chair

A heartfelt todah rabah to all the congregants who attended the parlor meetings last Spring and who have been providing assistance to the Pulpit Committee in the last few months. As you know, we filed the Congregational Profile with the United Synagogue’s Rabbinical Assembly (known as the “RA”) just before Rosh Hashanah last Fall. From that filing, the RA published our profile on a private web site so that all members of the RA around the world can review it and determine whether they want to apply to CBS for the opening.

The candidates then send their credentials to the Executive Director of the RA’s International Placement Committee (Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg). Rabbi Schoenberg and his team review the submissions and counsel the candidates. If Rabbi Schoenberg is satisfied that the individual would be a good fit for CBS (and in particular, has had at least two pulpit jobs and is mid- or late-career), the candidate’s credentials are sent to your Pulpit Committee.

We follow up with the candidate, fill in any holes in the resume, and prepare a package of information for review by our Pulpit Committee. We first do a preliminary screening to see if the individual meets the criteria we have developed – the criteria coming from the Parlor Meetings in which the congregation participated – and then proceed with informal and formal interviews, if appropriate. We will undertake reference checks, background checks, and asking friends and relatives if they know of or have seen this candidate. Of course, we cannot be too “public” about this, since sometimes the candidate has not told their current congregation that he or she will be leaving.

The Pulpit Committee members have been meeting at least once a month to review resumes and discuss candidates. So far we have received thirteen resumes, and the list is impressive: All with at least one Master’s; some PhDs, EDs, and DDs; men and women; from all parts of the country; some early career (this would be their third pulpit), some late career (they would probably retire after CBS), and some in the middle; some with strong pastoral backgrounds, some strong counselors, some strong educators.

Early in our evaluation, the committee determined that some of the candidates just do not fit the needs of CBS, and we promptly told those individuals that they are no longer in consideration. But we still have a very fine pool at this point, and Rabbi Schoenberg has said that we should expect to see another one or two dozen candidates in the January-February period. Of course, there is the chance that we will not find one in that new pool who is better than the ones we have now, so there is a bit of strategy that needs to occur here. Our objective is to narrow the field down to three candidates, any one of whom would be an excellent fit, and then invite them for a weekend visit here before we make an offer.

We have eight weekends in February-March-April when these visits may occur. The current possibilities are: February 3-4, 10-11, 17-18, 24-25, March 3-4, 17-18, 24-25, and March 31-April 1. The congregation will be notified in advance of each candidate’s visit; we urge you to attend at least one service or educational event those weekends and give us your feedback.

We will need assistance from members of the congregation in arranging these visits – in housing accommodations, showing the candidate and spouse around the area, hosting dinners or receptions to meet the candidate and spouse, and attending services that weekend to see if we agree that “this is a good one.”

If you’d be able to help in any of these tasks, please send me an e-mail at cbsmeb@mac.com, or call the CBS office and leave a message for me, or contact any other member of the Committee: Rayna Arnold, Hazzan Dinkin, Sandy Frucht, Bill Gourdin, Scott Korney, Lynn Levine, or Mary Anne Winig.

Thanks, again, for all your help.

February 2006