This High Holiday season marks a fresh start for many Baltimore-area congregations as they welcome new rabbis and assistant rabbis.
Synagogues such as Beth El Congregation, Kol HaLev and Temple Isaiah, among others, have seen new rabbis join their ranks in the past few months to succeed their recently retired predecessors or to fill new congregational roles. Many of these new rabbis are women.
Rabbi Marci Jacobs, Chevrei Tzedek Congregation’s new spiritual leader, is one of these new rabbis. She also serves as the middle school Jewish life chair at Krieger Schechter Day School — the same school she attended and graduated from as a child. The Pikesville resident will continue to teach at Krieger Schechter.
Initially, she had intended to focus on pursuing a career in Jewish education rather than becoming a pulpit rabbi.
“I wasn’t sold on becoming a rabbi in a community,” Jacobs said. “But in my fourth year of rabbinical school [at the Jewish Theological Seminary], I had an internship in a congregation in South Orange, New Jersey. I had the opportunity to work with an adult bat mitzvah class, read Torah, officiate weddings and funerals. … I became another member of the rabbi’s household and saw how impactful it was to work with the community in that way.”
She became involved with Chevrei Tzedek because she missed pulpit life and the role that pulpit rabbis serve in the community. Jacobs still has a vested interest in Jewish education, though, and she carries many of the skills she acquired as a teacher with her as a rabbi.
Another recent addition to Baltimore’s rabbinical community is Rabbi Amanda Weiss, who started work as Temple Isaiah’s assistant rabbi immediately after she was ordained in May 2023. Similarly to Jacobs, Weiss also worked in education, though her focus was more on experiential education and creating curricula. She also spent six years working at Hillel chapters at Cornell University, the University of Oregon and Oregon State University.
Weiss moved to Baltimore because she wanted to be closer to her nieces, and the change of scenery led her to apply for the assistant rabbi position at Temple Isaiah.
“When I read the job description for Temple Isaiah and saw their emphasis on upgrading their community and inspiring and investing in young leadership … it aligned with everything I believe,” she said. “You can see so much love and excitement and enthusiasm in this congregation.”
Right now, Weiss is working on preparing for the synagogue’s upcoming Rosh Hashanah in the Park family service, which will be held on Temple Isaiah’s 20-acre campus for the first time. She is also planning some social events, such as a congregation trip on the 2023 Maryland Ice Cream Trail.
“I truly believe it’s valuable that engagement and education don’t have to be rivals, and that there’s opportunities to both learn and socialize, and to have fun and explore,” Weiss added.
Beth Israel Congregation recently welcomed Rabbi Rachel Safman. Safman succeeds Rabbi Jay R. Goldstein, who had served the congregation for 22 years before retiring in 2022.
Safman’s origins as a rabbi stem from an unexpected place: Singapore, where she served on the faculty of the National University of Singapore. During her time overseas, she connected with Singapore’s small but passionate Jewish community and studied many prominent Jewish scholars like Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg.
“[Study] really deepened my appreciation for the Jewish textual canon and my ability to engage with it, despite not having had a day school education,” Safman said. “I found myself spending more time at Jewish community events and at the synagogue at the expense of other events, including my professional life, so I decided to take a year off to decide if being a leader in the Jewish community was something I wanted to do.”
She came to the conclusion that it was, and she served at congregations in Ithaca, New York, and New London, Connecticut, before coming to Beth Israel. Safman described the synagogue as “a larger pulpit in an area with significantly richer Jewish opportunities” than what she had been doing before.
“I think one of the things that is outstanding about Beth Israel, as it exists today, is the fact that it is a welcoming and accepting community that really cherishes its members,” Safman said. “But I think that there’s space to expand our vision of what a synagogue is and what role it plays in the Jewish community’s life in the life of people who seek out a Jewish space.”
Other new rabbis in the Baltimore Jewish community this fall include Rabbi Joanne Yocheved Heiligman of Bet Chaverim Congregation, Rabbi Naomi Zaslow of Beth El Congregation and Rabbi Emily Stern of Kol HaLev.
Correction 9/7/23: This article has been updated to correct details about Rabbi Marci Jacobs’ background, as well as remove inaccurate paraphrasing and quote about women at Chevrei Tzedek Congregation.
The Baltimore Jewish Times regrets these errors.
