“Opportunity to be heard!”

Our congregation’s current search for a new Senior Rabbi represents an opportunity and a challenge for Temple Beth El. My hope is that we will emerge from this process not only with a consensus candidate that we can all rally around, but also as a more solidified community; with all congregants feeling excited and unified around common themes.

We have designed our search process in a manner that is certain to give every member the opportunity to be heard. From our most veteran members to every newcomer, from young to old, your voice will count, your opinions, wishes, hopes and vision will guide the process which will lead to our choice of a new senior rabbi. Through town meetings, emails, phone calls, and letters, there are numerous opportunities for every voice to be heard. Please take advantage of these opportunities to be a part of this process.

With your input in mind, and after countless hours of extensive research into the candidates’ qualifications, interviews, reference checks, and personal visits, the search committee will make a final recommendation to our board for approval.

Our goal is to have this recommendation mirror who we are as a congregation while understanding that our congregation is one of diversity – both in membership and in views. As became clear at the two town meetings already held – we must accept our mission as the only Reform Congregation in Charlotte to make all feel welcome and valued. We will seek to identify a Senior Rabbi who can continue to lead us on that worthy mission. Perhaps we have mis-labeled our efforts by referring to the process as a “Rabbinic Search”. This process might more adequately be called a “Congregational Search,” a search for our own identity, the very essence of what we’ve become and what we want to be.

We are a very large family, one with vast differences, attitudes and backgrounds, yet bound together in many ways. The goal of our search process is to build a consensus among the members of our search committee which is reflective and representative of the majority of the congregation and then to use this honored consensus to select a new Senior Rabbi.

It is my fervent hope that once we have been through this process, we will come together, like any family, and continue to be the great congregation that Temple Beth El has always been. May we go from strength to strength

Larry Farber, President