Our Community, Our Future is our process of seeking and welcoming our new Senior Rabbi. Our Leo Baeck Temple community members are at the heart of this process. On this page, we provide updates on the status of our transition.

Through the now-completed Visioning Our Tomorrow listening campaign, we defined who we are as a community and what we seek in our next senior rabbi.  We conducted extensive research on best practices for rabbinic transition.  We met with the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) and the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR).  We also consulted with clergy and lay leaders from congregations across the country that were going through rabbinic transition and who had an internal candidate.
 
Our long-standing Associate Rabbi, Lisa Berney, has expressed interest in our senior rabbi position. Guided by this research, the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees have decided to begin our search by considering Rabbi Berney’s candidacy prior to the national placement process, which begins in August.
 
The insights from our Visioning Our Tomorrow listening campaign will inform this process, which will be led by the Seeking Our Sacred Partner Committee. That committee will make a recommendation to our officers and trustees. Consistent with our bylaws, you, the Leo Baeck Temple congregation, will vote to make the final decision.  I look forward to your participation as we take this important step together.

The second step of Our Community, Our Future, is literally to seek our next sacred partner.  We have now begun the search process to identify our next senior rabbi.   The Seeking Our Sacred Partner Committee will use everything we learned from Visioning Our Tomorrow as our guide.   

The first step of Our Community, Our Future is Visioning Our Tomorrow, in which our community identified who we are today, what we value for our future, and what is most important to us in a senior rabbi.  Our listening campaign was a huge success, gathering valuable information, while bringing our community together.

Members of our Visioning Our Tomorrow Committee led 26 separate listening sessions with a total of 38 listening groups over a six-month period. 265 members of our community participated, encompassing all ages and all corners of our community. Thank you to all our participants.

Check below to view the various messages that have been shared with our congregation throughout this process: