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Health & Fitness

Northfield rabbi named to rabbinic leadership program

The intensive three-year Rabbinic Leadership Initiative (RLI) program will immerse Rabbi Paul F. Cohen, and 26 colleagues from North America, Israel and Australia in the highest levels of Jewish study. The program, designed for rabbis poised to become influential leaders in their synagogues, communities and the Jewish world, will equip participants to meet contemporary challenges with ever-greater intellectual and moral sophistication. 

Rabbi Paul F. Cohen of Temple Jeremiah, Northfield, Ill., has been named to the Rabbinic Leadership Initiative (RLI) of the Shalom Hartman Institute, an elite three-year program of study, reflection, and professional development for 27 rabbis from North America, Israel, and Australia, which will begin on July 1, 2013, at the Institute in Jerusalem.

“I am honored to have been chosen by the Jewish Federation of Chicago to participate in this program as a Hartman Scholar,” Cohen said. “This three-year program promises to enrich my rabbinate through an intensive program of study in a religiously pluralistic environment. I look forward to this journey of spiritual growth and renewal.”

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Inaugurated in 2000 by the Institute’s late founder, Rabbi Prof. David Hartman, past and current RLI participants represent a broad range of religious, geographic, and gender diversity. The pluralistic framework of the program creates a community of rabbis uniquely able to transform the lives of Jews in North America. Participants spend a month each summer and a week each winter studying at the Hartman campus in Jerusalem. During the remainder of each year, participants engage in weekly study with leading Hartman Institute scholars, learning classical and modern sources and developing ways to integrate this knowledge into their rabbinical work.

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Among program graduates to date are Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Asher Lopatin, incoming head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah of New York, and Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, demonstrating how the program's pluralistic message is reaching hundreds of thousands of families across North America.

“Since its inception nearly 35 years ago, SHI has made the advancement of rabbinic leadership a core mission,” said Rabbi Lauren Berkun, Director of Rabbinic Programs at Shalom Hartman Institute and a graduate of the second RLI cohort. “Rabbis have very few structured frameworks for ongoing scholarly enrichment, spiritual development, and intellectual leadership training. RLI is specifically aimed at equipping rabbis to become ever-more significant agents of change and intellectual leaders, continually infusing North American Jewish communities with new energy and vitality.”

Rabbi Asher Lopatin said that learning with the team of scholars and thinkers that David Hartman assembled at the Shalom Hartman Institute transformed his rabbinate.

"The program gave me direction and vision in Jewish thinking based on innovative interpretations of age-old sources in our tradition," Lopatin said. "Every teacher was an inspiration, each with their own unique style. The learning combined the intellectual rigor of an academic setting with the fulfilling bond with our tradition that yeshiva learning provides. Equally important were the lifelong relationships I acquired - through struggling with and then mastering sublime, but deeply relevant, works of Jewish thought. Ethic, theology, religion, history and philosophy came together every day and transformed who I am as a Jew, a rabbi and a human being."

Here is a list of the RLI V cohort, running from 2013-2016:

·         Justus Baird, Auburn Seminary, Princeton, NJ

·         James Bennett, Congregation Shaare Emeth, St. Louis, MO

·         Matthew Berkowitz, The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Jerusalem, IL

·         Jacob Blumenthal, Shaare Torah, Gaithersburg, MD

·         Nail Blumofe, Congregation Agudas Achim, Austin, TX

·         Daniel Bogard, Congregation Anshai Emeth, Peoria, IL

·         Paul Cohen, Temple Jeremiah, Northfield, IL

·         Shoshanah Conover, Temple Sholom of Chicago, Chicago, IL

·         Adam Cutler, Beth Tzedec Congregation, Toronto, ON

·         Edward Elkin, First Narayever Congregation, Toronto, ON

·         Shira  Epstein, Congregation Beth Elohim, Brooklyn, NY

·         Alejandro (Alex) Felch, Congregation B'nai Tikvah, Deerfield, IL

·         Linda Goodman, Union Temple of Brooklyn, Brooklyn, NY

·         Tina Grimberg, Congregation Darchei Noam, Toronto, ON

·         Joshua Hoffman, Valley Beth Shalom, Encino, CA

·         Sara Hurwitz, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale/Yeshivat Maharat, Bronx, NY

·         David Ingber, Romemu: Judaism for Body, Mind and Spirit, New York, NY

·         Adam Kligfeld, Temple Beth Am, Los Angeles, CA

·         Erin Leib Smokler, Yeshivat Maharat, New York, NY

·         Marion Lev-Cohen, Central Synagogue, New York, NY

·         Joel Pitkowsky, Congregation Beth Sholom, Teaneck, NJ

·         Michael Resnick, Temple Emanu-El of Palm Beach, Palm Beach, FL

·         Eric Solomon, Beth Meyer Synagogue, Raleigh, NC

·         Howard Stecker, Temple Israel of Great Neck, Great Neck, NY

·         Ari Sunshine, B'nai Shalom of Olney, Olney, MD

·         Orna Triguboff, Emanuel Synagogue and Neshama Life, Sydney, Australia

·         Marc Wolf, Shalom Hartman Institute, New York, NY

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