In Search Of Connection
Stephen Fried’s chronicle of one shul’s process of selecting a new rabbi led the author on a journey of his own.
Sandee Brawarsky - Jewish Week Book Critic

Some synagogues want a rabbi who’s a good sermonizer, some want a scholar, others want someone who relates well to their teenagers; some want a rabbi they can call by first name and play tennis or basketball with; some want an individual well known in the larger community, others want a rabbi who knows them well; some go for formality and others for lots of hugging. Some want it all.

In “The New Rabbi: A Congregation Searches for Its Leader” (Bantam), investigative reporter Stephen Fried gets inside the congregational mindset the way no other writer has. He intensely follows the process of finding a replacement for Rabbi Gerald Wolpe, when he steps down after leading a Main Line Philadelphia synagogue, Har Zion, for 30 years. But the compelling book is as much about Judaism in America and the role of the rabbi as it is about Har Zion. And it’s as much about Fried’s return to synagogue life as it is about Wolpe’s departure.

Fried, who has written for Vanity Fair, GQ and other magazines, is the author of books about the inside workings of the fashion industry, and the dangers of adverse reactions to prescription drugs. It some ways it seems that the Har Zion story is one he was destined to write.

In 1997, Fried’s father died suddenly in his hometown of Harrisburg, Pa., at age 62, and the reporter, who had been a six-day-a-year synagogue-goer began attending daily minyan in Philadelphia to say Kaddish. Rabbi Wolpe had been the much-beloved spiritual leader of his family’s Harrisburg synagogue before he was lured away by Har Zion in 1969. When Fried prays, in fact, it’s often Rabbi Wolpe’s cadences that he hears, and he recalls that Rabbi Wolpe’s sermons were often the topic of conversation at the Fried Friday night table.

A few months after his father’s death, Fried went to see Rabbi Wolpe, known as a master speaker, whom he had been in touch with once in the 20 years he was working as a journalist in Philadelphia, calling him for a quote for a story he was working on. “For a guy whose voice is in my head, I should know him better,” Fried writes.

Rabbi Wolpe, who is the father of Rabbi David Wolpe who writes the weekly “Musings” column in this newspaper, granted Fried unprecedented access to his own story, and to the private life of the synagogue in transition. Although the journalist wasn’t able to convince the rabbinic search committee to let him sit in on their meetings, he did manage to follow what was going on, with the help of a few moles and his own schmoozing abilities. “It has been my experience,” he says, in an interview with The Jewish Week, “that Jews are not really good at keeping secrets.” For three years, he attended services, stayed for kiddush and also came back for special events at Har Zion, always listening well. He jokes that much of his reporting for this book was done within easy reach of a buffet table.

Fried brings to life a range of personalities, from the machers who are close to Rabbi Wolpe to the soccer moms who are active in the award-winning Hebrew school as well as the cast of rabbis from around the country being considered for the job, including the assistant rabbi of Har Zion, Rabbi Jacob Herber, who is ultimately promoted. His beat is holidays, sermons, funerals, the everyday dramas of shul life and the many twists in the selection process, involving the differing agendas represented on the search committee, a desired candidate’s change of heart, and the rules set out by the conservative movement’s Rabbinic Assembly.

A process that was expected to take one year is extended to three. Rabbi Wolpe makes a decision to stay out of the selection process, but continues to speak with Fried, quite openly, about his life’s choices, his own father’s death when he was a boy, his wife’s illness and healing, his mentors and mentoring and his four accomplished sons, two of whom are rabbis.

Fried’s approach is altogether serious, although leavened with a breezy writing style; he describes the way synagogue honors are shared among congregants and bar and bat mitzvah families as “aliyah gerrymandering” and asks the rabbi in charge of rabbinic placement at the Rabbinic Assembly to “handicap” the upcoming season for Conservative rabbis. He describes an Orthodox minyan he sometimes attends in a downtown law office, where attorneys are sometimes summoned by their boss via speakerphone to make up the quorum, as “like davening in a David Mamet play,” while his usual congregation, where they sometimes go out on the streets to look for a 10th man, as “more like ‘Waiting for Godot.’ ”

In an interview with The Jewish Week, Fried, who’s now comfortable in just about any synagogue, talks about his own journey of reconnection, how he has had the opportunity to re-evaluate the religion of his youth as a grown-up. “It’s a great process. If I’m a proselytizer for anything, it’s for that process, as important as re-evaluating your thoughts about anything you thought you knew everything about when you were 16.”

One of the messages of his book, he notes, is that American religious communities are important and they’re also fragile. “The process like the one I’m writing about can refortify an institution for the next generation or really cripple it, no matter how powerful it is. It’s also important that attention be paid.”

“Another message for me, personally, is that the search for spirituality in one’s own religion, rather than running to another, is incredibly rewarding.”

Ever think about becoming a rabbi himself? Fried laughs. Apparently, his wife has thought about it more than he has, after this long immersion. “I like being around rabbis,” he says, mentioning rabbis he’s met over the years who are extemporaneously fascinating. “But I don’t think I’m a rabbi, I’m a writer.”

For Fried, one of the hardest parts of writing this book was knowing when to stop reporting. The story went on: Rabbi Wolpe came out of retirement to fill in at a major synagogue in Palm Beach having some difficulties, the events of Sept. 11 happened, and the selection process seemed ongoing at Har Zion. As has been reported in the Philadelphia Exponent, the new rabbi’s installation has been delayed, and there may be some controversy about his future. Fried will write an afterword, bringing the story up to date, for the paperback edition, due out next year.

The final scene in “The New Rabbi” is Yom Kippur 2001, when Fried attends services at his own synagogue in downtown Philadelphia, and is surprised to see Rabbi Wolpe in his signature red tallit, seated alone in the pews. When he goes over to greet him, the rabbi says his wife isn’t coming and invites Fried, whose wife is also at home, to join him. Fried realizes that for all the time they’ve spent talking, they’ve never sat side-by-side praying together. They chat a bit, share readings in non-prayer books and say Yizkor, “alone and together and in the loudest of silences, for the souls of our fathers.”

Now, Fried, who is teaching a class at Columbia Journalism School this fall, says that he is in the process of untangling his connection to synagogue as a place of work and a place for prayer and personal reflection. This year, for the holidays, he didn’t go to Har Zion at all, but instead to his congregation, where he still attends morning minyan, finding much of comfort and interest. n

Stephen Fried will read from and discuss “The New Rabbi” on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble, 2289 Broadway (82nd Street), Manhattan.

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