Being a Rabbi is a Team Sport

From Florida, from Illinois, from Seattle. A military translator. A video games marketer. A career Jewish professional. Born and raised Jewish. Born and raised… not Jewish. Aged 75. Aged 30. All with one thing in common: the deep desire to become a rabbi. A path that might have been closed to them just a few years ago. But now, they are all able to pursue that desire through Hebrew Union College's Virtual Pathway.

Interim Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Initiatives Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed, Ph.D. says her "pulpit" is the Virtual Pathway. She sees these 23 students online for the most part, in her email inbox, and virtually in sessions. But last month she saw them in New York, live and in person. It was the third in person intensive for inaugural cohort, and the second for the newest cohort of the aptly named "Virtual Pathway" to becoming a rabbi, designed and executed by Hebrew Union College to be an alternate path for "nontraditional" students who, for reasons of family or career or something else, can't get to LA or NY or Jerusalem on a regular basis.

Mostly, they bond with the others through their virtual classes, learning largely the same material as the campus-based students. But twice a year, they come together in person. And this time, they were also able to learn and connect with the campus-based students in New York.

Says Medwed, "this was our first time in which Virtual Pathway and campus students were together. They were integrated in classes together, they went to tefilah together, they ate together."

This was echoed by the students. Elisabeth Cardy, a video game marketer from Seattle, says "it was just sweet to feel like a bigger part of the network and was really nice because coming into this semester I'm in all cross campus classes - virtual but with students from the on-campus cohorts - for the first time, which means that some of those students that I saw at the intensive I am now classmates with."

This togetherness is part of the point. "They're not only becoming rabbis, they're becoming part of the rabbinate," says Dean of Students Rachel Gross-Prinz, M.A.R.E. "And when they come to campus and deepen relationships with their peers and are in community with mentors and faculty, it helps them become part of a collective of Jewish spiritual leaders."

That is not to say that the students are not getting that community regularly. They have the advantage of bringing everything they learn directly back to their home communities and congregations, in real time.

Gross-Prinz told a story where "we met with a panel of rabbis and lay leaders in New York City and the Virtual Pathway students immediately were making plans for how they were going to bring this back to their personal congregations and embed the lessons in their lives back home."

Lisa Miller was born and raised on the East Side of Manhattan, but she moved to Austin, Texas seven years ago, and she wasn't able to leave her family, her career, and her community for rabbinical school. When she found the Virtual Pathway, she was thrilled. "There's a really huge value of opportunity here. The cohort that I'm in represents so many different locations, backgrounds, and people coming from different fields. The life experience that is being brought to the program is really giving us wonderful diversity and character. And the opportunity is endless when you are not constrained by location."

The program is specifically geared towards second-career rabbis and requires a lot from its students. "I think we definitely did a lot in four days," says Miller. And I wish there were hours for us to have more unstructured time. We're getting a different flavor of the experience, but the experience is still there. It's just different.

All of the students interviewed said that the biggest takeaway from the intensive for them was tefilah in person. Says David Masters, a military translator who lives outside of Annapolis, MD, "I think that the ability to pray with people who want to be praying is very different from many congregational spaces. Being in a group of aspiring rabbis-that's a very different dynamic. For me, I don't have easy access to weekday tefilah, so pretty much every Thursday, I log into HUC out of New York. And it was super cool being in the place that I have been watching for so long!"

Cardy adds, "there's something about being in tefilah together that is really delightful. I've been zooming into the New York chapel all semester and actually being there with my cohort was amazing. I had no idea what the back of the room looked like-I had never seen the stained-glass windows. They are fantastic. They are triangular, so they change the image that you see as you walk across the room, and I would not have known that if I hadn't come to New York."

All of the students reiterated that they could not have left their lives behind to join the campus-based program. But they all have their own communities that they bring their studies back to, and immediately, in a way they would not be able to if they lived in New York or LA. And the community they are building virtually is critical, even if they only see each other in person a few times a year.

Gross-Prinz says it well. "Just being together is an essential piece of building their rabbinates and becoming part of the rabbinic project. I would say being a rabbi is a team sport and the intensives are an essential part of where they build that team."