Come grow with us
Congregation B'Nai Israel in Emerson New Jersey, a conservative, egalitarian synagogue founded almost 70 years ago, is searching for a new Rabbi to lead us into the future.
We are looking for a Rabbi who is energetic, enthusiastic, innovative, and collaborative - a Rabbi who will embrace the opportunity to make a difference, inspire us, and lead us into a new future. Our congregation of 150 member units is focusing on continuing the engagement with our current members, invigorating our Hebrew school experience and effectively adding new young families in our membership campaign. The culture here is very informal, super friendly, unpretentious and very haimish.
Specifically our main pillars of action:
1. Engagement of members - casual events that bring our community together: Shabbat under the stars, casual shabbatot (our Cantor has created about 30 Erev Shabbat services where we chant our prayers to the music of various rock stars, and Broadway shows etc), game nights, guest author events, barbecues, and our purim carnival, just to name a few.
We will work with our new Rabbi, cultivating ideas on outreach to get more "Jews in our pews", but we believe that by leading creative, inspirational services with meaningful, heartfelt sermons that leave us intellectually fulfilled and energized is a major key.
2. Hebrew school engagement- we recently aligned with a neighboring congregation to have our kids attend classes with a larger community. Our shul has always been extremely proud of the extent and depth of the prayers and services that our B'nai Mitzvah students lead. We are looking to continue in that direction and are looking for a Rabbi to maintain that high standard.
3. Membership growth. - We have been developing a new marketing campaign that has begun to improve the number of member families, including those with children of Hebrew school age or pre-Hebrew school age. It is of the utmost importance that our new Rabbi engages with young prospective families to attract them to our congregation.