Rabbi Rick Jacobs is incoming presidentof the Union for Reform Judaism, the congregational arm of the
Reform Jewish Movement in North America.
A longtime and devoted creative change agent, Rabbi Jacobs
spent 20 years as a dynamic, visionary spiritual leader at Westchester Reform
Temple (WRT) in Scarsdale, New York.
During his tenure, he reshaped communal worship, transformed the
congregation into a community of lifelong learners, and strengthened the synagogue's
commitment to vibrancy and inclusion. Under Rabbi Jacobs' leadership, WRT completed a new "green" sanctuary, one of only a
handful of Jewish houses of worship in the nation to carry this designation.
Prior
to his tenure at WRT, Rabbi Jacobs served the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, where
he founded and co-directed the first synagogue-based homeless shelter in New
York City. He was ordained in 1982 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of
Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York, where he received numerous excellence
awards. In 2007, he received an honorary
Doctorate of Divinity, also from HUC-JIR. Deeply committed to the State of
Israel, Rabbi Jacobs has studied for two decades at Jerusalem's Shalom Hartman
Institute, where
he is now a senior rabbinic fellow.
Rabbi
Jacobs is a product of the Reform Movement, and has held numerous leadership
posts within the URJ, the CCAR, ARZA and WUPJ.
He also has served on the boards
of Jewish organizations in the
community-at-large, including American Jewish World Service, UJA-Federation of
New York, and, since its inception in 1996, Synagogue 2000 and its successor,
Synagogue 3000.
Dedicated
to global social justice issues, Rabbi Jacobs was part of a delegation that
assessed disaster response following Haiti's devastating earthquake in
2010. He also observed the plight of Darfur
refugees as part of an international humanitarian mission to the Chad-Darfur
border area in 2005, and in 2009, participated in an annual conference of
Muslim and Christian leaders designed to build understanding between the West
and the Muslim world.
Rabbi
Jacobs lives in Scarsdale with his wife, Susan K. Freedman, and their three
children.
The following are principles that have guided our work at WRT over these past fourteen years. I share them with the hope that they may prove helpful to others at various stages of synagogue growth and change.
For decades, Jewish power and leadership rested in federations. Synagogues with their focus on prayer and study were widely viewed as not nearly as important as federations' work of saving and protecting our people. But so much has changed over the past ten years.
Three days after Yom Kippur, I was in the African nation of Chad, meeting with refugees who had survived the genocide across the border in the Darfur region of Sudan.
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