From the Search Committee

Dear shul-goers of America,

As you know, the Young Israel of Brooktown, MA is looking for a new rabbi. Our current marah d’asra is making aliyah after nearly 30 years of dedicated service to the community. We have an active search committee and we know these searches take time.  If you have smicha from a real Modern Orthodox yeshiva (not the one we excluded from the list), let us know.

You will need to be very frum and learned in all matters of Jewish law, but very open minded and university educated — with a keen sense of 3000 years of Jewish history and be able to apply it critically to current affairs.  You will be expected to be fantastic with the kids and elderly, be able to relate to the young married couples and those with teenage kids, and especially with the wealthy local donors — spend more time with them. We have many needy people  here too, so don’t just focus on the big donors. It’s a physically demanding job, so even though we expect you to attend every minyan, and you should consider a gym membership to keep in shape. You will probably have to make time to visit the hospitals, and supervise the local kosher establishments, but please always be available in your office for meetings at any time of the day or night. You should be very pro-Israel, but not so much as to make Aliyah yourself, ‘cuz then we’d be right back here in the same place looking for a new guy again.

When we set up these criteria  we thought it would be very difficult to find anyone who fits the bill. However we have been overwhelmed with thousands of letters of recommendations and applications-by-proxy by shul-goers across the country.  After a few awkward phone calls we realized we need to send this message to you:

Stop sending us the name of your Rabbis without their permission.

Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to reach out to a Rabbi somewhere asking when he’d like to visit Brooktown, MA only to find out that he never applied for the position? If you have a problem with your rabbi, talk to him, or to the president, or to someone in your shul, but don’t pawn him off on us. You should see the magnificent cover letters and resumes with glowing reviews for dozens of Rabbis so far, and most of them were made up by disgruntled, sneaky congregants. Stop it. We only want to interview Rabbis who are really looking for a job. If you are not looking for a job, but we contact you anyways, well I guess it’s a message.

Sincerely,

The Search Committee

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