Rating: 
Summary: This Book Reads as Smoothly as a Well-Written Novel
Review: In this book Steven Fried used his investigative journalistic skill in reporting on the life and world of American Jews. He follows a distinguished rabbi as he finishes his thirty year career in a prominent Jewish congregation in Philadelphia. The account reads as smoothly as a well written novel. Anyone familiar with a church or synagogue will experience a feeling of kinship with the rabbis and their families as the story unfolds. The skillfully drawn portraits of other actors in the drama remind the reader of people familiar in their lives. No one who has served on a pulpit nominating committee or been the object of the committee's investigation can fail to enjoy Temple Har Zion's search for Rabbi Wolpe's successor. The rabbi's devotion to his invalid wife and her determined will to fill her place in life no matter what her physical limitation win the reader's admiration. Both Jews and non Jews will find this an interesting and informative book.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartwarming and Horrifying
Review: THE NEW RABBI gives us an inside look at the rabbinical search process at a notable North American shul. Though the congregation in question is Conservative, the search process described closely parallels the process of my own Reform movement. The emotions, personalities and politics described certainly reflect universal aspects of synagogue life. The book is also in part a meditation on being a rabbi in the North Ameican milieu. His examination of the career of the out-going rabbi, Gerald Wolpe, is both frank and compelling. But while the author spends a great deal of time reflecting on the life of R. Wolpe and on his assistant and potential in-house successor, Jacob Harber, he really concentrates on the congregation's perspective in the search. As a result, we do not get a real sense of what the search process feels like to the applicant rabbis. Harber is, in a sense, drafted by the congregation, so his experience is less than paradigmatic. Perhaps, as a rabbi, I over-identify with that aspect. Still, I wish he had spent some time interviewing the rabbinical candidates for Har Zion to include their POV. Even so, this is a first-rate bit of investigative journalism on a little-know and sensitive aspect of Jewish communal life. While the author writes sympathetically about everyone involves, this work is revealing enough to make me wonder whether he will be welcome back at Har Zion any time soon. The issues that come up in THE NEW RABBI will, at times, seem arcane to someone totally unfamiliar with synaogues. Nevertheless it is well-done and most readable. Most people involved in organized religion of any sort will get something out of it, and it certainly it should be required reading for rabbis and search committees in shuls everywhere.
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