Temple Chai welcomes new associate rabbi

Rabbi Barry Cohen is the new associate rabbi at Temple Chai, a Reform Jewish congregation in Long Grove. Cohen, who has been a rabbi for 14 years, will work closely with Rabbi Stephen Hart, the temple’s rabbi for over 20 years.

Cohen believes that “Reform Judaism today is not your father’s or your grandfather’s Reform Judaism.”

Reform “implies change”, said Cohen, and Reform Judaism is currently in a “state of transformation.”

Reform Jews today are ideologically diverse, and Reform congregants have contrasting secular and traditional upbringings, he said. Cohen believes that Reform Judaism must “re-identify itself” in order to find and define its “essence.”

Cohen grew up in Memphis, Tenn. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. While at Michigan, he decided that he wanted a career where he could study, teach, and write; where he could continue to expand his strong Jewish identity; and where he would never be bored.

So, he chose to become a rabbi, and he has never looked back.

Cohen began his rabbinical career as an assistant rabbi at Temple Beth Israel in Phoenix, Ariz., where he spent two years. He then became a journalist for four years, working for the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. His next stop was Oklahoma City, where he was a solo rabbi at Temple B’nai Israel.

He and his wife, Jennifer, and their 7-year-old twins, Ethan and Gabriella, look forward to an excellent relationship with Temple Chai and Chicagoland. He feels privileged to be working with Rabbi Hart, Cantor Scott Simon, and executive director Larry Glickman, who have created and maintained a cutting edge congregation, where experimentation thrives and where the envelope is continually pushed.

Cohen believes that today’s Reform Jews have the freedom to define their own Jewish identity, but he maintains that Reform Judaism still has and must continue to have “core principles.” For Rabbi Cohen these principles include: embracing pluralism, that is, accepting fully that there are different and valid concepts of Judaism that Reform Jews might not agree with; recognizing the equality of men and women in the clergy and in religious observances; and opening our congregations to all Jews regardless of sexual orientation.

Rabbi Cohen has learned from experience that all synagogue or temple staff including the rabbi, the cantor, the executive director and the teachers, as well as the lay leadership, must work as a cohesive team to identify the diverse and changing needs of a temple’s congregants and the Jewish community which the temple serves. Cohen believes that once these specific needs or “wants” are identified, the temple’s staff and lay leaders must develop a plan to respond to them. The plan must then be continually critiqued to determine whether and to what degree it is succeeding.

Cohen also has learned that he has to be patient while the plan is unfolding. He understands that compromises have to be made between an abstract vision of an ideal result and what will actually work in a congregation or community. One of Cohen’s goals is to emphasize ongoing social action activities for Temple Chai members.

Rabbi Cohen is concerned that some Reform congregations are slow to address the fact that many Jews today may express little or no interest in a structured, synagogue oriented religion. Cohen believes that a rabbi should not judge those Jews negatively or ignore them. Rather, a rabbi together with the temple’s staff should reach out to them and attempt to involve them in the life of the synagogue or temple. Nonetheless, he realizes that some Jews, while identifying themselves as Jewish, will continue to prefer a non-structured and non-labeled form of Judaism. Their choice should be respected, he said.

It is an ongoing challenge, said Cohen, to successfully address the specific concerns of individual congregants. He believes that he will be up to this challenge at Temple Chai. And, all the while, he said, he has to keep the difficult balance between being a rabbi on the one hand, and a husband and father on the other. Rabbi Cohen believes that he will be up to this challenge as well.

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