New rabbi happy to be at Naperville's Beth Shalom

During the recent Jewish High Holidays, Judi Newman noticed Rabbi Marc Rudolph celebrating in dance with the synagogue's youngest congregants.

"I'm feeling good about him," said Newman of the new spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville. "It was such a warm and wonderful thing to see him be joyful and dance with the small children."

Rudolph is indeed joyful about the new position he assumed on Sept. 3.

"I like so many parts of my job, it's really hard to pick one out," he said. "I really enjoy fashioning a good sermon. I enjoy teaching. I enjoy meeting folks. I love working with small children."

Rudolph will have an opportunity to do all that and more in leading the 340-family synagogue. The well-established congregation searched 14 months for a new rabbi, while Newman and four other synagogue leaders picked up additional duties.

Newman said they wanted to be sure they had a good fit after the two previous rabbis lasted only three years each.

"Everybody is looking forward to this man being our steady rabbi," she said.

Rudolph said he was attracted by the congregation's active membership and pleased to see it had many young families.

"A wonderful feature of this congregation is that there is energetic and talented lay leadership. That's very important to a rabbi because a rabbi cannot do it alone," he said.

Rudolph's own involvement in congregation life began as an active layman. He worked as a psychotherapist for many years, but taught B' nai Mitzvah students, did Torah readings and helped lead services as a cantor in his synagogue.

After taking professional voice lessons, he began serving as a cantor in other synagogues and was asked to fill in as a spiritual leader for a congregation that was without a rabbi.

When his own rabbi found out how much he was enjoying what he did, she suggested he become a rabbi himself. Rudolph said he had never considered the possibility and simply took her words as a nice compliment. But when he went home and told his wife, Middy Fierro, she had a different reaction.

"The minute he told me, I took it very seriously. It dawned on me that's what he was preparing for," she said. "I really thought that was his calling."

With his wife's encouragement, Rudolph embarked on five years of study at the Academy for Jewish Religion - an independent seminary in New York City - and was ordained in 2004. He spent his first years as a rabbi leading a congregation in Long Meadows, Mass. until it merged with a larger synagogue.

When Rudolph learned of Congregation Beth Shalom, he was looking for a new synagogue to lead. His background as a psychotherapist made him attuned to working with people, but he found his role as a rabbi more satisfying, he said.

"I bring to the role everything I have, all my talents, all my interests," he said. "I also feel like I can touch more people in more ways than I ever did as a psychotherapist."

Rudolph's background in a pluralistic Jewish seminary also fits well with Congregation Beth Shalom, which is independent and does not belong to one of the recognized Jewish denominations, he said.

"In this congregation, we have people of Orthodox backgrounds, Conservative, Reform, Zionists, agnostics, you name it," he said.

The challenges are the same as those of many congregational leaders - educating people to the importance of the synagogue to their lives and of the need to support it financially, he said.

"The synagogue is a place to raise children and to have role models," he said. "We are an institution that will allow people to express themselves in a Jewish way."

Rudolph's duties encompass everything from teaching and preaching to counseling and visiting the sick to conducting weddings, funerals, baby namings, and bar and bat mitzvahs.

He represents the congregation to the larger Naperville community, and seeks to connect it with the larger Jewish community and the state of Israel.

Rudolph, who spent a year studying in Israel in college and has visited there since, said he would like to lead a trip from Congregation Beth Shalom to Israel in the coming years.

"It's an amazing experience to be in the majority, which Jews are not anywhere but in Israel," he said. "Plus, it's a beautiful country."

But for now Rudolph - a native of Scranton, Pa. - said he is happy to be in the Midwest, where he has found the people to be friendly, welcoming and helpful.

His wife, who has been traveling back and forth from Amherst, Mass. while she finishes her psychotherapy practice there, said she will join him full-time in Naperville next year. The couple have two adult sons and a new grandson, Daniel, who lives with his parents in West Hartford, Conn.

Fierro said it will be hard to leave her grandson behind, but she agrees with her husband that Congregation Beth Shalom is the place for them.

"I know for the rabbi, it felt just right," she said. "I felt equally touched."

Rudolph said he hopes to stay until he retires. "It's all in God's hands," he said.