By Zach Crizer

By Marcia Caller Jaffe

Funded by The Russell Berrie Foundation, Atra's Northern New Jersey (re)Design Fellowship aims to help local spiritual leaders innovate with new skills and strengthen connections among each other.

By Philisa Cramer

New Report from Atra shows that young people want relationships with rabbis who accept them for who they are and how they want to be Jewish.

Most survey respondents say having a relationship with a rabbi important, half want to be more connected to Judaism.

A new report from Atra shows that young people want relationships with rabbis who accept them for who they are and how they want to be Jewish. Young American Jews want more experiences with rabbis because those interactions help them feel more spiritually connected and more connected to a Jewish community, says a new report released today from Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation.

Rabbi Jeremy Schneider, of Temple Kol Ami, and Rabbi Cookie Lea Olshein, senior rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Tempe share their personal experiences and learnings as alumni of Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation as the organization announces its new name and plans for growth. 

Atra is also trying to understand where the gaps are in training, especially for more experienced rabbis who are not recent seminary graduates.

As more people turn to rabbis for spiritual leadership, new funding positions Atra to help more rabbis engage people in meaningful Jewish life.

CRI is proud to announce the addition of Dr. Rebekah Tokatlilar as our inaugural Chief Program Officer. In this role, Dr. Tokatlilar will join Executive Director Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein in supporting CRI’s dramatic growth as the Center implements its Strategic Plan.

American rabbi Shira Koch Epstein is an expert in the field of Jewish peoplehood. As the executive director of the startup The Center for Rabbinic Innovation, she helps train Jewish clergy and spiritual leaders to meet the needs of contemporary Jewish communities, “especially those who might otherwise sit at the margins of Jewish life, which is potentially a majority of people who identify as Jews,” she described over the phone. She was interviewed by JTA while attending the Z3 2021 Futures Workshop.

The Center for Rabbinic Innovation, has named six clergy to a new, mid-career fellowship in which they will seek to engage members of the Jewish community in new or expanded initiatives that don’t use a traditional synagogue membership model, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, the group’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

(JTA) — On March 13, nearly a year to the day after Temple Beth El of Charlotte, North Carolina, closed due to COVID-19, Rabbi Dusty Klass gathered the congregation’s 900 households for a shared — albeit remote — Jewish experience.

The Center for Rabbinic Innovation (CRI), a project of the Office of Innovation, has named eight spiritual leaders to its newest class of Fellowship for Rabbinic Entrepreneurs, Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, CRI’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein is now at the helm of the project that has grown out of the Fellowship for Rabbinic Entrepreneurs, originally founded by Rabbi Daniel Smokler, Chief Innovation Officer at Hillel International. The Center for Rabbinic Innovation helps rabbis answer tough questions about the future of Jewish community: How and what is Judaism even going to be? What is a rabbi for, as society changes? As financial models shift, how can I make a living? Every 50 to 100 years, the Jewish community experiences major shifts in how it organizes itself, she said. Such changes were happening even before the coronavirus pandemic hit.