Rabbi Goldstein holds photographs from her life as a pinoeering rabbi. (Right: Ordination class at Hebrew Union College, May 1983; Left: First appearance at Holy Blossom Temple, November 1983.
education and Jewish life not only relevant but affordable ? Third, they will be at home using social media, ChatGPT and AI and that will affect their teaching and preaching. How will they retain their integrity, their scholarship, and their rigour when the internet makes it so easy to cut and paste someone else’s work, and ChatGPT makes it so easy for a comput- er to write your sermon? How will they use social media so that it doesn’t cut off an older generation who do not rely on it, and so that it doesn’t isolate people further and deter them from coming together in person? And fourth, it was once clear that a rabbi teaches Torah, but today the how we teach Torah has radically changed. From Zoom to reading the Purim megillah in bars, the next generation of rabbis will have to find new ways to engage people. All we had to do in the old days was show up at the synagogue. Yes, we had to invent new programs and reinvent the wheel several times, but there was still an expectation that Jews would join that synagogue and turn that wheel. Judaism is now global, sophisticated and sensitive to gender and race. Its new rabbis are as well, and the real test will be if they can move their congregations and organiza- tions forward on this. And finally, rabbis used to think of them-
selves—and their families—as klei kodesh or holy vessels. We used to see ourselves as channels for other people’s Judaism. Not so anymore. The new generation of rabbis wants to empower people, not overpower them. They don’t want to be the professionals who “Jew it for you.” Rabbis used to be married twice—once to their spouse and once to their congrega- tion. Not so anymore. The new generation of rabbis demands healthy private lives and clear boundaries. The rabbi’s spouse usually also has a career and the traditional reb- betzin is gone. So this last challenge is for us in the Jewish community: are we ready and prepared for this new rabbi? Once I retire, I will proudly remember when I was that “fighting-for-recogni- tion-and-change” rabbi. I look forward now to hopefully being the voice of a seasoned elder. My life has been immeasurably rich and full as a rabbi in Toronto, and I thank the Holy One for all the people whose lives I have touched and whose lives have touched mine, all the Torah I’ve been blessed to teach, and all the challenges I was strong enough to meet. n Rabbi Elyse Goldstein is the founding rabbi of City Shul in Toronto. She will retire in June 2024.
There have been seismic changes in Jewish demographics and Jewish identity over the past 40 years. The Reform rabbinate in Can- ada is a very traditional one, still eschewing the American patrilineal decision which recognized children with Jewish fathers as Jews. Most Canadian Reform rabbis do not officiate at interfaith weddings. The first challenge is: will the new gen- eration of Reform rabbis coming to serve in Toronto be attracted to that traditional stance, or will they contest it? Will they come to sustain it and adopt it as their own, or will they come to modify it and alter it? What will be the majority rabbinic culture on these important questions of Jewish status in the future? Second, new thinking about Israel and its place in the Diaspora Jewish identity, Jewish education, and the economics of living a Jewish life will shape the next generation of rabbis. They are entering a community fractured over Israel-Palestine issues, a community not sure of the worth of joining organized re- ligious institutions, and a tired, working com- munity that does not have time to volunteer. How will they make ‘teams’ to support their work so they aren’t doing it all alone? How will they approach the multiplicity of narratives in the global Jewish community around Israel? And how will they make Jewish
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