Rabbi: People are looking for 'a spiritual experience'

Jul. 18--Rabbi Arthur Stern comes to Congregation Temple Israel in Springfield at a momentous time.

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Stern, 61, succeeds Rabbi Emeritus Barry Marks, the only rabbi two generations of Jews attending the temple in the Historic Westside neighborhood have known.

Temple Israel, founded in 1957 with the merger of Congregation B'nai Abraham, also recently decided to shed its "conservative" identity and become a "non-affiliated" synagogue.

The challenge, said Stern, is to create a religious and spiritual experience that resonates for people so they want to be part of a community and a congregation.

"We have to be more inclusive than exclusive," Stern said, during a recent interview in his office at Temple Israel. "From a spirituality standpoint, we need to accept people and bring them religion where they're at rather than tell them where they should be.

"We need to listen to what people are saying and what they want."

Temple Israel is Stern's first pulpit assignment since he graduated from from the Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles, a trans-denominational seminary located on the campus of UCLA, and was ordained in May.

Stern, a native of the Bronx who grew up in Connecticut, was a successful businessman in the insurance world with Prudential and Guardian, from which he will retire next year.

Stern was working at a synagogue internship in L.A. when he read about the opening at Temple Israel.

"It was like a bell that went off in my head," Stern said. "They were trying to do the things I was really good at and I know pretty well, move the synagogue to a more multi-denominational or post-denominational (setting). I think 10 years from now, you're not going to have congregational synagogues. You'll have Orthodox and everybody else.

"A number of synagogues are beginning to de-affiliate with the movements because they don't want to be tied to that and because, I think, religion is becoming less relevant and spirituality is becoming more relevant. I think people are looking for much more of a spiritual experience."

'A different path'

Barry Seidman, a Springfield businessman who led the committee to search for a new rabbi, said Temple Israel held congregational meetings, met with a consultant and various focus groups to try beginning "turning out a different path."

"Today is not the same as it was 40, 30, 20, 10 years ago," Seidman said. "What appealed to us about Rabbi Stern in our conversations with him is that he's a person who not only has a vision to help us do things differently, but actually had the interest and desire to work with us to determine a different course for our congregation.

"He was looking for the right fit, as we were."

Stern said at one point in his life that he "lost everything" to alcohol and drug addiction and wound up in a homeless shelter in Minneapolis. To earn his room and board, Stern worked in the shelter's food center which served over 4,000 meals a week and the shelter's housekeeping department.

After putting his life back together, Stern earned his master of business administration degree from the University of St. Thomas. He transferred to the west coast and while still working in the insurance business, he decided to pursue a master's degree in spiritual psychology. He followed up by earning a doctorate in psychology which has allowed him to do counseling and therapy.

Several years after earning his doctorate, Stern said he was weighing his next educational venture "when this voice came into my head and said, 'why don't you go be a rabbi?'" he recalled. "I thought, holy smokes, a rabbi? That wasn't even on my radar screen.

"When you have a master's degree in spiritual psychology, you begin to pay attention to those voices inside and the guidance that you're getting from God."

During his addiction, Stern admitted he "lost contact with God. You can't have a strong bond and a strong relationship with God if you're drinking and drugging all the time."

Stern started to go back to synagogue for High Holy Days, though he didn't consider himself a religious Jew.

"That's why rabbinical school came as a shock to me," he said. "Getting sober, gaining recovery, getting a solid spiritual foundation--after doing all of that, then I was open to the voice that came into my head. I think if that voice would have come into my head 10 or 15 years earlier, I never would have had heard it. I think God knew the exact time to put that in my head."

Lighting a fire

Stern said the "exclusion" of people should not include couples in an interfaith marriage, long a knotty question for rabbis.

Stern, who said he would have no problem performing an interfaith wedding, said "we need to embrace things (like interfaith marriage). What we have a responsibility to do is to share with that person who is non-Jewish what we're all about. If they're interested and we light a fire inside of them, I think that'd be great. Maybe they'll practice a Jewish lifestyle.

"One of the goals as rabbis that we should have is to ignite the fire in people to just be a little more Jewish today than they were yesterday. If we can ignite that part of their soul, then we're doing our job."

Stern said he has been meeting with Marks, who came to Temple Israel in 1973 before officially retiring June 30, via Zoom the last couple of months.

"Rabbi Marks is amazing and he's really loved by the community," Stern said. "He's been giving me information about the synagogue and trying to make a smooth transition. He's been so gracious and such a good mentor for me."

Marks, a First Citizen Award winner, said Stern "has an impressive array of talents and a tremendous background and I am there for him as he needs to be introduced to the community and familiarized with it. I welcome him and support him."

Seidman said there is an arrangement that when a rabbi retires and intends to stay in the community, that he or she will leave temporarily as the new rabbi adjusts. Seidman said Marks had been prepared to do that and that the candidates in their interviews had asked about that arrangement.

"When Rabbi Stern asked about Rabbi Marks and we told him that he would be leaving town, he said 'Why? Why would I want him to leave? He's been doing this for 47 years. I'm brand new,'" Seidman recalled. "To us, this was a Rabbi Marks type of response. The sincerity of wanting to help someone and not looking at Rabbi Marks as a potential problem, but as an asset was very telling to us.

"People love Rabbi Marks' genuineness and his sincerity and we feel in Rabbi Stern we have found someone who is genuine and sincere. He may be doing things differently than Rabbi Marks. He may come from a different approach than Rabbi Marks does, but the genuineness and sincerity is the same."

Contact Steven Spearie: 622-1788, [email protected], twitter.com/stevenspearie.

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