When Rabbi Lewis Kamrass, the senior rabbi of Wise Temple, decided he was ready to retire at the end of a 40-year tenure, he wanted to avoid leaving the congregation – the largest in Cincinnati – in a lurch.
“I wanted to [retire] in a way that was planful and thoughtful, because it’s really how we’ve worked for a number of years,” Kamrass said. “What mattered to me was that there wouldn’t be hiccups.”
So Wise is doing something unusual as it transitions to a new senior rabbi: In Kamrass’ last year on the job, he is overlapping with, and helping to train in, Rabbi Neil Hirsch – who will become the new senior rabbi on June 1, 2025, having joined Wise earlier this July.
In the meantime, Hirsch, who comes to Cincinnati from a congregation in the Berkshires, has the title “Senior Rabbi Successor.”
The transition is not only a generational change for Wise Temple, but an opportunity of a lifetime for Hirsch, who steps into a lineage of rabbis dating back to Isaac Mayer Wise, a founder of the modern Reform movement. Becoming senior rabbi at Wise is practically a lifetime appointment.
“They are big shoes to fill, especially [considering] the current senior rabbi, his 40 year tenure, and his accomplishments in those 40 years,” Hirsch said. “Rabbi Kamrass is known as a ‘rabbi’s rabbi,’ and in our building a relationship already…not only am I honored and humbled to get to serve Wise Temple, but to come and lead with Rabbi Kamrass.”
The fellowship of the rabbinate
To drive home the point of the senior rabbi successor model – that Kamrass and Hirsch are partners in leading Wise for the next year – the two rabbis have made a point of appearing together in public as often as possible.
That meant Youtube videos introducing Hirsh to the congregation were done together (titled “Rabbi to rabbi”), and the rabbis did a joint interview with Cincy Jewfolk about the leadership transition, how both view the job of rabbis today, and Kamrass’ retirement after unexpectedly making a home in Cincinnati.
“I never intended to stay in Cincinnati past ordination,” said Kamrass, who was ordained at the Cincinnati campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. “I never intended to stay in Cincinnati for a lifetime. And it became home – we raised our children and our family, not only here in the city, but in the congregation, and my adult children and our grandchildren are part of it.”
While he is deeply proud of his career, Kamrass is also ready for retirement, where he can just be one of the congregants and enjoy what Wise Temple has to offer – much of which are the fruits of his labor.
“It will be nice to sit in the congregation and just appreciate what’s in the moment, and not have to be thinking about everything that goes into the planning, and everything that goes in the follow up,” he said. “I’m looking forward to that headspace.”
Though retirement is not so simple for rabbis (who are often called back to work by virtue of the many relationships built up over a lifetime), Kamrass plans to keep busy with plenty of hobbies.
“I have a very long to-do list of things that I simply didn’t have the time or the space to do – and while I have no regrets about that, I see this as a new chapter for me,” he said.
But all of that will come next year. In the meantime, Kamrass is excited about helping Hirsch take the reins at Wise.
Likewise, Hirsch is already learning from the elder rabbi, quoting Kamrass as saying, “We rabbis are stewards of our congregations – the congregation is not ours,” when asked how he’s approaching his role at Wise.
Hirsch comes to Wise after serving the Hevreh of Southern Berkshire for almost a decade. There, he was involved in a variety of synagogue initiatives, including starting a childcare program to help parents, and working on local housing for immigrants.
Hirsch is hesitant to say what ideas he has for initiatives at Wise. For one, he’s still new to Wise, but mainly, Hirsch doesn’t think his role is to suddenly come in with his own vision and make the synagogue follow.
“Any sort of planning like that needs to be co-created with the staff and congregation,” he said.
Instead, Hirsch follows what he calls a “ready, set, go” plan. “Ready” involves really getting to know congregants and the synagogue, how things operate, and listening to what their needs may be. “Set” is putting together a plan to address those needs, and workshopping the plan with the congregation. “Go,” of course, is enacting the plan.
That’s how the Berkshires childcare program came about.
“One of the things that I began to hear, especially from congregants who were raising children in the Berkshires, who were trying to make their careers work, was that we were living in a childcare desert,” Hirsch said.
“That was the biggest impediment to them being successful. And as we explored this more, we realized that the congregation had both the facilities, the physical plant, and the faculty – the ability to open up an early childhood center. And so that became a major initiative of the congregation.”
But any work depends, first and foremost, on building relationships with the congregation, listening to the Wise community, and asking any questions he has about how Wise operates.
During this year of transition, “the life of the congregation is going to keep on ticking as well,” Hirsch said.
While he is having small group meetings to get to know congregants, he is also “beginning to show up for congregants when it’s needed. One of my mentors always said that 90% of the rabbinate is showing up, and this congregation has had a rabbi who has shown up for them for 40 years.”
Hirsch plans to bring that same dedication to Wise, he said. His concept of the rabbinate is closely tied to the Jewish concept of “chesed,” often translated as “lovingkindness,” which Hirsch understands as being “care.”
“Care is both a value and a practice,” he said. “We know it when we feel it, when we sense it in our kishkes, but care is also something that we show and express towards others.”
In the multifaceted role of rabbi – ranging from nonprofit executive to pastoral care worker to Jewish educator to public Jewish advocate – Hirsch feels guided by a core question: “What’s the caring thing to do?” he said. “If we can answer that question, that often informs a lot of the next action steps.”
For Kamrass, reflecting on the rabbinate after four decades, he sees the job as being, yes, one with many roles, but with a common thread.
“So many people talk about how difficult the rabbinate is, because we are generalists in a world where there are no more generalists,” he said.
“But you bring your whole self [to every role], you don’t compartmentalize yourself as you do that,” Kamrass said. “It’s an incredible gift to go to work every day. And it’s not just a job, in the sense that you’re called to it. And you’re called to bring the fullness of yourself to each of the little pieces of what you’re doing in that moment.”
Testing a unique transition model
The senior rabbi successor model is rarely seen among synagogues, and Wise Temple had few real-life examples to reference.
“We definitely did not find other places” where this kind of transition happened, said Gayle Warm, president of the board at Wise. “We did rely on our consultants who told us it has happened — [but it’s] definitely not the norm.”
Still, choosing this way to navigate Kamrass’ retirement was an easy choice, considering the alternatives.
Synagogues typically have two ways to approach a senior rabbi transition, though each comes with a set of risks:
A congregation might hire a new senior rabbi who starts directly after the old rabbi retires. But such quick change can be jarring to the synagogue community, and in a worst case scenario, the synagogue and new senior rabbi suddenly discover they aren’t a match.
Another option is hiring an interim rabbi to hold down the fort while a congregation takes its time searching for the right senior rabbi candidate. But that’s not ideal either.
“When you do that, you lose some time – not just that [interim] year, but you lose the time when the outgoing rabbi announces” their retirement, Kamrass said.
“You still lose the capacity for fostering relationships long term,” he said. “Then the new rabbi comes in, and it takes a while naturally for that rabbi and the congregants to come to know one another.”
The senior rabbi successor model offered the best of both worlds.
“We thought it would give the congregation time to adjust to a new face, just like what you would get from an interim break,” Warm said.
But it also would “give the candidate the opportunity to learn from Rabbi Kamrass for a year, and to learn the congregation, without having to be the senior leader from minute one,” she said.
Key to the model was preparation: The Wise board spent time reflecting on the synagogue’s identity and running small group reflections with congregants to refine a description of its ideal next senior rabbi. Doing so meant a clearer focus for the search committee and the board.
“We went into it knowing if we don’t find the right person, we won’t make a hire,” Warm said. “If we had to, we would find an interim or figure out another plan.”
But Hirsch “checked off all of the boxes that we were looking for,” she said. “He’s the right fit for the model, and he’s the right fit for our next senior rabbi.”
For Warm, leading this kind of transition at the board level has been, in a way, deeply personal. She grew up at Wise Temple, and during a decade and a half stint away from Cincinnati, still came back to have Kamrass do baby naming ceremonies for her children.
“This was a huge undertaking to see who would take over from someone who has been in my life since I was 13,” Warm said. “But I just kept focused on what was best for the congregation and put up faith in the people that are around me. And it was the right move.”
It’s emblematic of the unique role that rabbis have, and the personal connections they build during long careers.
“I don’t think a lot of places have had rabbis for 40 years…just within the Reform movement,” Warm said. “It’s unique to have even had someone go from an assistant to senior [rabbi] in the way that [Kamrass] did. And so it’s a big deal for us to try to do this. We knew we had kind of one shot to do it.”
One month into Hirsch’s time at Wise, Warm and other congregants are feeling good about the transition model, and about Hirsch becoming senior rabbi.
“More than one person has said to him, ‘We do know you have big shoes to fill. But we’re excited to watch you fill your own’…I think that does say exactly what we were trying to do,” Warm said.
“We want you to learn who we are, obviously and how we function. But then we want to be led by you, Rabbi Hirsch, not, you know, [a] new Rabbi Kamrass,” she said.
