Marcus Foundation Grant Propels ARA’s Growth

The Atlanta Rabbinical Association has received a new three-year grant from the Marcus Foundation that is being touted as giving the 30-year-old organization new energy and a new direction. The grant for the association, which represents about 100 of the city’s rabbis, is designed to broaden their influence in the general community and to enhance the opportunities for further study at Emory University.

The ARA’s president, Rabbi Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai in Sandy Springs, described the funding as transformational.

“The grant is large enough to really transform what we do and how we do it,” Levenberg said. “This is a grant that will help to professionalize the organization, and I think, really prepare us for a new era of leadership in the city.”

The program is formally being launched on Nov. 18 with a day-long Rabbinic and Leadership Conference at Temple Sinai. The program, which has been developed with Emory’s Candler School of Theology, is the first of three such meetings that will take place each year.

The November conference, which is being promoted as helping to build “the future of Jewish leadership,” comes at a time of what the organization describes as “a time of profound change for Jewish communities.”

“This program addresses the growing need for innovative leadership models to support rabbis and nonprofit leaders as they navigate pressing challenges — including declining participation, evolving generational expectations, and financial strain.”

Rabbis will have the opportunity at the conference to hear from Emory experts about how to deal with their increasingly problematic future and help them explore and develop new strategies for enhancing their moral leadership.

Rabbi Levenberg sees the Marcus grant as building on Atlanta’s effective model of uniting civic and business communities with religious leaders to bring about social change.

“I think that it’s a realization that we owe something to the faith leaders of our past to be able to be more engaged in the city than perhaps we have been in the past.”

The foundation for the program was largely created by the work of Rabbi Daniel Dorsch, senior rabbi at Congregation Etz Chaim in Marietta, who completed his two-year term as president of the organization in May of this year.

Much of his work dealt with clarifying how rabbis see their organizations and how it might be repositioned to deal with the many challenges they face today. A pair of rabbinic meetings held in March and April of this year, according to Levenberg, led to a proposal to the Marcus Foundation.

“From those conversations emerged a new mission, a new vision and some new threads,” Levenberg noted. “It became apparent that we are an organization that leads together, learns together, and even leans on each other for support. So, from these meetings the ARA created what’s known as the Now and Next Document. It’s a list of goals to accomplish over the next few years.”

Helping the organization in their effort to clarify their future work has been Rabbi Ira Bedzow, executive director of Emory’s Purpose Project, which is designed to help students sharpen their focus on purpose and meaning in their lives. As an ethicist, who is also affiliated with Emory School of Law, he has often written about how best to approach change.

He believes that trying rather than “being blown over by uncertainty, personal and professional achievements can be realized if one harnesses the winds of change in ways that speak to who you are and what you believe in.”

Under the terms of the new agreement, Rabbinical Association rabbis will be able to access coursework, not only at Emory’s Divinity School but across the university. Credits can be applied toward a master’s degree.

Rabbi Levenberg believes the partnership with Emory will be particularly meaningful for young rabbis who are in the early stages of their career.

“The opportunity is for newer rabbis in Atlanta to be able to enhance their skills by going to Candler. They might be the skills that they didn’t get in seminary, or perhaps the skills that they didn’t realize they would need to be more fluent in in their practice now in Atlanta.”

For the first time in their history, the grant also provides the ARA with formal office space. They will be located at The Dupree in Sandy Springs close to Rabbi Levenberg’s temple offices.

In an effort to further professionalize the work of the organization, the Marcus grant has also provided for an expanded role for the organization’s program and operations manager, Brooke Rosenthal. She is the wife of Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal, senior rabbi of Ahavath Achim Synagogue, who is also a former president of the organization.