← Towards a Spiritual Humanistic Judaism · Part IV — Carrying the work
The account of authority given in the previous chapter leaves one case unresolved, and it is the hardest one. If authority is horizontal and no voice holds a veto, what is a rabbi?
In Spiritual Humanistic Judaism the rabbinate is neither a supernatural office nor simply a form of employment. A synagogue is an organisation and a rabbi is one of its employees, but neither can be understood adequately through those categories alone. The kehillá is a religious and spiritual community within the evolving civilisation of the Jewish people, and the relationship between rabbi and congregation should therefore be understood as a brit: a covenant of mutual responsibility directed towards a shared sacred purpose. This is Waxman’s covenantal community applied to its own leadership.
The rabbi does not possess an authority derived from supernatural revelation, nor represent a divine will inaccessible to other people. Rabbinic authority arises from Jewish learning, practical experience, ethical integrity, cultivated wisdom and the trust established through service. A rabbi may therefore be recognised as an authority without being in authority: their contribution deserves particular attention, and it does not cancel the experience, conscience or responsibility of the community. Nor does the office prescribe a theology. Because God is optional within this framework, a rabbi serving a Spiritual Humanistic kehillá may hold any of the accounts set out in Chapter 2; what the role requires is competence, integrity and a covenant, not a metaphysics.
The primary task is not to practise Judaism on behalf of otherwise passive congregants. It is to help people become more capable participants in Jewish life. The rabbi teaches Hebrew, history, texts, ritual and ethical traditions so that members of the community can study, question, interpret, lead and practise for themselves. This is one of Kaplan’s most important contributions to the modern rabbinate: the rabbi becomes a teacher and guide within an evolving religious civilisation rather than the guardian of an unchanging revelation. It follows directly from the argument of Chapter 9, that if composing is an obligation rather than a permission it cannot belong to the clergy alone. A rabbi who is the only person in the community able to write a blessing has not discharged that obligation but monopolised it. Rabbinic success should therefore be measured partly by the growth of the community’s Jewish knowledge, confidence and participation — by how many other teachers the rabbi has produced.
The rabbi is also a maker and interpreter of Jewish meaning. Through liturgy, ritual, teaching, music, sacred time and the marking of life’s transitions, the rabbi helps inherited forms speak within contemporary experience. This work requires both continuity and honesty, and the two failures are symmetrical: a Spiritual Humanistic rabbi should neither discard Jewish forms simply because their inherited explanations are supernatural, nor repeat theological claims the community cannot sincerely affirm. The task is to understand what a practice has carried, identify what remains life-enhancing and reconstruct it without pretence — the six tests of Chapter 7 applied by the person best placed to study the sources. The rabbi helps the community inherit before it reconstructs, and reconstruct so that it can continue to inherit.
In Schulweis’s language the rabbi might embody the predicates of Godliness. On the account given in Chapter 2 they are the predicates of holiness: compassion, justice, courage, learning, healing, gratitude, dignity, responsibility and peace. The rabbi does not bring a separate divine presence into the community. Presence of this kind arises between people, through intentional connection: when mourners are accompanied, students are guided towards b’mitzvá, excluded people find their voices, difficult truths are spoken with care, and inherited rituals gather a room into shared attention. The rabbi helps create the conditions in which it may emerge, and neither possesses nor controls it.
This also shapes the prophetic role. A rabbi should be capable of challenging prejudice, injustice and complacency, and of moving a community beyond the limits of its present comfort. Prophetic leadership is not a licence for self-righteousness or domination. Moral conviction must remain answerable to evidence, dialogue, human consequences and the dignity of those involved — which is the ethical constitution applied to the person best placed to evade it. The rabbi’s task is not to announce the verdict of a higher authority but to cultivate conscience, direct moral attention and help the community examine how its choices affect living beings. The discipline required is the one set out in Chapter 8: anger at injustice can be morally clarifying, and it serves protection and repair rather than cruelty or dehumanisation only while it remains accountable to the justice it pursues.
Pastoral care is equally central, and cannot be delegated. A rabbi accompanies people through love, grief, illness, conflict, transition and celebration, and this work expresses raḥamim and ḥesed: compassion, loyalty, reliability and care sustained over time. But pastoral responsibility must not be transferred entirely to the rabbi, and the argument of Chapter 11 forbids it. If what a non-supernatural Judaism puts underneath bereavement is a room rather than an explanation, then visiting the sick, comforting mourners, welcoming strangers and supporting vulnerable people are obligations of the whole kehillá. Kaddish requires nine others, not one professional. A healthy rabbi does not replace communal responsibility; they teach, model and organise it.
A Spiritual Humanistic understanding of the rabbinate must also reject the fantasy of the endlessly available, universally gifted rabbi. No person can excel simultaneously as scholar, counsellor, administrator, preacher, ritual leader, teacher, activist, mediator and intimate companion to every congregant. The expectation that a rabbi must embody unconditional love, satisfy every personal need and remain perpetually accessible turns spiritual leadership into an impossible performance. Rabbis require boundaries, privacy, family life, collegial support, study, reflection and renewal. These are not concessions to human weakness. They are necessary conditions for sustained attention, ethical judgement and responsible service — and the constitution’s commitment to anavah, that persons take their rightful space while neither dominating nor disappearing from responsibility, applies to the rabbi in both directions.
Accountability nevertheless remains indispensable. Rabbis will make mistakes, fail to communicate adequately and sometimes misuse authority. A covenantal relationship must therefore include din, honest judgement, and hochéaḥ tochíaḥ, loving rebuke. Evaluation should not become a popularity contest or a collection of anonymous grievances. It should be a reciprocal process through which rabbi and congregation examine whether their relationship and shared institutions are advancing their stated purposes. The rabbi must be willing to listen, respond and undertake teshuvá; the congregation must be willing to examine its own conduct rather than locating every systemic failure in one individual.
The values guiding the rabbi must also guide the community: kavod, mutual dignity; brit, reciprocal commitment; avodá, sacred service; ḥesed, reliability and loyalty; raḥamim, compassion; din, accountability; tocheḥá, honest correction; ahavá, care and fidelity; and tsedek, fairness and justice. These need not be grounded in tzelem Elohim as a metaphysical claim. Their authority arises from shared humanity: every person has needs, vulnerability, agency and the capacity to suffer and to flourish. No title — rabbi, president, board member or congregant — confers greater human worth.
That refusal is the substitution of Chapter 2 performed on anthropology rather than on theology. Tzelem Elohim locates human dignity in a divine original and therefore makes dignity depend on the noun; the account offered here locates it in what can be observed of persons and what they can testify to about their own treatment, which is the first and third of the four sources set out in Chapter 7. Dignity so grounded is not weaker than the inherited formula. It is harder to withdraw, because it does not depend on anyone’s theology remaining intact.
Spiritual Humanistic Judaism therefore understands the rabbi as a learned participant in the life of the Jewish people: a teacher who creates other teachers, a ritual leader who makes inherited forms intelligible, a pastoral presence who strengthens communal care, a moral voice who cultivates responsibility, and a partner who helps the kehillá pursue sheleymut and shalom. The weekday test applies here as everywhere. Are there more people able to lead than there were a year ago? Did anyone receive accompaniment who would otherwise have been left alone? Was a difficult truth spoken, and did the community survive hearing it? The quality of a rabbi is demonstrated not through supernatural status, charisma or institutional power, but through what their presence enables people and communities to become.