Big in the 60s — meet the new Progressive rabbi
IN THE words of Gershon Silins, the three Liberal congregations he serves now have the benefit of a “freshly ordained rabbi with 30 years’ experience”.
For the Chicago-born minister, who describes himself as in his 60s, is among the latest graduates from the five-year rabbinical course at Leo Baeck College.
After a cantorial career which had taken him to Toronto, New York, New Jersey, Berlin and Amsterdam, Rabbi Silins came to the UK in 2011 to join his partner Deborah Lynn Steinberg, who was professor of gender, culture and media studies at the University of Warwick. There was then only one other “credentialled cantor” within the Liberal and Reform movements — he is pleased to report that there are now four.
He was grateful for the warm welcome he received within Liberal Judaism, which provided a bursary for his studies — and also for the support he received from the movement after Professor Steinberg died in early 2017.
But he found that although congregants understood what a cantor does, the role did not have the recognition it enjoyed in America and Canada. “It left me as something of an outlier,” he recalled. “In addition, I wanted to study in a different way and immerse myself in Jewish texts.”
He “loved” the Leo Baeck course and believes his rabbinic qualification has changed the way he is perceived. “People invest something in the competence and ethical commitment of the rabbi.”
In his ordination address, he observed that his middle years at the college “are linked in memory to Professor Steinberg and her illness, decline and death. Deborah had strongly encouraged me to pursue rabbinic ordination. I feel her presence here today.
“And the college was unfailingly supportive of my continuing as a student, despite the barriers that were occasioned by Deborah’s increasing needs. I will never forget the kindness of the college administration and faculty during that period.”
He regularly visits the small Liberal communities in Lincolnshire, Stevenage and Norwich to officiate at services, undertake pastoral duties and be involved in special events.
The latest Leo Baeck graduates also include Rabbi Zahavit Shalev, who has run the conversion course at Masorti’s New North London Synagogue in Finchley since the birth of her eldest child 15 years ago — and been a member of its ministerial team for the past seven years.
Her involvement at the shul began more than 20 years ago as a founder of Assif, a traditional chavurah which is now one of the NNLS minyanim.
Completing the cohort are rabbis Daniela Touati and Igor Zinkov. The former will be working in Lyon as
France’s fourth female rabbi.
Being a cantor left me as something of an outlier in the UK’