ROSH HASHANAH 5783 L’CHAIM
In mid-August, on the final day of Rabbi Bruce Dollin’s tenure as spiritual leader of the Hebrew Educational Alliance, the weather in Denver was rare for this hot and dry summer — cool and rainy — but the rabbi’s mood was anything but gloomy.
Instead, as he gave the Intermountain Jewish News his “exit” interview, Dollin was relaxed and expansive, looking forward, he said, to spending considerably more time with his wife Tamra, his four children and his grandchildren; doing a bit of traveling; studying Jewish texts he loves so much.
He was reflecting, the rabbi added, on his nearly three decades at the helm of the HEA, the region’s largest Conservative congregation, which has grown and changed a great deal since Dollin assumed its pulpit in 1994.
“I loved my job, and I loved it every single day,” he says. “There was not a single day, not a single week, that was not different. Every meeting I had, every pastoral visit or celebration, happy times, sad times — it was always different and interesting. I look back at my 35 years in the rabbinate with a great deal of appreciation and gratitude. I can’t think of doing anything that’s more meaningful and satisfying than being a pulpit rabbi.”
Dollin was born and raised in Albuquerque. His rabbinical career began in 1986 when he graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He spent eight years leading a synagogue in New Jersey during which he helped manage the challenging task of merging it with another congregation, ultimately becoming the spiritual leader of the new entity.
He learned a lot from that transition, Dollin says. It would help him considerably when he began seeking a new pulpit, having grown weary of the fast-paced lifestyle of the East.
He told the IJN in his “entrance” interview in late 1994, “I find myself in a similar situation in terms of transition.” It was a few months after the HEA hired him to serve as its new leader. “But I’ve done it before and I know it can be done.”
The challenges of HEA’s transitions were considerable. The venerable congregation had only recently decided to move from its original location on Denver’s West Side to the growing southeast metro area. A new location had been selected and purchased; a huge building project loomed ahead.
The Alliance’s beloved leader at the time, Rabbi Daniel Goldberger — who, along with Rabbi Manuel Laderman, was one of only two spiritual leaders in the congregation’s history — had just retired.
Perhaps most daunting, the HEA had recently made the momentous decision to affiliate with the United Synagogue of America, officially becoming a Conservative synagogue, after decades of informally defining itself as a “traditional” and modern Orthodox congregation.
In his recent interview, Dollin discusses how he helped navigate those trying waters, the many ways in which the HEA has grown and changed, the challenges currently faced by the Conservative movement and what he sees ahead for American Jewry in general.
IJN: When you and I conducted our interview in 1994, the HEA was in a time of significant transition. Twenty-eight years later, is that transition period over? What did the congregation transition into?
Dollin: In terms of transition, it’s never over. I mean, every single year has been different at the Alliance, every month. You can only imagine the changes that we needed to make during the pandemic, some of the programs that we had to let go.
Back when I first came, the synagogue was quite small. There was extensive involvement from families, because we didn’t have professionalized staffing to do all of this work. A great example of that is the executive director, Neal Price, who’s been my partner for decades.
As we grew, we professionalized more things because we got big, and fast. There was less lay involvement in the detailed running of the synagogue.
And we had to transition in the way we had to rebuild. We had to move across town, build a building and create women’s participation, build a preschool, rebuild the religious school and youth program.
Everything was changing then. The changes were coming a little bit fast and furious at that point.
But we still had to build each and every year. There was board work to do and committee work and fundraising. Essentially, for everything that we did that was new we had to adjust. That’s the same even today — the transitions never end and that’s probably a good thing.
How do you describe your personal role in helping the Alliance through those changes and what grade would you give yourself?
I don’t know if I would have a specific grade. I think I did pretty well. There was a lot of successes at the synagogue. We grew. We drew a lot of people through our doors, so I think my grade is probably decent in steering the ship.
But it wasn’t just me. I had great partners. We had great lay leadership really from the beginning. Gerard Rudofsky was my first president and in a sense he brought me to town. We had a great board. We also had Neal Price and the two of us really had to chart how we were going to get into the future.
That wasn’t easy. There was a lot of anxiety in the organization about what we would look like in the future. I feel like I had a pretty steady hand and kept things focused toward a vision moving forward, but I had a lot of help. [Cantor] Marty Goldstein was my partner in sustaining the services on Saturday morning, which was really a central focus of our synagogue life.
Everybody did their part. I was setting the vision but that vision was being realized by my partners.
What didn’t you expect when you took the reins of the synagogue?
I didn’t expect our growth to be as extensive as it was. I think we went from about 300 families to almost a thousand families. At a certain point, we were growing at a hundred net families a year for several years.
Who could have expected that? There was a lot of anxiety around that as we got bigger and when we moved into the new building.
One of our biggest and most difficult issues was the fact that we had already gone from kind of an Orthodox synagogue, with no women’s participation, to women’s participation in my second year here. But there was virtually no controversy about that. What a huge change for a congregation, but the anxiety level was really quite low.
After we moved into the new building, suddenly people began thinking about what’s going to be the new direction, and they wanted to influence that direction. Our biggest fight was over the selection of the new siddur. We needed a new siddur because the ones that we were using wore out; we had to decide on the what the new one would be.
And there was concern and anxiety about the future direction of the service. I was much less anxious about that because I knew where we were headed. We were going to keep the services traditional, pretty much like it was — much to the dismay of some of our members, but to the great satisfaction of most of our members — and we created a niche, a nice traditional, egalitarian service.
We grew, because that was something that was really needed in the congregation and the synagogue benefited from that.
In reflection, is there anything you would have done differently?
That is a good question. We met with a great deal of success and that required, I think, of me, institution building. I was involved with managing the board and various committees, managing the staff, as we moved all the way through this. We had explosive growth, so there was a lot of institution building and fundraising that I had to focus on.
What I was not able to do, through all these years, was really some deep study — reading, working on my own spiritual life — because I was so busy with the institution itself.
Some of my colleagues would put aside a couple hours a week minimally, and some like daily, to study and read. I never was able to do that because of the work we had to do to keep things moving forward in a big institution. I would say that’s probably a regret.
You only have enough bandwidth for a certain number of things in your work life, and of course, the significant attention that your family requires of you, and family has always been a priority for me.
Tamra and I were married in 1988; we have four kids and I was able to carve out time for that, but in a large institution I just didn’t have the bandwidth for more personal study and reflection.
I can really see the difference since I announced that I’m moving toward retirement. A lot of the work of visioning and institution building I was able to leave the side. My reading has been deeper. My thoughts, how I teach, how I preach, I already see it being deepened now at a time when I’m turning over the leadership of the shul.
Speaking of Tamra, your wife, she became a leader herself, a well known figure in the Jewish community. What was her role at the Alliance?
She has always worked in some capacity. She’s a very skilled Jewish educator and Jewish communal professional and she has used her skills to benefit the community. She was the Judaic consultant, putting together Jewish functions and programs, for the JCC. She’s worked for the Rabbinical Council. She was the president of DAT, where our children went to school. Now she works for the Grinspoon Foundation in its Life and Legacy program.
She has really been a leader in her own right. I think she has been a real gem, not only, obviously, in my life, but through her leadership work in the Jewish community. She brings her skill and magic to communities all across North America.
Do you feel that the Alliance today, with its siddur and approach, is comfortable?
Yes, then, but we’re talking about 25 years ago. Things changed. In 2012, for example, I brought an idea back to the Alliance of a new service that we call Shir Hadash, which provided a very different style of service, much more singing, a little bit more spiritual. That took off as well and still exists to this day.
COVID required us to relax many of our halachic standards. The service changed because it really needed to go online. Now, after COVID, it’s all got to be rebuilt, and, again, it’s a major transition moving forward. That’s just the nature of a synagogue.
You played a leadership role in the Denver Jewish community as a whole, through the Rabbinical Council and other venues. How has the Denver Jewish community changed l during that period?
When I first came, I think the synagogue was a centerpiece of the Jewish community. People that wanted to be involved in Jewish community joined a synagogue. Even if they weren’t particularly connected to Jewish ritual, they still were members of a synagogue. Those more deeply connected to Jewish spirituality joined synagogues back then in big numbers, at least at the Alliance.
For example, when I first came and my children and Marty Goldstein’s children were in strollers, we had dozens of families with kids in strollers. They’d come on Saturday morning and the strollers would be up and down the aisles of the sanctuary.
We’re not seeing that as much today. The younger Jewish adults, for a variety of reasons, are not joining synagogues, at least as early as the young adults and young families did when I first came. So I think the synagogue has challenges moving forward. It feels different.
This seems to be a trend around the country. People are studying the whole structure of the synagogue, the dues structure, the whole variety of things that the Jewish community is responding to because of the reduced numbers of young families. It’s not just the Alliance; it’s happening around the country. It’s of concern to anyone in the synagogue world.
Where do you feel Conservative Judaism stands today? How is it different from the way it was when you first affiliated with the movement?
I’d say the Conservative movement is under stress. The number of synagogues has declined. Overall membership in the movement has declined as well. There are fewer Conservative Jews. When I started, Conservative Judaism was still the largest movement in the country, with the largest number of synagogues.
There are a whole variety of reasons why that’s changed over time. One of the big problems today, interestingly enough, is the pipeline for Conservative rabbis. There are way more congregations today than there are Conservative rabbis. There are reasonably small, maybe medium size congregations out there that can’t find religious leadership. That’s a big problem in the movement.
But, you know, people who are prognosticating about the health of the various movements in Judaism are unwise because things change. The Conservative movement is going to retool itself. It will start to grow again.
I would be very hesitant to say what the Conservative movement is going to look like in 10 years because as the community changes the movement will change and develop as well.
What’s interesting is that it seems that the Alliance is bucking those trends. You’ve tripled in size in two or three decades. Is the Alliance is a model in some ways?
Yes, it is a model in a lot of different ways. Our new service, Shir Hadash, has thrived and has been a model for synagogues around the country. When we started, I was taking calls from colleagues: “How did you do it? What was the music? How did you organize it? How did you staff it with musical leadership and clergy?”
That was a model that people used around the country, but I think the Alliance has also suffered from these trends as well, where our membership contracted. We’re feeling that stress, so while we’re a model in many ways, we’re also somewhat like other synagogues in other ways.
What’s next for you, personally and professionally, as rabbi emeritus?
I’ve been doing a lot of studying. I’ve been talking to a lot of colleagues who are retiring around this time. A lot of rabbis of large congregations have moved on or are moving on. I know the Great Resignation that happened during the worst of the pandemic happened to Conservative rabbis as well.
So I talked to them and almost all of those who have retired in the recent past have said very clearly: don’t over-program, that your first-year opportunities are going to pop up, both professional and personal opportunities. So I’m taking that advice.
I do know already that my reading list has gotten very large. I’ve enjoyed the developments in my own family. We’ve got another marriage coming up next May. There’s just been a lot of joy in the Dollin family.
Tammy and I are not moving, so we will be members of the synagogue. Maybe I’ll teach some classes in the future. I will certainly be available to give my perspective if asked and other than that, just to be a supportive and active member of the congregation.
We went to Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago — what an amazing national park that is. In the last several years I participated in a Shalom Hartman Institute rabbinic fellow program. We have gone to Israel for a couple of months a year for the last four years or so and that has been an amazing experience.
So we don’t have any big plans, but it looks as though I’m going to be the planner of trips in the future, so I’ll have to let you know.
What parting message would you like to give to the members of the Alliance?
In my closing sermon I quoted one of your questions, which got me to thinking about transitions. I said that there is no completing of transitions because everything is a transition. I brought up the image of the lunar calendar in Jewish life that’s based on the appearance of the moon during the course of the month, which always looks similar to us.
The new month begins with the first sliver of the moon and it waxes until it’s full and it reigns again. It always waxes and wanes but it looks the same, but it’s not the same at all because the moon goes around the earth and the earth goes around the sun and the sun goes around something. The universe expands.
So the moon is never in the same place in the universe. Everything is changing all the time, even if we don’t see it as change.
For the community moving forward, there will be changes that the Alliance will have to respond to. Things will change. The synagogue will change. The Jewish community will change. But that in my mind is a good thing. It certainly makes things more interesting because responding virtually every day to new situations gives us an opportunity to grow, if not in numbers, then in depth.
Chris Leppek may be reached at IJNEWS@aol.com.
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