Leaders of a center for rabbinic innovation reflect on the sacred work that happens on Rosh Hashanah, and far beyond the pulpit.

By Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein, Faith Leener

(JTA) — On Rosh Hashanah morning, a rabbi stands in front of you, in front of God, having spent weeks preparing for this exact moment, praying that they can somehow reach everyone sitting in front of them. They do not know who will walk through the door, but they have been hoping for you.

Maybe you are a regular, and they know exactly what this year gave you and cost you. Maybe you haven’t set foot in a synagogue in a while, and they know only that you came, carrying something you haven’t named, maybe even to yourself.

Either way, they want the same thing for you that our tradition asks of this whole season: teshuvah, literally a returning, to yourself, to the people beside you, to something larger than either. They are trying to turn a room of strangers and regulars alike into a community and to help you walk out having moved, even slightly, closer to who you’re capable of being.

This season is when rabbis are most visible. But much, if not most, of rabbinic leadership happens out of view: in pastoral calls, hospital rooms, hours of study and preparation, and the slow work of building relationships.

Because so much of this work is unseen, it is easy to treat the pressures of the role as the rabbis’ alone to manage. Yet the challenge is bigger than individual workload. Rabbis are often asked to be spiritual leaders, pastoral caregivers, educators, fundraisers, administrators and community organizers — with little agreement about which of those responsibilities should come first. The work that is easiest to see and measure can crowd out the work that matters most: the conversation that takes an hour, the hospital visit that changes a family’s experience of loss, the time needed to listen, study and prepare. When no one decides what matters most, the deadline decides for us.

One of us is a rabbi, and both of us work closely with rabbis across the country through Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation. We train and support rabbis, study the changing rabbinate and bring together rabbis and the institutions that recruit, employ and sustain them. We have also been gathering stories of rabbinic impact: the moments, often known only to those involved, when a rabbi changed the course of a life.

Again and again, we hear the same tension. What people value most from rabbis — time, trust, wisdom and presence — is often the work most easily crowded out.

The numbers bear this out. In “From Calling to Career,” Atra’s national study of nearly 2,000 people across the rabbinic pipeline, 97% of surveyed rabbis said their work was rewarding. Rabbis feel called to this work. But among those who had held both congregational and noncongregational jobs, only 40% said their congregational workload left enough time for themselves and the people they love.

One rabbi told us about calling the mother of a dying congregant. The woman lived far from a Jewish community and had no rabbi of her own. The rabbi stayed on the phone for a long time, asking questions and listening. Later, the woman said she had felt held during one of the most painful moments of her life.

No one will ever count that hour. The woman will not become a member or appear in an attendance report. Yet most of us would recognize that conversation as exactly what a rabbi is for.

At the same time, the budget memo is due. The Zoom link is broken. A vendor needs an answer. In many communities, the rabbi is also the office manager, volunteer coordinator, fundraiser and tech support. When a congregant calls in the middle of all that, the rabbi may answer with one eye on the clock.

What feels like indifference can be a calendar that treats a newsletter as more urgent than a person, because the newsletter has a deadline and the person does not.

This is not an argument for lowering expectations or protecting rabbis from accountability. Communities should expect thoughtful leadership, serious preparation and responsible stewardship. But accountability works only when expectations, priorities and resources are aligned.

Too often, “the rabbi’s job” means whatever no one else has claimed. A board may focus on membership and attendance while a rabbi may think about the phone call no one witnessed, a hospital visit never logged or a conversation that unfolded in a run-in at the grocery store. Both matter. The trouble begins when no one has named the difference or decided together what success should look like.

Our storytelling project has taught us something else: Rabbis often have no idea when they have made a difference.

During hospital chaplaincy training, one rabbi worked overnight shifts. One night, an elderly woman was dying, and her daughter asked him to sing Psalm 23 at the bedside. By morning, after many other visits and on the heels of a long year of losses, he could barely recall the encounter.

Two weeks later, a letter arrived. The daughter wrote that his presence had been an inexpressible comfort. He had almost forgotten the moment that had meant everything to her.

Rabbis hear quickly when a sermon disappoints, a service runs long or a program falls flat. They hear less often that a conversation stayed with someone for years. A thank-you note cannot fix an impossible job. But it can remind a rabbi why the work matters, and it can encourage them on days when it all feels too much.

And the nature of these jobs will help determine whether there is a next generation of rabbis to thank. Among people in Atra’s study who considered rabbinical school but did not enroll, 38% said they were strongly deterred by the fear that the career would be too demanding or all-consuming.

This cannot be solved by asking individual rabbis to become more resilient. Rabbis need to be honest about their limits. Boards and employers need to decide what work matters most and what can be shared. Seminaries and funders need to invest in the people and structures that make sustainable leadership possible.

The Jewish community gets the rabbinate it creates the conditions for. So perhaps our accounting this year should include more than whether we remembered to thank our rabbis. We might also ask what we have asked of them — and whether we have made it possible for them to do the work we value most.

Rabbi Shira Koch Epstein is executive director of Atra. Faith Leener is is senior strategist for Atra’s Rabbinic Pipeline Initiative.