Rabbinical council to converge on Teaneck for convention

The Rabbinical Council of America, the largest organization of Orthodox rabbis in the world, will hold its 50th annual convention at Teaneck’s Cong. Bnai Jeshuran next week.

Bnai Jeshuran’s Rabbi Steven Pruzansky will co-chair the event with Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of Boca Raton, Fla.

This year’s convention marks the first time the RCA has partnered with Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future for the event. The partnership reflects the long-standing relationship between the RCA and Yeshiva University, two leading institutions in Jewish life, according to organizers. By partnering for this key event, they said, both groups will pool vital resources, allow for significant financial savings to their members during a time of economic challenge, significantly upgrade the quality and benefits of the convention, and create a model for enhanced communal sharing and partnership.

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“We are particularly pleased that we are partnering this event with YU’s Center for the Jewish Future,” said the RCA’s outgoing president Rabbi Shlomo Hochberg, “thus strengthening our special relationship as we pool our respective resources for the good of our members and the community at large.”

The program itself will highlight many challenges facing the Orthodox rabbinate and Jewish life today. One panel, moderated by JM in the AM radio host Nachum Segal, will address “The Future of the Modern Orthodox Rabbinate: Centralized Authority, Personal Autonomy, and Varied Models of Rabbinic Leadership.” Rabbis Kenneth Brander, Barry Gelman, Pesach Lerner, and Pruzansky will discuss the subject during an “arm-chair conversation.”

Another panel of rabbis, including Rabbi Daniel Feldman of Teaneck’s Cong. Etz Chaim, will discuss personal and communal ethical issues facing the Orthodox community. “Enhancing the Ethical Dimension of Our Lives and Communities: The Rabbi’s Essential Role” will focus on recent events and issues, according to organizers.

“Both the RCA and the CJF are wonderful organizations that do crucially important work in supporting, educating, enhancing, and inspiring the rabbinate and the communities of North America and the world over,” Feldman said. “It is a source of tremendous pride and excitement to have the convention here in Teaneck.”

Other sessions will include Torah and homiletic presentations, meetings of RCA Conversion Network leaders, allied Military and Health Care Chaplain tracks, skills workshops, election of a new RCA administration, adoption of resolutions, and rabbinic awards.

“This event will reflect what has been a recent period of extraordinary growth and expansion of the RCA on numerous fronts,” Hochberg said. “We believe that the convention will reflect these past accomplishments, even as it sets our direction and goals for the future.”

Pruzansky referred comment to the RCA when reached earlier this week, while calls and e-mails to the RCA’s executive vice president Rabbi Basil Herring were not returned.

For more information, visit the RCA’s Website, www.rabbis.org.