By Thea Chard, other
As a child growing up in a traditional, East Coast family, Rabbi Jacob Fine never thought he would one day become a theologian and religious leader. It wasn’t until after the events of September 11, 2001 that he began to find spirituality not only personally but as a way to influence and give back to the world around him.
He studied environmental science and religion — mainly Buddhism —of which he had a great interest, as an undergrad at Vassar College.
“I was very attracted to the Eastern religions…but I never rejected Judaism,” Rabbi Fine says. “It was always part of me, just at that point in my life studying Buddhism was a very active part of my spirituality.”
After graduating from Vassar he moved to New York and began working, and in turn searching for what to do next.
“I moved to New York about 10 days before September 11, 2001, and that was a very intense experience for all people and all New Yorkers,” Fine says. “I was just out of college and was just trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and it was then that I saw how much we need to be the active change in the world we’re living in.”
Fine, whose father had also gone to rabbinical school, saw this newfound path as a way to mix his many varying interests in a rewarding, significant and unique way.
“I’ve always been spiritual, but I didn’t grow up wanting to be a rabbi,” he says. “Not at all, actually. I didn’t think about being a rabbi until the year before I applied to rabbinical school.
“I have a lot of interests and passions: spiritual development, community building, education, social justice, and I was looking for something that would allow me to combine all of the things that I wanted to do…. At the time I was meeting a lot of rabbis who were doing unconventional things.”
Though Fine knew he wanted to become a rabbi, he knew synagogue life was not for him. “I didn’t want to be a pulpit rabbi,” he says.
In May, Fine graduated from the Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies in Los Angeles. In July, he came to Hillel at the University of Washington, where he began his position as assistant director for the organization, but more visibly as the director of JConnect Seattle. The popular program for local Jews ages 21-32 offers a variety of different types of social, spiritual and social action programming.
Rabbi Fine was excited to begin working at the Jewish student’s organization because of its already well-established program and student base. The unique opportunity of continuing to build Jconnect, which will have a decidedly different focus from previous years, excited him most.
“One of my main goals is to build a connection not just at the UW but within the surrounding community as well,” he says, explaining that he envisions Hillel as a place for people of all factions of Judaism and varying age groups and life stages.
“We have a very strong Hillel here. More traditional Conservative and Orthodox students may be drawn to organizations like Chabad and that makes sense,” Fine says, pointing out that Hillel and Chabad have a very good working relationship at the UW, “but right now those students may not have a home at Hillel… I want to see religious participants as well as less observant and secular Jews coming together to experience and explore their Judaism.”
Rabbi Fine, who sees this as an opportunity to “build bridges between different ages and levels of observance,” says the core atmosphere of Hillel and JConnect will remain the same, but the next year will see a change with a greater emphasis on Jewish education.
Hillel operates around four pillars of Jewish experience: religion, spirituality and education; social justice; arts and culture; and social programming. Rabbi Fine hopes to see programming and events this year bolster each pillar, and combine the experiences in new and different ways.
One of his main goals is to give every student and JConnect member the tools to explore their own personal Judaism in a home-away-from-home environment. To make sure the programs offer what participants need, he says, they are encouraged to work closely with the programming staff to design and implement their own programs.
Some of the first additions that will be seen with the onset of the new school year will be an Introduction to Judaism class for both Jews looking to “deepen their Jewish knowledge” as well as for non-Jews interested in conversion. The organization will also offer more ongoing, multi-week classes in a variety of subjects such as theology, Judaism and the environment, Judaism and social justice, prayer and Talmud, to name a few, as well as expanded Shabbat and holiday programming.
“In general, we are looking to create a community of learners,” Rabbi Fine says, “to reach out to people who are new to Jewish learning as well as to provide stimulating and challenging learning to folks who have more background.”
As he takes the reins of his new career, Rabbi Fine says he hopes to operate under the credo that “changing the world needs to happen from within,” a motto that has carried him through since the day, not long after 9/11, he decided to become a rabbi.