By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
Last month, Everett’s Temple Beth Or welcomed a new rabbi into its fold. Rabbi Jessica Kessler Marshall, an East Coast native just one year out of rabbinical school, joined the Everett congregation on April 14.
Prior to making the move to the Pacific Northwest, Marshall served as a Hillel rabbi at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. However, due to budget cuts, her position was eliminated.
“This is a difficult time for everyone,” Marshall acknowledged. “I’ve heard lots of stories of rabbis losing jobs all across the country.”
Fortunately for Marshall, she didn’t have to wait log before a new opportunity arose.
According to Temple Beth Or president Janis Warner, the synagogue’s previous rabbi, Harley Karz-Wagman, left Beth Or in the summer of 2007 to take a position at a synagogue in Wilmington, N.C. The congregation then began what would be almost a two-year long process to find a replacement. Temple leadership met with congregants to come up with a list of qualities and qualifications they hoped their new rabbi would possess. A nine-member hiring committee was formed to review an initially sizable pool of interested rabbis from around the country.
In the meantime, Beth Or relied on lay leaders and several interim rabbis to lead services and help with lifecycle events. Eventually, the committee narrowed the field down to just two applicants: Marshall and one other rabbi, both of whom were invited to come to Everett for in-person interviews.
“It was a unanimous decision by the committee to hire Rabbi Marshall,” Warner said. “She truly seemed like a good fit to our members.”
Marshall is a graduate of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College in New York. While in rabbinical school, Marshall became involved in Adventure Rabbi, a program that situates Jewish experiences outdoors, combining Shabbat services and lifecycle events with activities like hiking, biking, camping and climbing. She has also worked with the Jewish environmental organization Hazon for the past several years to help put on their annual Jewish Environmental Bike Ride in New York.
She said she looks forward to bringing similar programming to Beth Or.
“There’s so much spirituality in nature,” she said. “Judaism has a lot of grounding in nature and natural world.”
Marshall added that although she comes to Beth Or with big ideas, the thing she is looking forward to the most is getting to know her new congregants on a personal level.
“I really like the idea of working with a smaller congregation like this — a more intimate community,” she said. “I’m excited to start building relationships with new people. The interpersonal connections are really where I find God.”
Temple Beth Or currently has 125 member families. Marshall said that she hopes she will be able to reach out to younger, unaffiliated community members in Snohomish County who might be weary of joining a synagogue, but still looking for Jewish experiences.
Warner seconded that wish, saying that Marshall’s “emphasis on the environment and outdoor life and her youth are all appealing to other young people.”
“But she’s also quite saged for someone her age,” Warner added.
Marshall is currently employed at Beth Or on a part-time basis. Warner admits that this is not an ideal situation for the congregation, but their current budget cannot accommodate full-time clergy. She said she worries most about Marshall’s enthusiasm driving her to work more hours that her contract stipulates.
“The biggest challenge for us will be to be respectful of her only working part-time. She has so many ideas and is so dynamic, I’m afraid it might be easy to overextend her,” Warner said.
Marshall is unconcerned, however. She said she is looking forward “to [having] time for fullness in my own life.”
For her, this means going on bike rides, making jewelry and ceramics, learning to play the guitar, exploring her new community in Seattle’s Greenlake neighborhood, and cooking for friends. She said she will also be available to assist with lifecycle events such as weddings and funerals for community members outside of the Beth Or congregation.