By Deborah Ashin, JTNews Correspondent
“Hello, Mrs. Rabbi Singer. Is Mr. Rabbi there?”
When Rabbi Beth Singer’s husband Jonathan was a youth rabbi in New York, she would often get calls from kids who didn’t quite know how to address the rabbinic couple.
Eighteen years ago, the Singers, now at Temple Beth Am in Seattle, were pioneers. But as more women attend rabbinical colleges, communities across the country are welcoming husband-and- wife rabbi teams.
Unlike other double-career marriages, these rabbinic spouses face some unique challenges, such as never celebrating Shabbat or Rosh Hashanah together, or figuring out how to belong to two synagogues. They also constantly deal with people who wonder how a couple consumed with spiritual and intellectual pursuits can possibly find time to have a normal relationship, or even weed the garden.
Washington is now home to three rabbinic couples. They struggle with these issues but also find added joy in their careers as well as their marriages. The three rabbinic pairs are Rabbis Beth and Jonathan Singer from Temple Beth Am; Rabbis Laurie and Phillip Rice, at Congregation Kol Ami and Temple De Hirsch Sinai, respectively; and the area’s newest rabbinic couple, Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, assistant rabbi at Temple B’nai Torah and Rabbi Seth Goldstein, who serves at Beth Hatfiloh in Olympia.
The Singers
Rabbis Beth and Jonathan Singer, who share the pulpit at Temple Beth Am but are now in Europe on sabbatical, spend a lot of time discussing congregational matters, Torah, and current Jewish issues.
“Sometimes Jonathan just says, ‘OK. Enough synagogue talk. Let’s talk about something else,’” Beth explained in an e-mail from London.
Although they met as undergraduates, the Singers started out at two different seminaries. Eventually, however, they ended up studying together at Hebrew Union College.
“It was a truly wonderful experience to be married to my chevrusa, my study partner,” she says, adding that she was ordained 45 seconds earlier than her husband because B comes before J.
Married for 18 years and the parents of three children, aged 12, 10 and 6, the Singers have not always worked together. They have been forced to confront the challenge of trying to manage two full-time congregations. She describes their first positions in Seattle, when she was at Temple De Hirsch Sinai and her husband was at Temple Beth Am.
“We were both working six days a week, many evenings, every weekend. It was ferociously intense,” she says. They hired an au pair to help with their first two children, but realized if they wanted a third something needed to change.
“It was actually quite a painful decision but I concluded that I must find some part-time position for a period of time so that I could have that third child and also be more attentive to the other two,” she recalled. Fortunately, there was a small part-time position available at Beth Am, which has developed into a half-time opportunity and allows the couple to share the pulpit.
“I think that our challenges are more similar to those of nearly all busy, married professional couples these days,” says Rabbi Beth. “ Most of my rabbinical couple friends swear that the success of their marriages rests on not being in the same synagogue!”
For the Singers, however, it is working just fine.
The Rices
Rabbis Laurie and Phillip Rice, who met in Jerusalem during their first year at Hebrew Union College, both knew they wanted to be congregational rabbis but also recognized they needed flexibility. They’ve found the ideal situation in Seattle: Laurie Rice is the full-time rabbi for Congregation Kol Ami, a small Woodinville synagogue, while Phillip serves as assistant rabbi at one of the city’s largest synagogues, Temple De Hirsch Sinai. Although they’re both “on call,” she has fewer members in her congregation and he has more administrative support.
“We wanted separate congregations — we haven’t been doing it enough to work together,” Laurie says. “The biggest difficulty is how to have a family and both work because rabbis have such crazy schedule.”
The couple, with a 16-month-old son and a second child on the way, has learned to adapt and take pleasure in their unusual situation. On Friday nights, since his service starts at 6 p.m. while hers begins an hour later, they celebrate Shabbat together — but later than most families.
“We’re so boring,” she laughs, acknowledging they don’t have much of a social life, because they’re usually tired and one or the other often has an evening obligation. They’re accustomed to being apart on High Holiday but are pleased to have Passover together since only Kol Ami has a congregational seder only on the first night.
“We have the joys of any married couple that both enjoy and share the same things,” Laurie explains. The Rices are more likely to discuss their congregations’ administrative issues than debate Talmud, but they often share ideas for sermons.
Since neither likes to eat before going up on the bima, after Rosh Hashanah services Rice says they’re likely to be eating spaghetti at 11 p.m. and discussing how each of their services went.
Rabbis Kinberg and Goldstein
Like the Rices, Rabbis Goldstein and Kinberg are pulpit rabbis at different synagogues, but their situation is reversed: Goldstein works full-time for a small, 130-member congregation, while Kinberg is at a large temple with 900 families.
“It is a challenge,” says Goldstein, “but since we live our Judaism to such an extent, it’s not a loss because we can give to others.” He added that he does miss being with his wife on Shabbat and the High Holidays, however.
Goldstein and Kinberg, who met before they attended the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College near Philadelphia, believe attending rabbinical school together formed the foundation for their rabbinic marriage. They were not only study partners in school but also got married and had a baby.
“We have always worked together and learned from each other,” he explains, adding that it makes for a very strong partnership.
Kinberg, whose father was a rabbi, was well aware of the lifestyle and pressures of being in a rabbinic family.
“Like all working couples, we both struggle with how to find balance,” she says, “but the benefit is sharing the same focus.”
Ordained just three years ago, Kinberg and Goldstein are discovering what it means to be a dual rabbinic family. Kinberg, who commutes between their home in Olympia and Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue, said one of their dilemmas was determining how to be present in each other’s communities. Since it’s impossible to be active members of two congregations, they’ve decided to teach at each other’s temples as a way to be supportive.
While many Jewish families struggle to create a Jewish home, Kinberg said that the challenge for dual rabbinic couples is often figuring out how to do regular things, like learning to cook and garden. They are still developing a rhythm that allows them to carve out time together. Both have Mondays off, which they use for family activities with their one-year-old son, and once a week they have breakfast to coordinate their complicated schedules.
Kinberg acknowledges, however, that having her mother live with them is what makes their life manageable.
“We went into this knowing it was all encompassing,” Goldstein reflects. “But I like the feeling of seamlessness between our personal life and our work.”