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News-Sun photo by LARRY LEVEY Lorraine Rudenberg, associate rabbi at Temple Israel, shows a recently published religious book during a group discussion at the temple.

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published: Friday, September 05, 2008

Passionate about people, passionate about Judaism

By LARRY LEVEY

News-Sun correspondent

SEBRING

Keep an eye on Rabbi Lorraine Rudenberg in action at Temple Israel of Highlands County - conducting Friday evening services, leading group discussions, helping out in the kitchen, or talking with others about temple business or more personal matters - and you immediately sense what her passions are.

As she puts it, "I care about people. I care about their lives."

And she cares about her Judaism. "My Judaism gives me so much. I want to give it to everybody else."

She grew up in a very religious, very observant Jewish family. "I knew what to do ... but not why." But once she reached her mid-40s, she started exploring what she calls "the deeper meaning and richness that lay beneath the rituals and celebrations."

This exploration led her to devouring books on Judaism, to attending classes, even earning a master's degree in religion. "The more I learned about Judaism, the stronger my love of it grew."

And it showed. Because of her obvious thirst for knowledge, her love of Judaism and her desire to share it, she was told, "You'd be a great rabbi."

"What, you talkin' to me?" she quipped at the time. "You have to go away for five years to be a rabbi. I'm married. I have kids. I'm 51 already."

Guess what happened.

In 2002, she was accepted in the rabbinical school of Hebrew Union College, which, from 1972 to 2007, had ordained 495 women rabbis - more than any other school in the world.

The summer of 2002, as her youngest child left home for college, she left for Israel for a year on her journey to become a rabbi, "frightened and hopeful at the same time."

How did her husband, Bruce, react? "He had encouraged me to apply."

Or as he puts it, "When you see your wife so passionate about what she's doing, you can't help but support her."

Following her year in Israel, she attended the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College for four more years, always managing to stay close to her family.

And on June 2, 2007, she took the leap from rabbinical student to rabbi when she was ordained at the Plum Street Temple in Cincinnati.

Moving back to Miami, she was soon hired by Temple Israel as the associate rabbi, stepping in whenever the senior rabbi, Merle Singer, is absent.

But while the position at Temple Israel is part time, she sees herself "as a rabbi 24 hours a day, all the time, all day. You meet me in the grocery store or a book store and you need to talk, I'll listen. I'm there."

This caring, this concern for others was magnified when she trained in 2005 as a student chaplain at a hospice unit at Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach. "It's a very holy moment. It really teaches you a lot about living and dying. To be allowed into that moment in someone's life, to hold the hands of the living and dying together - it makes you really care."

If you're a woman, she says, by nature you are more nurturing and more social, quickly adding that male and female rabbis both bring different and unique gifts to their positions. In fact, she says, "Because congregations are filled with men and women, having both male and female rabbis allows a congregation to find more of what it needs."

Talk to members of the Temple Israel congregation and you'll hear comments like, "She reaches out to the individual person." "More of a mothering influence." "More of a caring attitude."

What also helps, members say, is her age and her experience as a wife and mother. And her enthusiasm. As one member puts it, "She's full of ideas to make the temple better."

"My job as a rabbi," she says, "is to make Judaism meaningful for you. If you come to temple and you're uplifted, you pray and you feel a sense of spirituality, of God, in this moment - that's my job."

How does she see her future? "My goal is to spend enough time with one congregation that they become more educated, more spiritual; that they become a congregation of learners, of doers, so they can then lead someone else.

"I'd like to be able to look back and say, 'I led them and I taught them and now they've become leaders themselves.'"