By: Stephen Fried. Publisher: Bantam, 358 pages, $25.95. Review: An award-winning investigative reporter goes inside the process of hiring a new rabbi in a gripping, multilayered account that will resonate with anyone concerned about the state of organized religion today.
Reviewed By Neal Karlen journalistic
Special to the Star Tribune
The dramatic stakes could have been exceptionally low in this tale of how one religious congregation chooses its new torchbearer -- especially since said religion encompasses only 3 percent of the U.S. population. Yet Stephen Fried makes the reader care in "The New Rabbi," his multilayered chronicle of postmillennial organized religion, leaps of faith, tempestuous family biography and the political dybbuks creating mayhem behind most spiritual lecterns
His book should keep both Jews and non-Jews turning pages to find out who gets the prize pulpit at Philadelphia's venerable Har Zion -- and who is still conversing over the pews after this bruising contest of will, theology and personal temperament.
An investigative reporter and winner of a National Magazine Award, Fried cracked the dark sides of the modeling world in "Thing of Beauty" and the drug industry in "Bitter Pills." Here, however, he makes clear his new effort is about faith and God, not Woodward and Bernstein.
"I needed comfort," he says, "and the synagogue happened to be a place where I found it."
Yet while sheathing his knives in a surprisingly emotional quest, Fried comes up with his most revelatory work.
"I'm about to turn 40 and I just lost my father," Fried writes. "I have reached the point in life when all answers turn back into questions."
Thankfully, he finds humor in his bewilderment. For strength, Fried begins listening again to the rabbi of his youth, the nationally known scholar Gerald Wolpe, 70, who will shortly be retiring after 30 years as leader of the 1,400-family-strong Har Zion. It's time to go, Wolpe jokes to Fried, because he is slipping into his "anecdotage."
Fried pulls no punches in using the total access he was granted to Wolpe, his family, the synagogue's selection committee and Conservative Judaism's New York-based Rabbinical Assembly that helps place candidates. To Wolpe, it's what has become part of "the retail business of religion" -- any religion -- that has come to swallow up young rabbis like his publicity-hungry son, David.
The intrafamily drama crackles. Monica Lewinsky's father belongs to David Wolpe's Los Angeles synagogue, and when the rabbi sermonizes against former President Bill Clinton's relationship with her, he is besieged by the press as "Monica's rabbi." He quickly appears on two network newscasts, is quoted by the Associated Press and agrees to go on CNN and the "Today" show.
"I told him to shut it down immediately," the elder Wolpe says.
Fried's investigation of the process of picking a new spiritual leader is illuminating. For auditioning rabbis, it's always sudden-death overtime. Rabbi Perry Rank from New York is doing well with the synagogue's selection committee of 21 until he mentions that he quoted Bob Dylan in a recent sermon.
Fried describes the reaction of one committee member: " 'Uh-oh, wrong answer,'[she] thinks to herself. They want to hear about rabbinics, scholarly work, religious sources. From the moment the words 'Bob Dylan' come out of his mouth, Rank's interview is over, like a first date that has suddenly revealed itself to be the last date."
Luckily for the reader, there are many more blind dates to come in Fried's engrossing book.