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"After years of a toxic political environment, plus a global pandemic, and now the most challenging moment in the history of Israel and the Jewish people in most of our lifetimes, I fear our clergy are on the brink."
Those are the words of Rabbi Steven Shapiro, president of the Rabbinical Council of North America, in a New York Times op-ed about what he sees as a growing crisis in American Jewish communities.
Shapiro says he's "privileged to work with" hundreds of rabbis and cantors "tell me of their utter exhaustion" as they try to keep their communities safe while dealing with the "trauma and anxiety" of the current political climate.
"They are running on fumes," he writes.
"If our spiritual leaders continue to burn out more quickly than they can be replaced, American Jewry will lose one of the foundational elements of our local community infrastructure."
Shapiro says synagogues and spiritual communities need clergy who are "mindful, holy, skillful leaders" and "find the perfect words of Torah and traditionwords of truththat will simultaneously inspire and comfort and not alienate the old or the young, the right or the left."
He warns that if the clergy "continue to burn out more quickly than they can be replaced, American Jewry Read the Entire Article