Adat Shalom currently has four full-time senior staff members: Rabbi Fred, Cantor Rachel, executive director Sheila Feldman, and Torah School director Mary Meyerson. We are also fortunate that our founding rabbi, Sid Schwarz, remains a member in community, conducting a limited number of services (10 Shabbat Slams and 5 Shabbat morning services this year) and teaching an adult education series. Also on our payroll are 35 teachers, 3 office support staff people (Annette Feigenbaum, Ellen Hoffman, and Dori Farrell), and a youth director (Eva Sarelle). Altogether, the congregation employs a large and varied group of people who are a wonderful resource for our congregation.
It takes very special professionals to work in a congregation with such a heavy emphasis on participation, process and volunteerism. The demands our community makes on the staff are high and we as individuals often turn to them at times of personal stress when we are thinking about our own needs, not theirs. Yet, Adat Shalom is not just a spiritual community for them; it is their work environment. As an employer, the community has the obligation to look after their professional growth and development, to compensate them appropriately and to ensure that we do what we can to create a supportive work environment for them. We need to make sure this is a great place to work as well as a great place to be a member.
Personnel issues are a major focus for synagogue presidents and this is especially true for me this year. I work almost daily with Len Sirota, at-large Board member and Chair of the Personnel Committee. His Vice Chair, Norm Schneider, is a long time member and former Board member. Our goals for the year include conducting evaluations of senior staff, helping with the evaluations of support staff, negotiating new contracts and employment agreements, arranging for benefits and helping with candidate searches for staff replacements. This work is essential to treating our professional staff as the valuable resource they are.
The first evaluation undertaken by the Personnel Committee this year was Cantor Rachel’s. Although she has worked for Adat Shalom for a number of years and received lots of informal positive feedback, the congregation had never formally evaluated her work so there was no systematic mechanism for giving Cantor Rachel the substantive feedback every professional needs for growth. The Personnel Committee approached Cantor Rachel’s evaluation as a collaborative process meant to identify her areas of strength, areas where further professional growth will enable her to better serve our community, and areas where the community needs to give her greater support. The process the committee developed for this evaluation will serve as a model for the other evaluations to be conducted this year and in the future.
Together with Cantor Rachel, we first listed her general areas of responsibility. Then, we jointly identified people familiar with her work who also had the experience needed to provide substantive feedback in at least one of her areas of responsibility. Len Sirota recruited an evaluation team with strong interviewing skills to conduct the confidential interviews. When all the interviews were complete, one team member assembled the material into an evaluation narrative and the entire team reviewed the report to ensure its accuracy and balance. Not surprisingly, the evaluation was overwhelmingly positive. Cantor Rachel received the evaluation in written form before she met with Len Sirota and me to go over the evaluation in person. Verbal summaries were presented to the Executive Committee and to the Board. All those involved in the process seemed to feel that the evaluation provided both Cantor Rachel and the lay leadership with valuable feedback and that it was a worthwhile and positive experience.
At the same time, Len and Norm, assisted by Garry Grossman and Gail Ross, prepared a new contract for Cantor Rachel. Her previous contract expired in June 2000, so the committee worked with some sense of urgency. Although her previous contracts had compensated her as if she worked part-time, Cantor Rachel had actually been “volunteering” 10 or more additional hours most weeks. The new contract recognizes Cantor Rachel’s status as a full-time employee, compensating her more appropriately with both an increased salary and more professional benefits, and redefining her duties to be commensurate with those of a full time clergy member. Most notably, like full-time cantors in most congregations, Cantor Rachel now coordinates the congregation’s B’nai Mitzvah program. The Board approved her 3-year contract in October.
Rabbi Fred’s evaluation team, coordinated by Norm Schneider and Myrna Seidman, is beginning a process much like the one described above. In addition, because Rabbi Fred has had contact with so many congregants in so many different ways, the team is also seeking comments from members. If you want to take part in the process, look for contact information elsewhere in this issue of the Scroll and get your comments in quickly. Concurrently, the Personnel Committee is beginning contract negotiations so that Rabbi Fred’s new contract will be ready to take effect when the current 3-year contract expires at the end of June 2002.
Harriet Shugerman will coordinate Sheila Feldman’s first evaluation, which will follow much the same pattern as Cantor Rachel’s and Rabbi Fred’s.
David Silberman, as Education Board chair, would have coordinated Mary Meyerson’s evaluation, which was scheduled to begin in mid-December. Instead, I deeply regret having to tell you that Mary Meyerson has informed us that she is leaving Adat Shalom at the end of the school year. As a parent of two of her students, as a friend, as a Hebrew teacher who had the good fortune to work for her, and as president of the congregation, I am very sorry to see her go. We are losing a highly committed, thoughtful educator with an unusual level of insight into the needs of individual children, high sensitivity to the diversity in our community and the vision to help us raise our children to be committed, knowledgeable, and questioning Jews.
As Mary Meyerson explains in her resignation letter being mailed to members, some of her reasons for leaving are purely personal, while others reflect on the highly participatory and questioning culture of our community, the stresses we put on our professional staff as they seek to find balance between meeting the needs of individuals and the needs of the community, and the widely ranging and sometimes inconsistent the expectations the congregation and families have for the Torah School. Mary Meyerson, who has been associated with the congregation for 10 years, offers valuable insights that can help us focus our attention on these areas of our congregational life. I look forward to helping our leadership and our community engage in dialogue about these issues in the months to come.
We are generally proud of our relationships with our professional staff, many of whom are also members. However, as the recent JRF report on the Rabbi-Congregation relationship points out, problems that surface in relation to a professional staff member are often symptomatic of broader issues in the congregational system itself. As we evaluate our professional staff members, the evaluation cannot simply be one sided. When there is a problem, the solution often requires change by both the congregation and the staff member. Change is always difficult — but supporting the precious resource of our professional staff is essential to the health of our community. I have no doubt that we will preserve the elements of our congregational culture that make us such a warm, vibrant, participatory congregation while we continue to evolve in ways that let all of us, professional and laity alike, thrive in our association with this community.
L’hitraot (Until next time),
Judy Gelman