Current Position
John Schechter is the Rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

"I serve as the rabbi for a 216 family Conservative congregation whose first services I led in a firehouse 12 years ago. Basking Ridge is a fast growing suburb in the corporately driven pharmaceutical and telecom belt of northern New Jersey. Most of our congregants are part of a highly educated workforce who, in general, grew up in other areas of the Northeast. They are 4th and 5th generation American Jews who seek quality religious education for themselves and for their children, possess few ties to Israel, are searching for a sense of enduring community, and, are liberal in their religious outlook. (Thirty-five percent of our families are dual-faith marriages.) Twelve years ago the starting circle was an offshoot of a Jewish federation study program and we were simply testing the waters to see if a congregation would flourish. When I returned to them 7 years ago, there were many developmental challenges as we grew from about 62 families to our present size and complexity. We now enjoy teaching 205 children in our religious school; 45 children in our nursery school; and 24 students in our high school programs. In general, I serve as the primary counselor, teacher of Judaica, coordinator of educational and religious programs, classroom teacher to the teens, and liaison to both the larger Jewish community and Gentile community.

"In my seventh year of serving the congregation I have built my position from half-time to full time, and we have added a trained cantor, a professional educator, an early childhood specialist, and an office manager. I mention these co-workers because a good portion of my daily efforts is to see that we work successfully as an integrated team. Exposure to the issues and training in the fundamentals of their fields (music, education, psychology, and sports) were all part of the Grinnell experience.

"I am married to Cantor Riki Lippitz and am the father of Gabriel, Eliana and Lev."

Career Path
"My training for the rabbinate had two linked paths. While I considered the question of rabbinical school when I served as the leader of the Grinnell Jewish Students Organization, it was not a sustained inquiry. In my years at Grinnell there were no academic or private classes in Hebrew. Even though I grew up in an active Reform Jewish family and was heavily involved in both Jewish education and Jewish summer camps as a high school student and during college summer vacations, my career path seemed to be in the sciences.

"When I was an undergraduate, I was a serious and conscientious pre-med student who failed and then re-took (with only modest results) three key courses: chemistry, organic chemistry and calculus. My failure to succeed in those critical classes was a source of great pain and disappointment as I was quite sure of my interest in medicine. In fact, during all of my undergraduate vacations and intercession breaks I participated in an extracurricular program of accompanying a surgeon through his surgeries and rounds at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. But at Grinnell my failure in classes that depended upon memorization and manipulation of configurations (chemistry) and the ability to recall mathematical notation (calculus) was met with criticism by some of those professors (who exhorted me to study harder and seek more tutoring). Although I followed their advice, and sought counseling by the college's academic advisor (who was a supportive and kind coach) no one suggested to me that the key issue was a learning disability. In fairness, in the 1970s that field was just developing in relation to adult learning patterns, and the modes of cognitive testing and therapy were just being expanded to include adults. So despite studying 5 - 8 hours a day, I scraped by in the sciences, aced most of my courses in the humanities, and was rejected from medical school.

"Unsure of what to do after graduation, I worked yet another summer at a Jewish educational camp and then returned to Chicago. There, at my father's suggestion, I set up two unpaid internships: the primary internship was in learning about medical social work at a newly opened pavilion for geriatric medical care. The second internship was in a methadone center whose clientele were required to complete a weekly self-evaluative test with the assistance of an unpaid advisor. From these unofficial yearlong programs I learned about the role of the counselor in the health care field and about the workings of hospitals and large institutions.

"But my curiosity about Jewish learning carried me to Boston, where I became the Outreach Director for B'nai B'rith Hillel of Greater Boston to 12 small college campuses. In those two years, 1980-82, I took night courses at Harvard in psychology; studied Jewish literature and participated a variety of Zionist and Jewish activities (including serving in Israel as a kibbutz tractor mechanic and, later, as their coordinator of an American industry search project). These adventures led me to become the Jewish Chaplain for Wellesley College for 1982-83. While running Jewish cultural and Zionist programs was fun and interesting, I quickly realized that I did not possess the serious Jewish learning which one needs to function as a teacher or rabbi in the larger community.

"After entering the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York in 1983 with high hopes, I quickly set the record in the rabbinical school for most semesters on consecutive academic probation. I simply could not learn to read Hebrew and thus was failing the law courses, language courses and Bible courses while enjoying the theology and history coursework. By a quirk, the rabbinics teacher who had filed for me to leave the program recognized in class one morning that my abysmal reading had an odd pattern to it. He inquired if I knew that I had a learning disability, a form of dyslexia. I truly had no idea of what he was speaking. But, after finding a suitable diagnostician from the Yeshiva University faculty, and a cognitive psychologist who spoke Hebrew, I received the testing in reading, mathematics and general knowledge that explained (but could not entirely reverse) my many years of frustration. My difficulty with learning any symbolic language stems from a repeated metathesis of symbols or items in a set pattern. The problem of learning Hebrew was little different from that of recalling cis and trans molecules or the proper arrangement of symbols and their functions in calculus.

"After a year and a half of intensive tutoring to re-learn Hebrew and master the imbedded difficulties of automatically rearranging patterns, I re-entered the full rabbinical studies program and made progress in language, Talmudic studies and literature. I also served as president for the Rabbinical Students Organization (and worked with the faculty of curricular development) in my 6th and 7th years of my studies. In 1990 I received my Master's Degree in Hebrew Literature and my ordination. Last year I had my first full- length paper on the workings of astronomy in the Passover Haggadah published in the juried academic quarterly of the Conservative movement. And, this January I submitted my second paper on the methodology of scriptural interpretation in the classical Jewish wisdom literature.

"I offer this lengthy and painful recollection to spur on all who might find difficulty in their cherished field of study. I also do so to raise the importance of early exposure to language and primary coursework for those at Grinnell who might be considering the rabbinate-a field in which Hebrew and Hebrew Literature are indispensable.

"Following ordination I served on the part-time faculty (for almost seven years) for an elite educational organization, the National Jewish Center For Learning and Leadership (CLAL) whose faculty taught the executive boards of federations, Jewish Community Centers, foundations, and, day schools on a contract basis in 53 cities. I also directed Hebrew High School retreats in my first formal year as a rabbi. But, when the senior rabbi of my wife's congregation fell ill with cardiac difficulties in the fall of 1991, I was asked to 'temporarily' take the helm of that 690 family congregation. After his partial recovery I stayed on as assistant rabbi, and then became the acting senior rabbi after his death in 1992. I remained with Oheb Shalom of South Orange until 1995 when a new senior rabbi was appointed according to the rules of seniority of our movement. Having led the first Jewish services in Basking Ridge, I was eager to return and develop that congregation."

Grinnell Experience
"There were many experiences at Grinnell which shaped my rabbinate and still inspire me in working with congregants: I was highly involved in the running of Sabbath dinners, services, and High Holy Days with the Jewish Students Organization (in a time when there was no Jewish chaplain or outreach support from federation). While I frequently went to visit my grandparents in Des Moines on weekends, or for a service on the major holidays, the give-and-take necessary to craft a communal celebration of the Passover, or Sabbath services stands out as practical training in my mind. I must add that the discussions over dinners and in the dorms with friends who came from a variety of religious backgrounds both challenged me and provided me with a wider understanding of the role of religion in general and the particular insights and struggles which religions bring to our lives.

"The second set of experiences were those of living within the larger world of ideas, including the sciences. Professor Harold Kasimow's seminar classes in Jewish thought and philosophy were a beautiful introduction to pluralistic thought, and his quiet sense of piety was inspirational. The training in rigorous thinking that marked Mr. Gurera's or Gene Wubbels' chemistry classes has stayed with me in my work with the bio-ethics committee at a major local hospital, and the understanding of science is crucial to knowing what to listen when counseling congregants at the hospital. The unraveling and analysis of poetry in Mr. Connelly's courses sustains me today in both my public teaching and my reading for private inspiration of Jewish and English poetry. And, last, but not least, my brief experiences as a student teacher in the local Grinnell elementary school (as part of an education class requirement) encouraged me to read further about education issues and to consider the classroom work as an essential part of my rabbinate."

How He Can Help
"I would gladly speak or correspond with any student or faculty member who is considering the rabbinate or Hillel work. If there are students who wish to accompany me through a day during their vacations, I would welcome the opportunity to share the joy and satisfaction that I find in the pulpit world."