Rabbi’s unique interim role at Rodef Shalom helps pave way for merger

Rabbi David Young is aware of the unique position he’s in.

“No one has ever experienced what I’m doing,” he said.

Young began serving as the interim rabbi at Rodef Shalom Congregation on July 1. It’s a role that’s meant to help a congregation through a transition — typically it’s the year between the departure of a long-serving rabbi and arrival of a new spiritual leader.

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Rodef Shalom and Young, though, are treading unexplored territory.

The Reform congregation’s Rabbi Sharyn Henry recently retired but there’s no mystery or suspense about who will replace her in a year’s time. Rodef Shalom is unifying with Temple Sinai and its rabbi, Daniel Fellman, will assume the leadership of the new, as yet unnamed congregation.

“The mantra among my interim colleagues is, ‘We’re hired by the congregation, but our client is the incoming rabbi,’” Young said. “What makes my role different is that my client is a known factor. My client is Rabbi Fellman.”

Under normal circumstances, Young said, he would be a catalyst for change at the congregation he’s serving as interim rabbi, while allowing its members to get used to someone new in the role.

Instead, Young said, over the next year he’ll help Fellman prepare to shepherd a larger congregation and will work with the leadership of both congregations as they continue through the unification process.

“If one team is more casual and fly by the seat of their pants, and another team is more regimented and stricter, it becomes difficult to try and figure out how we do things as a unit,” he noted.

Working with Fellman, Young said, provides some stability an interim rabbi might not typically have — especially since the two have known each other for more than two decades.

“When he was in rabbinical school, he worked with my sister and knew my father, so this is a long-term relationship,” Young said. “We have this blessing where we get to really enjoy a year together.”

Young, who grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, began his rabbinate after graduating from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2006. Following his ordination, he was named an associate rabbi at Temple Sinai of North Dade in Florida. He traded the East Coast for the West Coast when he became the rabbi at Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley, California, in 2013. He held the role for the next 10 years.

Thinking he’d never need it, Young took interim rabbi training in 2021 because, he explained, he thought the skills might be useful as his congregation made its way out of the COVID lockdown.

“Then in 2023, my wife was offered a job that we couldn’t refuse as a family,” he said.

Young and his wife, Natalie, share a unique history. They were the only rabbi/cantor pair that entered HUC already a couple, Young said. She serves as cantor at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois. They have three children.

Young put his interim rabbi training to use — serving first at KAM Isaiah Israel in Chicago and then at Congregation Beth Israel in Austin, Texas, before accepting the role at Rodef Shalom.

He’ll spend the next year helping Rodef Shalom and Temple Sinai become a unified congregation.

He said he’s already started to plan not only Shabbat services and lessons, but also the schedule for the upcoming High Holidays as well as the location of events and services.

Special attention, he said, is being paid to life cycle events because, in many cases, invitations have already been sent, and plans have been made. The intention is to have both congregations present at those celebrations.

“We’re not going to separate unless they’re the same weekend and then we’ll have one at Rodef Shalom and one at Temple Sinai,” he said.

When he’s not on the pulpit, Young calls himself “a nerd.”

“I go to the movies; I play Dungeons & Dragons every week with a group of rabbis. I play guitar and drums. I cook. I read comic books,” he said.

The nerd title is something he wears on his sleeve. Young is the co-host of “Torah Smash,” which bills itself as “the podcast for nerdy Jews.”

Rodef Shalom President Bill Battistone said that Young has “tremendous experience and background.”

“I think he fits exactly what our congregation and community needs at the moment,” he said.

When the congregation first began searching for an interim rabbi, it was still evaluating a possible unification with Temple Sinai, so it was looking for someone who could fill the traditional interim rabbi role while also offering a skillset that would help if the two congregations decided to unify.

Battistone said Young’s excitement about working with the two congregations during the unification process sold him as the right person for the role.

Battistone is quick to note, though, that this wasn’t a singular decision. Rodef Shalom, he said, put together a search committee and even consulted with Temple Sinai as it went through the process of hiring Young, “because we knew that depending on the status of the unification, he was going to be providing some services for them.”

“We’re really excited to bring in Rabbi Young and have him work alongside Rabbi Fellman and Cantor Reinwald to help us through this next phase of the unification process,” he said.

For Young, serving as an interim rabbi allows him to exercise his creative side.

He’s not sure what the future holds, noting that eventually he’d like to live in the same city as his wife and family, but said he finds satisfaction in his work.

“I am the poster child for the aphorism, ‘If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.’” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.