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When Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, begins at sundown Monday, Jews will examine their spiritual lives and start the next year with a clean slate. The beginning of the Jewish high holidays ushers in 10 days of prayer and penitence concluding with the most solemn day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.
Just as individual Jews are starting over in a spiritual sense, some synagogues in the area are beginning again, with new leadership. Three congregations - one orthodox, one conservative and one reform - have hired new rabbis in the last year or so. Members at Bais Abraham, Bnai Amoona and Shaare Emeth are experiencing the boons and growing pains of rabbinic transition, as the new rabbis are dealing with everything from the legendary reputations of their predecessors to the ingrained worship styles of their new congregations.
RABBI HYIM SHAFNER
Following a legend
As in some Protestant traditions, in most synagogues, a committee takes on the task of searching for a new spiritual leader when one leaves, retires or dies. Because a synagogue can exist without a rabbi, the search can go on for months, sometimes years.
Rabbi Hyim Shafner, 37, was on the search committee at Bais Abraham - a small, 110-year-old Orthodox synagogue in University City - after its St. Louis Jewish leader, Abraham Magence, died at the age of 84.
"I was interviewing people, telling them this was the most unique synagogue in St. Louis, and then I thought to myself, 'Maybe I do want to do this,' " said Shafner.
Magence, who had survived KGB prison camps in Stalinist Russia (where he was sent for teaching the Torah to children) and had led Bais Abraham for over 30 years, had asked Shafner to be his successor. But Shafner had demurred. He had been the rabbi at Washington University's Hillel program for eight years, a job he loved. Shafner, who has three children, wasn't sure he wanted the responsibility of a synagogue.
Lawrence Friedman, a lawyer with Thompson Coburn, has been a member of the congregation for 17 years and has served as its president. He said that there was such a void after Magences death, and that the character of the synagogue was so wrapped up in the...