The New Rabbi

• Introduction:
  Page 1: The book is American Rabbis: Facts and Fiction, by David J. Zucker (Jason Aronson 1998); it’s quite smart and entertaining.
• Page 2: The statistics on the number of churches and synagogues comes Churches and Church Membership, 1990 by Martin B. Bradley, Norman M.Green, Jr., Dale E. Jones, Mac Lynn, Lou McNeil; Glenmary Research Center, Atlanta
• Page 3: The budget figure comes from an author interview with Har Zion Executive Director Howard Griffel
• Page 4: The history of the term WASP comes from an author interview with its creator, sociologist E. Digby Baltzell, for Philadelphia magazine, published in the May 1986 issue.
• Chapter 1:
  Page 11: see "Penn Valley Rabbi Sets Retirement Date" by Kay Raferty, Philadelphia Inquirer June 12, 1997
• Page 12: Wolpe’s recollections are based on nearly three years of author interviews, beginning in the fall of 1997, and independently fact-checked where possible. All the quotes from Wolpe in the book are from these personal interviews or, when noted, from transcribed tapes of public events where he spoke.
• Page 15: Rabbi Milton Steinberg, who is best known to the public as the author of the novel As a Driven Leaf, was an inspiration to an entire generation of American rabbis.
• Chapter 2:
  Page 20: For Torah translations, I relied on the excellent Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Scriptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text from the Jewish Publication Society (1985).
• Page 25: My diligent interns polled the ordaining bodies of several dozen American religions. Most clergy seem to be selected by a small group from the congregation itself: the disparities come in how the candidates get on the short list to begin with. But, even in the most democratic of religions, such as Judaism, there is rarely anything like a true congregational vote–except to rubber-stamp the candidate chosen by the search committee and the leadership. So the process often doesn’t feel very democratic to the majority of congregants.
• Page 25: Author interview with Rabbi Mark Greenspan. For information on Beth El Temple, the website is www.uscj.org/epenn/harrisburgbet/index.htm
• Chapter 3:
  Page 27: Author interview with Louis Fryman
• Page 30: Author interview with Ralph Snyder
• Page 33: Author interview with Rabbi Eliot Schoenberg. I also had access to the voluminous printed material the RA prepares for congregational leaders about how to do a rabbi search and for rabbis about how to win a rabbi search.
• Chapter 4:
  Page 43: I relied on several books as a reality check on Jewish ritual observances–and, during fact-checking, the ritual material was double-checked with different rabbis–but there is still some variability in practice that cannot be explained without writing a separate book. Especially since, regardless of what the rules are, many synagogues and families have their own traditions that have been passed down as gospel and, for them, they are.
• Page 44: The website for Beth Zion Israel is www.bzbi.org.
• Page 48: The poem is called "Kaddish; Again" and it appears in The Unwelcome Messiah, by Ira F. Stone. We are delighted to own copy #13 of the limited signed edition of 50–which also comes with a bookmark on which another poem is published.
• Page 48: The chapter of the book Rela Geffen edited, Celebration & Renewal: Rites of Passage in Judaism (Jewish Publication Society 1993), was written by Judith Hauptman, a Talmud professor at the Seminary who lectures widely on Judaism and feminism. "Death and Mourning: A Time for Weeping A Time for Healing" appears on pages 226-251
• Page 49: The Study Brochure on "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother" was written by Chaim Potok in April, 1961 for The Teachers Institute–Seminary College of Jewish Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary
• Chapter 5:
  Page 52: Author interview with Rabbi David Wolpe
• Page 52: The Newsweek cover story, "Talking to God," by Kenneth Woodward appeared in the January 6, 1992 edition.
• Page 53: Author e-mail correspondence with Rabbi Hillel Silverman
• Page 56: I wrote about the friendship between David Wolpe and Mitch Albom in a short piece in Philadelphia magazine (September 1999, page 31) when Making Loss Matter was first published.
• Page 59: This piece, "Cradle to Grave" (Philadelphia magazine, April 1998, page 58) led to the reopening of the investigation of Marie Noe, whose ten babies all died mysteriously between 1949 and 1968. She confessed, and later pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder (two of the children died of natural causes.)
• Page 61: While there are a variety of background sources on Heschel’s life, I relied on his own books–especially God In Search of Man and The Sabbath–as well as the section on Heschel in Rabbi Neil Gillman’s book Conservative Judaism (Behrman House, 1993), pages 82-85. Using Gillman as a Heschel source seemed particularly ironic, because the first time I ever heard Gillman sermonize–on Yom Kippur at the "upstairs" service at my synagogue, Beth Zion Beth Israel in Center City Philadelphia–he was marking the 25th anniversary of Heschel’s death by describing his own personal relationship with the great rabbi at the Seminary. It was a relationship that clearly vexed Gillman because, as he admitted in the sermon, he had always wanted to be Heschel’s favorite at the Seminary, but he wasn’t. The quote from God in Search of Man is from page 3.
• Page 62: While The First Jewish Catalog by Richard Siegel, Michael Strassfield and Sharon Strassfield (Jewish Publication Society, 1973) is still around, a better source for Rabbi Arthur Green’s rich insights is his harder-to-find book Seek My Face, Speak My Name: A Contemporary Jewish Theology (Jason Aronson Inc, 1992)
• Page 65: I used a number of biographical sources on Kaplan–besides Wolpe’s recollections of him--but the one that lays out these large ideas most simply and readably is the section in Gillman’s Conservative Judaism, pages 73-82.
• Chapter 6:
  Page 68-74: Author interviews with Barbara Schwartz and Howard Griffel, as well as the Har Zion 1998-99 Schedule of Dues and Seat Request Form and Extended Kiddush menu. (By 2003-2004, the rates for family membership with main sanctuary seats had risen to $1650-$2230.)
• Page 75: The Associated Press article "Lewinsky's Rabbi Has Harsh Words for Clinton" appeared in newspapers around the country September 16, 1998.
• Page 77: See the AP article "Borscht Belt Awaits Gambling Rebirth" by Hadley Pawlak, April 9, 2000
• Chapter 7:
  Page 78: Author interview with Elaine Wolpe.
• Page 79: The phrase is a chapter title from his book In Speech and in Silence: The Jewish Quest for God (Henry Holt, 1992).
• Page 84: My story "Family Business" (Philadelphia magazine, September 1998) details the long rise and what turned out to be the beginning of the fall for Rite Aid and the Grass family in Harrisburg.
• Chapter 8:
  Page 92: For information about why Mezvinsky’s political comeback failed, see Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s devastating story "The Crash" (Philadelphia magazine, May 2000, page 75).
• Page 95: All quotes from Wolpe High Holiday sermons come from the handsome bound book of his sermons that the synagogue published as a going-away gift, Collected High Holy Day Sermons Rabbi Gerald I Wolpe 1974-1998. The book includes the sermons as they were written, but Wolpe did alter some of them slightly on the bimah. Since I clandestinely taped several of these sermons, I did make a few changes so the quotes are what he actually said, not what the book says he said.
• Page 97: Author interview with Lew Grafman
• Chapter 9:
  Page 106: My primary source of information for the details of the Jewish holidays described in this and later chapters is The Jewish Holidays: A Guide & Commentary by Michael Strassfield (Harper & Rowe, 1985).
• Page 108: Author notes from Rabbi Jacob Herber’s sermon.
• Chapter 10:
  Pages 113-119: Author interview with Rabbi Jacob Herber.
• Chapter 11:
  Page 120: Author interview with Rabbi Jacob Herber.
• Page 121-122: Author interview with Rabbi Gerald Wolpe and obituary of S. Harrison Dogole by Frederick Cusick in the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 15, 1999. Sonny Dogole died at age 77 in Florida, where he had retired from a 46-year career at Globe Security Systems, one of the nation’s largest detective and security firms. Besides his Jewish fund-raising, he also raised major money for Democratic politicians.
• Page 126: Author interview with Dr. Jeffrey Blum and Cindy Blum.
• Page 128: Author notes from talk by Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary
• Chapter 12:
  Page 129: Author interview with Jeff and Cindy Blum.
• Page 131: My background on Camp Ramah comes from the Ramah websites and the history of the camp program in Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS 1997), which I mistakenly forgot to include in my bibliography for the simple reason that I’ve never seen it as a book: the Seminary has it on-line at its website www.jtsa.edu --which I see they spruced up and speeded up the moment I no longer needed it to research this book. (It was down so often on Fridays and Saturdays that I came to suspect it had been programed to be shomer shabbos.) But much of what I know about Ramah comes from my friend Jeff Rosenschein, who was the music counselor at Camp Ramah in the Poconos for many years.
• Page 132: Background on the Birenbaum donation from Philadelphia Jewish Life 1940-1985, edited by Murray Friedman (Seth Press, 1986), page 228 and from the Har Zion 50th anniversary book (1974).
• Page 132: Information on JTS policy on halacha at Ramah camps from "Camps to enforce halacha standards" by Tami Bickley, from the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, Feburary 4, 2000.
• Page 133: The difficulties of younger leaders getting into leadership positions was explained to me in an interview with Bernard Fishman.
• Page 136: For more on Carole Karsch–who I chatted with quite often during the research for the book but never formally interviewed (the same is true for her husband)–see "A Fond Farewell: Family, Volunteer Work Will Now Occupy Retiring Exec" by Brian Mono, Jewish Exponent, January 21, 1999.
• Page 137: For more on Beth Am Israel (which friends of ours are always suggesting we join) see "Saturday Morning Alive!: Beth Am Israel conducts ‘a major experiment in synagogue change’" by Marilyn Silverstein, Jewish Exponent, December 31, 1998.
  Page 137: This quotation is known by all music writers (even semi-retired ones like me) because its author went on to become Springsteen’s manager. It comes from "Growing Young with Rock and Roll" by Jon Landau, The Real Paper, May 22, 1974.
• Chapter 13:
  Page 140: For information on the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, see their website at www.aapc.org/about.htm
• Page 142: While this section recounts many of the positive things that are done with the rabbi’s discretionary fund, there has been a rise in cases of rabbis being accused of misusing the funds by their congregational leaders. In many situations, I’d suspect these accusations grow from already-strained relationships between clergy and leadership, but I have also heard stories of the funds being used more as a kind of expense account for the rabbi–for books or professional travel—than for needy congregants.
• Page 142: I attended Leah Zatuchni’s inspiring bat mitzvah, where they gave out a printed explanation of the process called "What Leah did," and discussed it in interviews with Rabbi Wolpe and Hebrew School headmaster Sara Cohen.
• Page 143: Background information on Rabbi Joachim Prinz from "Marcus Center to Acquire Papers of Civil Rights Activist Rabbi Joachim Prinz" by Ben L. Kaufman, The Cincinnati Enquirer, January 4, 2001.
  Page 146-148: Author interview with Marshall Herskovitz (who kindly went back and pumped all his relatives for information so we could separate Schreiber mythology from fact.)
• Chapter 14:
  Page 151-153: The interviews of rabbinic candidates with the search committee were recreated from author interviews with several different search committee members, published biographical material on the candidates and their synagogues, interviews with rabbinic colleagues and, in many cases, a direct interview with the author or fact-checker. (All of the candidates mentioned ended up taking other jobs, so their desire to change jobs was not a secret.) The same journalistic process was used in recreating the interactions between committee members and those rabbis from the "wishlist" who were contacted by the synagogue in the hope they might consider applying, and in describing the careers of other rabbis mentioned in the chapter, such as Rabbi Amy Eilberg. (For information on Eilberg's prayers for after abortion and miscarriage, see the article "Amy Eilberg responds to women's grief Bay Area rabbi creates abortion ritual in manual" by Lori Eppstein, Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, November 20, 1998 http://www.jewishsf.com/bk981120/12amanualmid.htm)
• Page 154: Rabbi David Ackerman never agreed to do a formal interview with me for the book, but he did do a fact-check interview after the manuscript was completed, and spoke to me informally after that. He expressed a certain amount of astonishment that all the material about his dealings at Har Zion could be pieced together so accurately without his active participation. But I think he already knew as well as I did that it is very hard to keep secrets in a synagogue community.
• Page 162: Fact-check interview with Rabbi Harold Kushner.
• Page 163: Salary estimates come from the article "Clergy Pay Varies Widely, Survey Says" by Bill Broadway, Washington Post, September 16, 2000, which can be found on the website of the organization that did the survey, The National Association of Church Business Administration www.nacba.net/Article/salary.htm . The salaries of the two rabbis Wolpe were confirmed by synagogue leaders.
• Page 164: Author interview with Lewis Grafman.
• Page 167: Figures from Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia
• Page 168: This was the Jewish Community Center of Greater Harrisburg.
• Page 169: To document the rise and fall of the Locust Club, I primarily used "The Locust-Mid City Club" Jewish Exponent, June 9, 1961; Farewell, Locust Club" by Leon Brown, Jewish Exponent, March 11, 1999, and "From blacklist to A list: Welcome to the Club" by David Iams, Philadelphia Inquirer. August 8, 1999.
• Page 169: The information on the merger of Federation and UJA comes from, among other sources, "Merger Near, 2 Jewish Philanthropy Groups Pick a Leader," by Reed Abelson, New York Times, February 14, 1999.
• Page 170: The Akiba naming drama was covered by the Philadelphia Inquirer, especially "Akiba decides to keep its name" by Stephanie Stanley, Philadelphia Inquirer January 8, 1999
• Page 171: The back-door support of Sam Katz by Ed Rendell was detailed first and best by Larry Platt in his Philadelphia magazine article "Sam Katz Lets Loose" in the August 1999 issue.
• Chapter 16:
  Page 174: While I was unable to convince my publisher to create promotional kippahs for The New Rabbi, the idea so amused the Random House attorney who vetted my book, Matthew Martin, that he commissioned one from his sister, Liz, and gave it to me as a Hanukah gift.
• Page 179: This search committee scene was recreated with the help of several members of the committee and the recreation was fact-checked with them and Rabbi Ackerman.
• Page 186: Author interview with Cantor Eliot Vogel.
• Chapter 17:
  Page 190: Author interview with Rabbi Jacob Herber
• Page 191: The librarians at Har Zion, who were always very helpful to me, were kind enough to loan me the cassette tape of this event, to augment my notes from that afternoon.
• Page 195: Author interview with Paul Wolpe.
• Page 198: Luckily, going to minyan doesn’t cost as much as Transcendental Meditation.
• Page 198: I was asked to become editor of Philadelphia magazine in February of 1999, after being on the full-time staff from 1982-1989 and being a contract writer and consultant with an office at the magazine from 1990-1999. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I accepted the job with the understanding that I would continue working on The New Rabbi while occupying the corner office.
• Page 199: For more information on Beth Shalom, the website www.uscj.org/delvlly/epbsc/
• Page 201: Author interview with Rabbi Joel Meyers
• Page 201: Author interview with Rabbi Lee Buckman
• Page 203-206: I was with Rabbi Herber when he opened the note and made the call. I then sat in the library, which has a window overlooking the entrance moms and kids use for school, watching this scene unfold. Background information on Noreen Cook came from the chapter on her in the Har Zion 75th anniversary book Connections (which was titled with the quote "Branches are lost when the root is"), her obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer written by Dominic Sama on March 26, 1999, and her obituary in The Bulletin of Har Zion Temple, written by Julie Levine and Elizabeth Shaid, June 1999
• Page 209: Author interview with Robert Cook, who has now made it his mission to spread the word about this condition and to fund the installation of portable defibrillators–one of which might have saved his wife--in public places. I’m also appreciative to my friend Dr. Raymond Woosley, Vice President for Health Sciences at the University of Arizona and an authority on Long QT Syndrome (especially when it is triggered by medications) for helping me succinctly describe the problem.
• Page 211: Author interview with Rabbi Jacob Herber and Rabbi Gerald Wolpe.
• Chapter 18:
  Page 214: Copies of Rabbi Michael Monson’s prayer are available upon request.
• Page 217: Author interview with Jeff Blum
• Page 222: I would love to hear from whoever wrote this very funny piece so it can be properly credited.
• Chapter 19:
  Page 225: The unpublished memoir is "From Wynnefield-Radnor to Penn Valley: A Personal Memoir of the Move of Har Zion," by Rabbi Gerald I Wolpe, September 3, 1992.
• Page 226: I covered this event, but was also able to interview Rabbi Chaim Potok and his wife, Adena, about it–and about their long association with Har Zion. It was an especially moving interview, because he had been terminally ill for some time, but he was fascinating and focused that afternoon.
• Page 226: Some of the early history of Har Zion came from the impressive, privately published hardbound book The Har Zion Temple, 1924-1949, A Quarter Century of Service, edited by Dr. Samuel Sussman, and the synagogue’s subsquent anniversary books, as well as several chapters in Philadelphia Jewish Life, 1940-1985, especially the chapter "Wynnefield" by David P. Varady (parts of which Rabbi Wolpe disputed in his own memoir), and "Changing Styles of Synagogue Life" by Sidney H. Schwartz. The very early history of Judaism in Philadelphia is informed by, among other sources, Jewish Life in Philadelphia, 1830-1940 by Murray Friedman (Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1993).
• Page 227: The reference to "Kike’s Peak" was published in Newsweek, in the "The Suburb That Struck a Truce," the sidebar to its cover story, "The Battle of the Suburbs" on November 15, 1971.
• Page 227: Biographical information on Rabbi Simon Greenberg comes from his own writings in Har Zion anniversary publications, from the biography written for the collection of his papers at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and from Jewish Life in Philadelphia 1940-1985.
• Page 228: Biographical information on Rabbi David Goldstein comes from his writings in Har Zion anniversary publications, from Jewish Life in Philadelphia 1940-1985 and author interviews with several rabbis who knew him: Chaim Potok, Gerald Wolpe and, especially, his last assistant, Rabbi Efre Spectre.
• Page 229: Besides my interview with Chaim Potok, there is also a very helpful website devoted to his life and work at www.lasierra.edu/~ballen/potok/
• Page 232-233: The circumstances of the resignations of the two older presidents of Har Zion was described to me in an interview with Bernie Fishman.
• Page 233: The tortured saga of Sam Klausner’s study–which, all these years later, can still easily ignite angry discussion–was pieced together from author interviews with Rabbi Wolpe, Bernie Fishman and Chaim and Adena Potok, a fact-check interview with Klausner (whose views were well chronicalled at the time in, among other places, the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Bulletin, and in his paper "synagogues in Transition: A Planning Prospectus" in Conservative Judaism, Fall, 1970, Vol. 25, No. 1, pages 42-54), Har Zion releases found in the files of the Bulletin archive (which is now ably run by Temple University), Newsweek’s coverage, Rabbi Wolpe’s memoir and the Wynnefield chapter in Jewish Life in Philadelphia 1940-1985.
• Page 234: The quotes about incendiary findings are from "Wynnefield Exodus is Slowed" in the Philadelphia Bulletin, July 27, 1970. The observations about Harry Sylk are from "Some Oppose Har Zion Move to Suburbs" by Joe Adcock, Philadelphia Bulletin, August 18, 1979.
• Page 236: See the front-page story "Large Synagogue is Moving to Suburbs" by Kathy Begley, Philadelphia Inquirer, December 17, 1972.
• Page 237: Anecdote about Rabbi David Vice from author interview with Rabbi Wolpe. The synagogue’s interaction with Goodman is detailed in Wolpe’s memoir.
• Chapter 20:
  Page 243: Website for Adas Israel, Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg’s synagogue, is www.adasisrael.org/Default.htm
• Page 245: Fact-check interview with Rabbi Martin Cohen.
• Page 248: For more information on the influential services at B’nai Jeshurun, see their website at www.bj.org (which includes Michael Lerner’s moving obituary of Rabbi Marshall Meyer)
• Page 249: I used the Keeping the Faith production notes posted on www.joan-or-arc.iwarp.com/up26.htm
• Page 250: The website for Sinai Temple’s "Friday Night Live" service is www.fnlatsinai.com/home.asp
• Page 251: The idea of secularizing gospel songs comes from my coverage of The Gospel at Colonus by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson (see "Your Show of Shows," Philadelphia magazine, September 1985, Page 162.) During my interviews with Breuer and Telson, we discussed how the techniques they had used to set Oedipus at Colonus in a gospel church (convincing a famous gospel performers to sing secular songs) could be transplanted into a synagogue to make services more musical. Gospel was videotaped for a 1985 airing of "Great Performances" on PBS, and you can still buy a CD of that soundtrack, which came out before the show’s brief run on Broadway.
• Page 252: Author interviews with Rabbi Joel Meyers, Lou Fryman, Cindy Blum and Ralph Synder.
• Chapter 21:
  Page 256: The Jewish Exponent’s website is www.jewishexponent.com
• Page 261: "If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking" by Emily Dickinson from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, (Belknap Press)
• Page 262: From The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph Soloveitchik (re-released in hardcover by Jason Aronson in 1996). This book grew out of a series of lectures in the "Marriage and Family" program of the National Institute of Mental Health Project at Yeshiva University.
• Page 267: My rabbi, Ira Stone, originally told me about the mandatory one-year interim period after the retirement of long-term clergy, explaining that he thought that Judaism should accept this model. I suspect he is probably right.
• Page 269: Information on Cynthia Herber from author interview with Rabbi Jacob Herber.
• Chapter 22:
  Page 273: "Where Have All the Rabbis Gone?" by Julie Weiner, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), July 22, 1999. JTA is like the Associated Press of the world of Jewish newspapers: www.jta.org
• Page 276: My thanks to the anonymous member of the congregation who passed on this remark, the same person who kind enough to clandestinely tape some of Rabbi Herber’s later High Holiday sermons for me.
• Page 279: Background on the Finkelstein Institute from Conservative Judaism, Gillman page 71.
• Chapter 23:
  Page 283: Author interview with Rabbi Moshe Tutnauer.
• Page 286: Author interview with Rabbi Ira Stone.
• Page 288: Detailed in the Brandeis student newspaper, The Justice, February, 2000 in articles by Michaela May and Carina Canaan
• Page 290: Some of the ideas in this section about my father were first explored in a longer essay about fathers and sons called "Reeling in the Years," in Philadelphia magazine, June 1995.
• Chapter 24:
  Page 294: Author interview with Cindy Blum
• Page 297: This bomb scare was widely known in the Har Zion community, but it was never reported in the newspaper. And, when I went to the police to get a copy of the incident report, they refused to give me this public document without the permission of the synagogue (which they refused to grant.) I’m guessing that this lack of separation of synagogue and state happens in places other than the Main Line. As a member of a synagogue myself, I can imagine a scenario where such secrecy might lessen the pain of a fellow congregant. But as a journalist, I have to say that I think such collusion is dangerous and could ultimately lead to calamity.
• Page 298: Information on Rabbi Schulweis and Valley Beth Shalom is available on their website www.vbs.org
• Page 306: Information on Rabbi Daniel Wolpe’s synagogue at http://www.sojc-orlando.org/
• Chapter 25:
  Page 311: In reconstructing the Temple Emanu-El saga in Palm Beach, I relied on my own ongoing interviews with Rabbi Wolpe, extensive fact-check interviews with Rabbi Leonid Feldman and former synagogue president Stephen Levin, and the excellent coverage of the synagogue and its problems by the Palm Beach Post, especially "A Powerful Personality" by Lois Kaplan, October 23, 1992 and "A House of Worship Now a House Divided" by Douglas Belkin, August 20, 2000. I strongly encourage journalists who are interested in ambitious coverage of local religious communities to look at the stories about Emanu-El, especially Belkin’s 8-20-2000 piece, because they are models of enterprise and fairness in a very touch situation.
• Page 315: See Ed McFall’s obituary in the Philadelphia Daily News, August 21, 2000. His family and friends created a fund in his memory at journalism school at Temple University.
• Page 316: Sadly, Cantor Paula Victor died from cancer not long after those High Holidays. She will always be remembered, however, for her kindness, her humor, her bravery under duress and her ability to inspire others to raise their voices in song and prayer. She also proved, I think, what many cantors privately feel but rarely will say out loud in mixed company–that they are as important to the daily life of the synagogue as rabbis, even if they usually aren’t paid or respected equally.
• Chapter 26:
  Page 324: The best source of information about the stained glass windows is in the booklet Har Zion published in the late 1980s--with text by Gerald Spector and photographs by Kenneth Bronstein–which sits in the book slips behind the prayer books in the synagogue and decribes both the building and the service. Bronstein’s original photographs, which he took in the 70s when the windows were first installed, are also the ones used to create the cover of The New Rabbi.
• Page 325: Philadelphia Magazine and I broke up in October 2000. I had been there, in one capacity or another, since May of 1982. We were reunited, briefly, in August 2002, when my successor published the first excerpt from The New Rabbi.
• Page 326: See "Ex-rabbi at Palm Beach Temple Disciplined" by Tim O’Meilia, Palm Beach Post, November 29, 2000
• Page 327: See "Bad Blood Recending at Temple Emanu-El" by Susan Spencer-Wendel, Palm Beach Post, December 11, 2000
• Page 328: Author interview with Rabbi David Wolpe.
• Page 330: The article read ‘round the world is "Doubting the Story of Exodus" by Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2001, page 1A.
• Page 330: The "grinch" line appeared in "Conservative vs Orthodox: Did Exodus Happen?" by Melissa Radler, Jerusalem Post, April 29, 2001.
• Page 331: The controversial article "The Conservative Lie" appeared in the February 2001 issue of Moment magazine (www.momentmag.com) and can be read on-line, complete with an "apology" from Shafran," at www.jewishamerica.com/ja/features/ConLie.cfm
• Page 331: Some of the information about Kirk Douglas’ bar mitzvah came from 'Today, I am a man,' says bar mitzvah boy Kirk Douglas" by Tom Tugend, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 17, 1999.
• Page 332: The story "A Rabbi’s Look at Archeology Touches a Nerve," by Gustav Niebuhr appeared in the New York Times on June 2, 2001, page A11.
• Chapter 27:
  Page 334: Author interview with Sara Cohen
• Page 343: The line and translation appear in the standard Conservative High Holiday Prayer book–Mahzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur–edited by Rabbi Jules Harlow and originally published by the Rabbinical Assembly in 1972, on pages 236-237.
  Afterword
• Page 359: The Alban Institute can be reached through its website at www.alban.org. Its consulting services and seminars for synagogues are highly recommended.