Could America ever have a Chief Rabbi?

Israel, itself deeply varied in its religious Jewish make-up, manages with an Ashkenazi and a Sephardi chief rabbi serving ten-year terms. Romania, Slovakia, South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay and Venezuela have all had chief rabbis at one time or another. And, of course, so has the UK, with Immanuel Jakobovits, Jonathan Sacks and now Ephraim Mirvis each serving as the public face of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

I saw that model of leadership up close this past April when I happened to be on Golders Green Road at the time of the double stabbing and was due to speak at the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre.

Amid the blur of that day, Chief Rabbi Mirvis and Kemi Badenoch stood out for how quickly and visibly they showed up. There’s something to be said for a Jewish community with a singular leader who works in close coordination with government when times get tough.

I put the question of whether the US could have a chief rabbi to Ari Goldman, professor emeritus at Columbia Journalism School and the New York Times’ religion reporter for 20 years.

In 2017, Goldman argued that no chief rabbi could succeed in America since the separation of church and state runs too deep, and any hint of a national religious authority would meet fierce opposition from communities fearful that such overreach might encroach on their individual freedoms and on the freedoms of temples and synagogues to practice Judaism as they see fit.

Europe, on the other hand, seldom draws as sharp a line between religion and state.

Nine years later, Goldman’s response was very different.

“This is just what we need,” he told me, “especially now when American Jews are in anguish about Israel, identity and antisemitism. It would be great to have a leader who could knit the various Jewish denominations and interests together and present a united front to the world.”

Goldman doesn’t pretend it would be easy. He grew up attending the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, or RJJ, named after New York’s first and, so far, only chief rabbi. Rabbi Joseph was a Lithuanian scholar who barely spoke English and whose tenure, by Goldman’s own account, was a disaster.

“We could do better today,” Goldman said. “Maybe even hold an election for the position. Or have two (or three) chief rabbis who would form a leadership council.”

Goldman lamented the towering figures of another era who espoused different strands of Judaism – from Menachem Mendel Schneerson and Joseph Soloveitchik, to Norman Lamm, Moshe Feinstein, Louis Finkelstein, and Alexander Schindler, Zalman Schachter-Shalomi – and wonders why we can't produce them again.

"So let's create one," he said. "I'm ready for an American chief rabbi."

The proposal sounds radical, but it’s hardly without precedent. According to historian Jonathan Sarna, who authored American Judaism: A History, Orthodox Eastern European immigrants in New York first floated the idea of a chief rabbi in the late 1870s, calling for a prominent rabbi “whose character will inspire respect, whose abilities will impart confidence and whose erudition and reputation will silence all disaffection and end all cavil and dispute.”

In 1887, a coalition of Orthodox congregations founded the Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations for the express purpose of finding, funding, and installing one. In 1888, they settled on Jacob Joseph of Vilna: a respected legal authority, a popular preacher, and an avowed Zionist.

Joseph’s tenure did not go well. His attempt to standardise kosher meat supervision collapsed when butchers and producers balked at the fees for the added service. His sermons, delivered in broken English, drew mockery. Rival rabbis eventually bestowed the title of chief rabbi upon themselves, too.

New York never tried again.

Marvin Schick, longtime president of Manhattan's Rabbi Jacob Joseph School, where Goldman studied, once described the result of the Jacob Joseph fiasco as the "shteibelization of America" – [where] there are a huge number of synagogues and each constitutes a universe unto itself. This is not what exists in the great cities of Europe, which invariably have a chief rabbi.”

Therein perhaps lies America’s peculiar genius, and arguably its greatest communal shortcoming. Over the centuries, American Jews have built a vast religious landscape in which no single institution or orthodoxy can reign supreme or dictate how Judaism should be practised. Such free market Judaism has produced a panoply of diverse religious Jewish life, but it has also made collective representation more difficult.

Who ends up speaking on behalf of American Jews when antisemitism spikes? Who testifies on Capitol Hill before Congress? Who can synthesise the concerns of Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and unaffiliated Jews without pretending their differences don’t exist?

Whether America ever gets a chief rabbi again or a universally-accepted council of chief rabbis may be beside the point. What isn't beside the point is that at a time of disturbing levels of antisemitism and a Jewish community fractured by politics, some kind of unity, however America chooses to build it, has never felt more necessary.

Jonathan Harounoff is an award-winning British author and journalist covering the Middle East and Israel’s former international spokesperson at the United Nations