Rabbi bids shalom to Temple Shalom

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This article was published 20/05/2023 (1231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Although he’s saying goodbye to official synagogue duties, Rabbi Allan Finkel won’t be bidding farewell to Temple Shalom anytime soon.

“This is a community I love,” says Finkel, 69, who officially retires on June 2 after four years as rabbi at city’s only Reform Judaism synagogue.

“I love sitting in as a congregant, but I will step in where I’m useful.”

Thought to be the first Winnipeg-born rabbi at nearly six-decade history of the congregation, Finkel also becomes the temple’s first rabbi emeritus, a role that includes taking on a few services, conducting funerals and weddings as requested, and teaching conversion classes over the next year, says temple co-president Judith Huebner.

“It has bought us time to reflect and do a planning process,” she says of the next steps for the congregation of about 100 families.

For Finkel, this new role provides him the opportunity to step away from administrative duties and focus on meeting and engaging people, especially new converts.

“I enjoy hearing their stories and what they found in Judaism and how much they love it,” says Finkel of shepherding others into the faith tradition.

Not only does Finkel delight in teaching others about Reform Judaism, a tradition he joined three decades ago, he also has an outward-facing perspective when it comes to co-operating with other Jewish groups in Winnipeg, says Rabbi Anibal Mass of Congregation Shaarey Zedek.

Finkel first floated the idea of sharing Temple Shalom’s Grant Avenue building with Shaarey Zedek when the Conservative congregation was searching for temporary facilities while their Wellington Crescent building is renovated.

“It would probably have been impossible without his mediation because he is the person who naturally believes in collaboration,” says Mass of the talks preceding the agreement to share space for about two years.

“He believes synagogues shouldn’t compete, but work together.”

During early months and years of the pandemic, Finkel put that belief in collaboration into practice, helping to formulate positions and statements as president of the five-member Winnipeg Council of Rabbis.

“We allow all the doors to be open and we respected each other on our different paths,” says Finkel, a long time runner who worked as the race director of the Manitoba Marathon earlier in his career.

“We know that when congregants see rabbis talking to each other, it gives them permission to do the same.”

Although he was immersed in traditional Judaism in his early life, singing in the Shabbat and High Holiday choirs at the former Talmud Torah Synagogue in the North End, Finkel disconnected from that expression of faith in his early adult life. He first attended Temple Shalom in 1990 and found Reform Judaism a good fit for his young family.

“It was all about living in the world, living ethically, rather than living in the heavily ritualized world of my childhood,” says the father of three.

With an outgoing personality and the ability to talk to anyone about what really matters, Finkel says his tenure as rabbi stands out as the highlight of a long career, which included a brief foray into law, several years in business, and then two decades as an appeals commissioner for Workers Compensation Board of Manitoba.

He preached his first sermon in 2002, volunteered as a lay leader several times a year, and explored liberal Judaism through courses at the Florence Melton School of Jewish Learning.

Nudged into rabbinical studies by friends and fellow congregants, he enrolled in the one-year online rabbinical course with Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute, the same program Mass completed, finishing his studies in June of 2019 just as Temple Shalom’s previous rabbi announced his resignation.

“It’s become one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life,” he said of his studies and subsequent work as a rabbi.

Instead of a retirement celebration, Finkel chose to celebrate his retirement by leading the Friday night Kabbalah Shabbat service on June 2, a service which also features music of the temple’s three cantors — Len Udow, Janet Pelletier Goetze and David Vamos.

“I think Friday night for him is a rekindling (of faith). It brought him to that more spiritual side of opening up the Sabbath,” says long time cantor Udow, who encouraged Finkel to undertake rabbinical studies.

For Finkel, the evening service marks not only the end of his paid work as a rabbi, but also celebrates his three decades of exploring liberal Judaism and connecting with others on the same journey.

“Temple Shalom was there for me in exactly that way when I walked in (the doors) in 1990,” he says.

“I’ve been giving back what I’ve been given.”

brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca

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