The perfect combination of progressive and traditional After extensive search amid scarcity of rabbis, Caroline Sim will join Temple Am Echad

By nICOLe FORMIsAnO nformisano@liherald.com

Temple Am Echad has spent the past two years searching for a rabbi traditional and progressive, spiritual and intellectual, easygoing and compelling. They have found all this and more in Caroline Sim, who will join the congregation this July.

“I was the first person who spoke with Rabbi Caroline,” said Carole Neely, co-chair of the rabbi search committee and past president of Am Echad. “Do you ever feel, just immediately: this is it?”

The current landscape has made the search difficult — there are many synagogues seeking rabbis, and a scarcity of rabbis to fill that need. Even so, Temple Am Echad remained selective, waiting for the perfect fit for its 240-person reform congregation. When Sim came along, Neely knew the search was over.

Neely recounts the first time Sim met the congregation. It was Purim, and the children were all making hamentashen, a traditional pastry dessert. Sim dived right in, spending time with the kids and helping them make the dough.

“That’s something you can’t rehearse for,” Neely said. “That’s something that’s just in you.”

Sim, who attended rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College Jewish institute of Religion in Cincinnati and is currently the director of rabbinic services at the Goldring/ Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, is looking forward to serving the Lynbrook community.

“I want to help people,” she said. “I want to be able to serve them as a rabbi — to comfort them when they’re in need, to answer questions they have, to celebrate holidays, to offer spiritual guidance, to help grow the community.”

Sim is remarkably popular with members of Am Echad — she is the first rabbi to be chosen unanimously by both the board and the congregation. During the selection process, rabbi candidates often meet with members of the synagogue during torah studies and other events, and the members offer feedback to the selection chair. According to Neely, their Continued on page 18