New rabbi comes to town

Published in The Post-Star (D1)
9/11/06

When Hurricane Wilma ripped the roof off her Florida home last fall, Rabbi Cathy Nemiroff decided she'd had enough of life in the South.

"Seeing the wind break the glass and blow through the house was really something," she said. "I was interested in leaving the area anyway, but at that point, and especially in the aftermath ... I said, 'I'm not doing it anymore.' "

She didn't realize it at the time, but there was already a place waiting for her in the North.
At Temple Beth-El, a Reform Jewish synagogue in Glens Falls, Rabbi Richard Sobel had just announced his retirement after 25 years.

When Nemiroff and Temple Beth-El were connected through the Reform movement's placement office a few months later, both sides immediately liked what they saw.

"I came up for an interview in April, and they offered me the job on the spot," Nemiroff said. "I was very pleased, because I liked it both in terms of the congregation and where it was located."

She moved to Glens Falls in June, and overlapped with Sobel for one month to ease the transition. Her office is still mostly bare, with only a few books on the shelves and some papers on the desk. She lost most of her books, artwork and other possessions to water damage after the hurricane, she said, but members of her new congregation have already offered to help.

"I've been very touched by how welcoming people are here," she said.

Nemiroff grew up in Queens and on Long Island, the daughter of non-practicing Jewish parents. She remembers her father speaking Yiddish with his parents, immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, but he wouldn't teach it to her.

From the beginning, she had what she calls "a love of Judaism that was insatiable." She attended synagogue with friends when she could, and tried to teach herself Hebrew from books. After high school, she traveled to Israel.

"Judaism is the thread that keeps coming back in my life," she said.

For the next two decades, she worked as a technical writer in Minnesota, eventually becoming president of a synagogue that she helped to start there. When she returned to Israel on a congregational trip, her interest in Judaism grew even more.

"I knew it was time to step out of computer land and into the Jewish world," she said.

Nemiroff enrolled in rabbinical school at Hebrew Union College, and studied in Los Angeles, New York and Israel before graduating in 2002.

She served several congregations in south Florida after that, including a Reconstructionist synagogue and a "very diverse" Reform congregation, but wished for a smaller, full-time congregation of her own.

"I like smaller congregations because I have the opportunity to get to know people more closely and see them through different life stages over the years," she said. "It's rare to get to do that, the way Rabbi Sobel did here."

There is a strong core of about 100 families at Temple Beth-El, Nemiroff said, and they are always open to new members and visitors.

"We really welcome anyone who comes through the door, regardless of their Jewish lifestyle, including intermarriages and alternative lifestyles," she said.

Although Nemiroff hopes to introduce new things to the synagogue in terms of music, prayer and teaching, she plans to keep some old, beloved traditions as well.

"I don't have any expectations of changing things overnight, and I don't think that would be right," she said. "First, let's find out what people have been doing, and what they want."
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