Talented rabbi
Because I am not a member of the New Reform Temple of Kansas City, I can make no judgment about the temple board’s decision not to renew the contract of Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn, as was reported recently in the Chronicle.
But I can say that I came to know the depth of this wonderfully talented man as he and I worked together to write our recent book, “They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust.” He is a man of deep integrity, of wit, of imagination and of both passion and compassion. He is, in addition, as intensely committed to Classical Reform Judaism as I am to the Reformed Tradition of Protestant Christianity.
I don’t know what the future holds for him but I do know that anyone he serves as a rabbi in the future will be blessed to have him.
Bill Tammeus
Kansas City Star “Faith Matters” blogger
blog: http://billtammeus.typepad.com
The community’s loss
Over the past 33 years that I have lived here in the community, including the three years that I served as rabbi of a local congregation, there has been a marked development in certain areas, not the least of which in the level of integration of local Jewry within itself.
Initially, I experienced the New Reform Temple as existing in the periphery of the community, being only nominally visible to, and impactful on the rest of us. Over the past 10 years, however, since the tenure of Rabbi Cukierkorn as its rabbi, New Reform has been brought into the mainstream of local Jewish activities and projects, with its spiritual leader having been elected by his colleagues twice as president of the local rabbinic association.
This has been no mean transformation.
It is, therefore, with dismay and surprise that I learned of the action of the Temple leadership, vis-a-vis its rabbi, in apparent disregard of these developments, in not continuing its relationship with him in the future. I genuinely feel it will be a loss to all of us and express my regrets accordingly.
Rabbi Gilbert L. Shoham, M.A., Ph.D.
