Howard M. Holtzmann Senior Rabbi

The Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale is pleased to work with DRG to conduct this search.

Read the full job description HERE.

The Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain at Yale ("the Chaplain") holds a unique, senior position that distinguishes Yale’s Slifka Center from other Hillels. Distinct from the Executive Director, the Chaplain serves as the Senior Rabbi to the Yale community in a role that combines teaching, community leadership, alumni engagement, pastoral care, and day-to-day work with students and faculty. The Chaplain leads the Slifka Center’s Student Life Team (the student-facing staff) supporting students in building a vibrant Jewish community that is both pluralistic and Zionist.

The Chaplain inspires students to greater love for and commitment to Jewish texts, Jewish tradition and the Jewish state; engages with faculty; and explores, teaches, writes, and speaks about Jewish texts, ethics, and values. Together with the Executive Director, the Chaplain is a key representative of the Slifka Center and the Jewish community in conversations with the Yale administration, faculty, and the broader community.

Because of the Slifka Center’s unique leadership structure, the Chaplain can serve the Yale Jewish community as a senior teacher, scholar, and community leader without the primary operational and fundraising responsibilities that typically accompany leadership roles in Jewish institutional life. The Chaplain will support, rather than lead these functions.

The Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale (home of Yale Hillel) is an independent self-supporting non-profit that serves more than 1,500 Yale undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty, staff, and members of the greater New Haven community. Located at 80 Wall Street, in the heart of Yale University’s campus, the Slifka Center provides a warm, welcoming, and diverse Jewish environment in which students and other members of the university community can connect socially, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually.

The Slifka Center is the home to Yale Hillel, which hosts multiple minyanim and communities of students with diverse interests including Magevet (Yale’s Jewish a cappella group), Shibboleth (Yale’s undergraduate journal of Jewish thought), W{Holy} Queer (Yale’s religious LGBTQ program run in partnership with other campus organizations), Yale Friends of Israel, Jewish service and social justice programs, as well as other student groups.

For more information see (Use the "Apply for this Job" box below)..

The Slifka Center operates the only kosher dining hall on campus, which serves as a focal point for student life within and beyond the Jewish community and a meeting place for students, faculty, and community members alike. In addition to the kosher kitchen, the facility also features a chapel, a library, a Beit Midrash, an art gallery, as well as additional gathering spaces for the Yale campus community.

• The Chaplain is the leader of the Student Life Team and responsible for, in collaboration with the Executive Director and Board of Trustees, the vision, strategy, and culture of student life at the Slifka Center.
• The Chaplain’s primary focus is student-facing work, including pastoral, educational, community building, and intellectual engagement across Yale’s diverse Jewish community of roughly 1,500 total Jewish undergraduate and graduate students.
• The Chaplain together with the Executive Director shares responsibility for facilitating a culture at the Slifka Center in which deep friendship, study, debate, and a sense of shared Jewish peoplehood flourishes across denominational, political, and other differences. The Chaplain works with the Board of Trustees and the Executive Director to establish the methods, metrics, and goals that guide the Slifka Center’s efforts to engage and inspire Jewish students, support student initiatives, build a vibrant and pluralistic Jewish community, and assist students in deepening their Jewish identities.
• The Chaplain is the Senior Rabbi of the Yale Jewish community and leads staff efforts to support the Slifka Center’s diverse prayer…