Cyberthought by Rabbi Zelizer -- August 16, 2010

Q. What of future rabbis? What are the characteristics that you find among the current student body?

A.

1. More of them are older and second career.
2. Many more of them have no qualms about gays or patrilineal.
3. At the same time I find them more personally traditional in their religious behavior, than those of us who ordained in my generation or even the generation after. There is this strange eclectic combination of new Judaism and classic traditional Judaism in the same person.
4. I also find that more of them do not envision their careers in the pulpit rabbinate but rather in the many other avenues which are open today to the rabbi which were not open in my day. e.g., organizational work; and many of them have spouses who work, some of them as rabbis, and require certain geographic locales.