Temple's rabbi retires - this time she means it

Nine years ago, Rabbi Judith Lewis retired, and was planning on going into teaching. Then, she heard about the situation at the Riverdale Temple. After a dispute, the rabbi had left, taking a number of followers with him to form what is now Congregation Shaarei Shalom. The remaining congregants needed a rabbi. 

Rabbi Lewis said she knew she had to try to help.

“I’d been in the rabbinate for 26 years and I’d seen plenty of congregations split and factions in congregations, that was what really attracted me to the position because I’d been through a lot of that in former positions and I’d learned how you navigate that,” she explained in her office on Friday, June 26. “So I came in and I tried to listen to everyone.”

Now, Rabbi Lewis has retired again — this time for good. She and her husband are moving to Rochester, to live with her father as he grows older. But Rachel Radna, the president of Riverdale Temple, said Rabbi Lewis is leaving a congregation that is tightly-knit. 

“The proof is in the pudding. We are healed,” she said. “And we are much stronger now. She made it about us, not about herself. And we all are very bonded with each other, and I think that has to speak to the way the rabbi handled us.”

Rabbi Lewis said she leaves Riverdale Temple with many favorite memories — she can’t pick just one — although looking back, the bar and bat mitzvahs and the High Holidays stand out to her as special times.

“Coming to Riverdale Temple let me live the values that had brought me into the rabbinate in the first place,” Rabbi Lewis said. She talked about the congregation’s lively and diverse Torah discussions, and how she appreciated hearing different versions of the text — traditional and more progressive. 

“I have never loved studying Torah as much as I did here,” she explained, adding “And I love to study Torah!”