[Avodah] Firing a Rabbi

[Jonathan Baker]

Way behind on reading Avodah as usual, but I had a few thoughts on
this thread from last month.

RMi:

> CM 26:1 - just to show the issur of arka'os
> Chiqrei Leiv OC #50
> IM CM #76
> Chasam Sofer CM #205-206
> Minchas Yitzchaq #75

> The Chiqrei Leiv, OTOH, grants rabbis tenure. The CS says that a tenured
> rabbi can only be fired if you can prove negligence. The MY says this is
> true of all kelei qodesh.

> OTOH, the IM is meiqil, if one gives sufficient severance pay.

I don't see this applying here.  If, as most posters said, rabbis are
hired by contract, and such contracts can be not-renewed, then rabbis
in practice do *not* have tenure.  So the CL and CS are non-operative
in the American context.  MY by extension also falls by the wayside,
leaving only IM.

Rabbis have maintained for generations that "you can't fire a rabbi",
but if this is the halachic justification for that statement, it just
seems self-serving - the Rabbis are of course nog'im bedavar.

A couple of stories of rabbis being fired, from Jeffrey Gurock's book
on R' Mordechai Kaplan, "A Modern Heretic and a Traditional Community":

1) In the early 1900s, Cong. Kehillath Jeshurun (KJ) on the Upper East
Side decided they wanted to move from a Yiddish-speaking rabbi to one
who could give sermons in English, and tried to hire R' Mordechai Kaplan, 
then a new-minted Orthodox rav trained by the Seminary and later musmach by 
R' YY Reines, the founder of Mizrachi.  (the Seminary didn't have anyone
who could grant smicha, so you were sent to Europe).  R' Peyser, the old
rabbi refused to go, claiming "Halacha prohibits one from firing a rabbi."

So the shul published an ad calling for applicants for rabbi, one
qualification of which was the ability to give sermons in English.  Rabbi
Peyser wrote them a letter, indignantly repeating his claim that "you 
can't fire a rabbi."  The shul board wrote him back, "Thank you for your
application for the job of Rabbi.  Unfortunately, you do not meet our 
requirements.  We wish you luck in future endeavours"  or something similar.
R' Peyser got the message, and left.

2) In 1916, Joseph H. Cohen (my great-granduncle) and R' Kaplan left KJ to
set up a Modern Orthodox synagogue on the West Side, as they and many 
others were walking across the park to get to shul.  That shul - The
Jewish Center (first of the name).  By that time, R' Kaplan was already
writing about his apikorsische ideas, but not preaching them.  He was a
very well-known speaker, one of the top speakers in the Jewish Endeavour
Society (a kiruv group at the time aimed at the children of immigrants,
who were drifting away from tradition).  Cohen kept him on on condition
that he not preach his Epicurean theology from the pulpit.

In 1922, Kaplan started saying the wrong things in his sermons.  So Cohen
tried to fire him.  His response?  You can't fire a rabbi.  Cohen got the
board to vote on firing him.  The vote was very close, but the Kaplan faction
won.  Still, not wanting to remain in a shul that was bitterly divided over
him, Kaplan resigned shortly thereafter, set up his own shul, and gave his
daughter (Judith Kaplan Eisenstein - her husband R Ira helped Kaplan set up
Recon, but Ira's grandfather had been a staunch opponent of R/C, the Baal
Otzarot, Judah David Eisenstein).

So there you have it.  Rabbis like to claim you can't fire a rabbi, but
in effect, you can - the board can make it sufficiently uncomfortable for
the rabbi to remain.

--
        name: jon baker              web: http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker
     address: jjbaker at panix.com     blog: http://thanbook.blogspot.com