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Should someone get smicha to become a Rabbi as a career path? With all the competition is it a realistic option for most people to actually make money through the Rabbinate?
The Rabbinate is not a position for those looking to make money even though there are many Rabbonim who get paid well. Having semicha is also not enough to be a Rabbi. If you are not a respected and recommended talmud chochom nobody “Orthodox” will hire you. I think Conservative and Reform pay a lot better.
Huh?? Not if you’re not Rabbi Material
If you go to a legitimate program like RIETS or YCT, you can get positions in Hillel, chaplaincy, etc.
Congregational rabbi jobs are generally very competitive.
Basically, it’s a bad job market for all kinds of clergy.
If you want to do kiruv, you’re best off going to a place like Ohr Somayach or Aish.
rebdoniel, going to YCT will not make it easy to find a job. The RCA does not accept YCT semicha as legitimate, and many places know that.
It’s not just the RCA. Most people (myself included) don’t count YCT semicha as legitimate.
I don’t even count it as Judaism. But I would gladly recommend a YCT grad for a pulpit in a conservative temple. Or an “orthodox” one without a mechitza like the one in Denver that has a YCT grad.
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Rabbi Zadok said: Do not make the Torah a crown to honor yourself, or a shovel to dig with it (and make a living), as Hillel says. Anyone who uses the sharpness of Torah for his own purposes, will be cut by it – anyone who benefits from Divrei Torah cuts his own life from the world.
Torah613Torah
There’s a whole bunch of Rabbis who you just unemployed….I hope you plan on feeding them…
But, they’re hired from YCT in positions where a rabbi would go to make money- chaplaincy, Hillel, etc.
Basically, positions open to Conservative and Reform rabbis are also open to YCT people, outside the framework of synagogues or denominational posts.
If you want to be a Modern Orthodox Rabbi, You need to go to YU for smicha.
Most place will only hire graduates from YU.
Yes, to be hired in an OU shul, you need RIETS semicha.
For chaplaincy jobs, or anything non-denominational, you can have YCT, Rabbanut, R’ ZNG, etc.
Even those places want YU Semicha, because unlike most Semicha which only focus on Torah, YU teaches related disciples like Psychology and how to deal with people.
Its more of a professional degree there like a doctor or Lawyer
RD:
Legitimate? YCT? Is that supposed to be some sort of joke? I’d take the semicha of some small furry creatures from my backyard more seriously than that of those Judaism-twisting quacks. At least my furry friends aren’t actively trying to distort Judaism into whatever garbage secular society happens to have taken a liking to.
My feelings are that the YCT curriculum is acceptable; they don’t learn much out of the ordinary, but the issue is that hashkafically, they politicize many things.
Allowing non-Orthodox clergy a place on the faculty of a rabbinical school (or as YU graduate R’ Benjamin Samuels did in Newton, allowing a reform rabbi the pulpit on Shabbos) strikes me as relatvistic, that there is nothing theologically wrong with what the speaker stands for, as does supporting homosexual marriage ((R’ Asher Lopatin, incoming president of YCT, gave the invocation at a prayer breakfast for a “marriage equality” group in Illinois, saying there that “the book of Genesis determines that nobody should be alone” and so on), opposing reparative therapy (thereby adopting politicized liberal APA gobbledygook), advocating “social justice” as a worldview, paskening that saving animals on Shabbos is a pikuach nefesh case and therefore one can ch”v violate shabbos to save their pet, working together with the IWW labor union (the famous Wobblies, a self-described Marxist-leninist group), condemning anti-jihad ads in the subways (the director of recruitment at YCT is on the board of the “Jewish Muslim Volunteer Alliance,” which seeks to stifle criticism of Islam (how supporting Islam goes along with feminism is beyond me, unless you consider burkas and worse empowering for women), arguing that Israel is “immoral” in its treatment of Palestinians (the recruitment director earned the criticism of Dr. Daniel Gordis, who in spite of his JTS ordination, is a brilliant Zionist thinker and right-wing scholar), citing favorably the opinions of Freire (a Marxist) and Peter Singer (who calls for animal rights and euthanasia, not unlike a certain brutal regime of 60 years ago), arguing for liberation theology(Marxist), replacing Adon Olam with Hatikva (this isn’t a halakhic problem, but an aesthetic one; even Reform temples don’t do this), supporting left-wing “religious zionism” and the Hitnakut (through ties with Rabbis M. Melchior, J. Sacks and D. Rosen, who sit on the board of “One Voice,” a pro-Palestinian State group, along with Imam Rauf of Ground Zero mosque infamy, Dennis Ross, Talab El Sana- wanted negotiations with Assad, etc.). and a litany of other moronic liberal moves.
Edited.
My feelings are that the YCT brand of so-called Judaism is no different then that of the beginning of the Reform movement. They do not get their outlook from the Torah; they have their own preconceived notions, more often than not taken directly from some secularist liberal’s philosophy. Then, they twist and pervert the words of the Torah Hakdosheh (most notably in regard to Halacha), pick and choosing, discarding what they regard as “outdated”, to make it say what they wanted it to say in the first place. So not only do they spew their own twisted garbage, but they actually have the audacity to blame it on Hashem and his Torah! They completely disregard every last one of the Gedolei Hador, both those of today and those of past generations, due to their own arrogance and deluded sense of self-importance. They have no problem labeling what Chazal said as “obsolete”, and they often go so far as to say that Chazal’s morals are simply incorrect.
They are the furthest thing from acceptable.
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Avos 1:10
Even those places want YU Semicha, because unlike most Semicha which only focus on
Torah, YU teaches related disciples like Psychology and how to deal with people.
Its more of a professional degree there like a doctor or Lawyer
Maseiach l’fi tummoi.
Don’t go to YU. They aren’t going to exist in 20 years. It’s going to be just YCT and Yeshivish.
WIY: There’s a difference between becoming a Rabbi and needing to sustain a family, and davka going into it as a “career path” like becoming a professor.
It’s not a career it’s a lifestyle. It’s who you are.
I see YU becoming more yeshivish, actually.
Well yes, I think YU will come with us to yeshivish, and will cease to be the same institution at all.
ZD: You’re wrong about YU semicha. Yes, they have classes on different topics. Their website lists some areas:
Pulpit
Education
Community outreach and Campus leadership
Hospital chaplaincy
Jewish communal services
but that doesn’t mean they treat it as a professional degree like a lawyer or doctor. They simply recognize that a Rav may be expected to provide advice and/or counseling to members of his shul. They offer training so the person actually does a good job of it. They offer a public speaking course so a Rav knows how to deliver a drasha in the shul. Does that mean it’s like being a lawyer or doctor? Absolutely not! They just want someone to be able to do the best job possible.
In 20 years, YU students will be a mix of 10% left-wing Modern Orthodox (but keeping their distance from YCT for whatever reason), 50% Right-Wing MO/”frum but not yeshivish”/”Orthodox without adjectives,” 10% Yeshivish, 15% neo-chassidic Orthodox who mainly still daven nusach Ashkenaz (inspired by soon-to-be mashgiach ruchani R’ Moshe Weinberger), and 10% “ChaVaKuk” dati leumi (spiritually-oriented students of Chabad-Breslov-Kook who are growing long beards and getting ready to move to settlements in Yehuda/Shomron after graduation), and 5% chassidic rebels seeking a less constraining lifestyle or a more rationalistic hashkafa.
Just thought I’d share my prophetic vision with ya’ll! :o)
I think you’re 100% correct, yytz.
R’ Weinberger is being brought in to give these kids the sort of varmkeit they got in their shana b’aretz; huggy, Carlebach, spirituality.
If you look at the hag hasemicha, you see quite a few yeshivish-looking guys, and even a couple of Hhasidishe looking ones, as well.
wasserman: I don’t think it’s accurate that places will only hire YU graduates. However, many places do want their Rabbi to be an RCA member. I don’t know how it works to become an RCA member. I do know they recognize YU semicha, but not YCT semicha.
As for places not respecting YU semicha, most of the right-wing chareidi world does not respect anything related to YU.
Whoah, RebDoniel, if my predictions are 100% correct then that’ll be crazy! I wouldn’t necessarily associate R’ Weinberger and the ChaVaKuk people too closely with each other or with hugs and Carlebach. Everybody’s different — they just have in common that they’re interested in spirituality.
Wasserman, that’s a good question. I don’t think YU has a monopoly on the Modern Orthodox rabbinate. I know of a Young Israel rabbi who has semicha from Beth Medrash Gohova. Do YU grads get jobs at non-MO shuls? I don’t know.
In the secular world colleges and universities are required to set standards for granting degrees. People want to know which universities made people earn their degrees and which are degree mills.
Its well known that YU makes you earn the degree, enough people are monitoring it. Smaller Yeshivas not so much.
How are people supposed to know if you actually had to earn that Semicha or it was basically sold.
It’s interesting that R’ Dr. Yitz Greenberg has his semicha from Beis Yosef and R’ Dr. JJ Schacter went to Torah Vodaas. So not “everyone” in the MO community went to YU, but the 2 might as well be synonymous.
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