Rabbi Susan Miller Rheins lifts a heavy chair and sets it down in front of Temple Sinai’s Ark. In contrast to the animated offices and populated hallways, the sanctuary is as subdued as her attire.
For a few moments, Rheins’ initial reserve blends into the surroundings. Her voice is so soft she’s asked to speak louder. Then an unexpected question unleashes the candor lurking in her eyes.
On Aug. 6, 1990, the New York Times published the wedding announcement of Rabbi Susan Lynn Miller and Rabbi Richard S. Rheins. Brides would kill to have their nuptials published in the Times. How did they pull it off?
“I submitted it,” she laughs.
Rick Rheins, her husband and senior rabbi of Temple Sinai, is at a meeting. But even if he were free, he would undoubtedly stay out of sight.
This is her moment to shine.
Rheins has enraptured Sinai congregants with her multi-faceted talents since her husband was hired in 2005 following Rabbi Raymond Zwerin’s retirement.
Her talent, intellect and insight catch the unaware totally off guard. This demure, petite mother of three sons is a powerhouse packed inside a small frame.
She introduced her exceptional gifts the first time she chanted Torah to a full house at Sinai. Her melodic voice rose, effortlessly traversed pitch fluctuations, sustained itself, and soared again. Each precise phrase was measured in joy.
“I’m always honored to chant, and I’m always nervous,” admits Rheins, who considered pursuing the cantorate until the eighth grade. “It’s such a huge responsibility. I’m a perfectionist, and I know it should be done in a certain way. I strive to do that.
“I chanted on Shabbat, Jan. 31, on the anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah. I practiced all week even though I knew it by heart.” She throws up her hands. “I can’t help it!”
In addition to leading congregational and women’s missions to Israel, Rheins has taught all-female Torah study classes for the last four-and-a-half-years.< “A congregant approached me to see whether I would meet regularly with a group of women interested in studying with me.” Delight registers in her face. “I said, ‘Sure.’ “They wanted to focus on women in the Torah, Judaism, women’s issues, women in the Talmud and the sacred texts. We’ve covered pretty much all the women in the Torah.” Rheins, who now instructs seven women-only Torah groups a month, contends that members of the feminine sex are powerful figures in Judaism. “While the men may get the spotlight, it’s the women who play the important role in perpetuating the history and continuity of the Jewish people. They move history along.” [dropcap]Susan[/dropcap] Rheins loved, and loves, the rabbinate. At one crucial point in her life, however, she made a conscious choice to reinvent its structure and rhythm. She took Robert Frost’s road less traveled — and has never regretted it. Rheins was ordained from HUC-JIR in 1988, one year before her husband. Hired as assistant rabbi at the 1,600-member Temple Beth-El in Providence, RI, she was the first female congregational rabbi in that state. Two-and-a-half years later, she became the full-time rabbi at the much smaller Beth Shalom in Florida, NY — and had her first child, Joshua. After great deliberation, Rheins altered her rabbinic course. “It was late summer, 1992,” she says. “I was working 62 miles away from our home in Westchester. It took me an hour-and-a-half to get there. Either I hire a full-time nanny and leave Joshua at home, or bring this infant to a somewhat isolated congregation. “I realized that if I was going to have a child, I was going to be this kid’s mom — and that instead of being a full-time congregational rabbi I would be a different kind of rabbi. And that’s what I did.” Asked to recount the highlights of motherhood, she hesitates. “There are different stages,” she says before centering on those blissful, newborn memories. “When the boys were little, I loved just watching them and seeing how they would develop: everything from smiling to rolling over to learning a word to walking to plopping down.” Her excitement is palpable. “I played on the floor with them for hours. I read hundreds of books. We cuddled. It was exhausting,” she says, “but I wouldn’t have traded that for anything.” The teenage years were equally enjoyable. Today, Joshua is almost 22, Sam just turned 19 and Jakob is 14. Before they know it, Jakob also will take flight. “I feel OK about it,” says Rheins, who pushes back her long, naturally curly hair. She is genuinely content. “That’s why we had them — so we could raise them, watch them grow up, leave the nest and see what life has in store for them. “Whatever they do, it has to be right for them.”
Rheins stresses that with the exception of those first six months with Joshua, she did not confine her role to a stay-at-home mom. “I worked,” she says in a quiet yet emphatic tone.
“I started teaching adult education at Rick’s synagogue and gradually took on other positions. When we moved to Pittsburgh, I worked for the Jewish Education Institute, taught adult Hebrew and Melton classes.”
She also directed youth education for grades K-10 at Temple David in Monroeville, Pa., for six years.
In Denver, she briefly worked at CAJE and is the coordinator for Chai Mitzvah: Grow Your Judaism.
During the High Holidays, when she’s not chanting Torah, Rheins leads alternative services for the Reform congregation. Last Yom Kippur, she spoke about the Women of the Wall controversy and the discrimination of liberal Jews in Israel.
At Friday evening Shabbat services, Rheins sits next to her sons about halfway back in the sanctuary and listens to her husband with obvious pride.
“After Rick accepted the job, I used to feel weird being in the sanctuary while he was up on the bimah,” she says. “I felt left out, like I was missing something. But that was years ago. Now I enjoy being with the kids and the congregation.”
Has Sinai changed since 2005?
“I think I’ve changed,” she reflects. “I’m sure the congregation has changed too. There’s definitely a comfort level. I would never consider being in a different congregation in this city. Sinai is home.”
Rheins is neither rebbetzin nor merely the wife of a salaried employee.
She is a rabbi, on her own terms.
The words home, family and Judaism pop up throughout the conversation. Add camp to the equation and you understand the genesis and strength of Susan Miller Rhein’s faith.
She was born in Passaic, NJ, and grew up in Clifton, about 12 miles from the Lincoln Tunnel. “Manhattan was our playground.”
Rheins casually mentions that her father was raised Orthodox. Catching a surprised look like an expert fielder, she pauses for a second. “My grandparents were shomer Shabbos. We used to visit them in Newark every Shabbat and sit in the dark. My grandmother would feed us chicken soup.”
Until the first grade, Rheins accompanied her father to the Orthodox shul on Shabbat and went to the Conservative synagogue on the High Holidays with her mother.
Then her parents reached a compromise that eludes her to this day — they joined a Reform temple when she was in the second grade.
The Millers immediately immersed themselves in temple life. “We lived there: Friday nights, Saturday mornings, religious school. In the ninth grade I started teaching religious school students.
“Judaism was fun,” she enthuses. “It was fun. The minute I walked in the Reform temple, it didn’t feel foreign. It was very participatory.” More traditional than a mainstream Reform synagogue, it encouraged kippot, talit, Hebrew.
“I was totally turned on by everything I was learning. Something just clicked in me. And I can’t explain why.”
At age 10, she began going to the Reform summer camp UAHC Joseph Eisner Camp Institute for Living Judaism — “I know, it’s a mouthful” — the only camp that affixed “Living Judaism” to its title.
“From the moment you woke up until the moment you fell asleep, you experienced Judaism. It had a huge influence on the person I am today.”
Rheins chose the rabbinate in the eighth grade, when she decided against becoming a cantor.
“My synagogue was blessed to have the first female Reform cantor,” she explains. “I was enamored of her. ‘If she can do that, I can do that.’ But then I thought, if I’m going to spend all those years in school I’d rather be a rabbi.”
At the time she thought rabbis led services and instructed confirmation classes. Period.
“I didn’t know about everything else the rabbinate entailed. I was absolutely clueless.”
Rheins, who majored in Near Eastern and Judaic studies at Brandeis, spent her junior year at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem (she took her first trip to Israel during her freshman year). All the facts and history and stories came alive.
“Here I was!” she says, wrapping herself in the memory. “It incorporated everything: synagogue, camp, Hebrew classes at Brandeis. I had found the source. And I felt so at home.”
HUC did not present a steep learning curve to the astute student, who equates it to “a continuation of college.” As she progressed — practical rabbinics, writing eulogies, being a student rabbi — she grasped the depths of her chosen profession.
During a Bible class at HUC, a fellow student named Rick Rheins struck up a conversation.
“He was a nudge,” she says candidly. “I was a very disciplined student and he kept trying to get my attention. I knew what he was trying to do, but the timing was off.
“Outside the classroom,” she qualifies, “it was nice.”
They were married on Aug. 5, 1990.
An advocate of the practice and spirit of inclusivity, Rheins is very glad that Temple Sinai opens its arms to interfaith couples — and firmly rejects the notion that interfaith marriage will sound Reform Judaism’s death knell.
“When we bring people in and welcome them to our community, whether or not they choose to convert, they learn to appreciate the essence of Judaism,” she says. “We’ve always welcomed people into the tribe.
“Their experiences enhance our experiences. If they decide to convert, it has to be for the right reasons. To push someone to convert is the wrong thing to do. To welcome that person into our community is the right thing to do.”
Results from the recent Pew survey indicate a decline in Jewish identification among adult Jews, as well as a plethora of other negatives.
Rheins strongly disagrees with these gloomy findings.
Reform Judaism has evolved so quickly in terms of literacy, practice and energized participation that it’s no longer her parents’ Judaism or even the Judaism of her own youth.
“It was the rare person who went to Israel,” she says of that time and place. “It was the rare person who learned Hebrew — females, anyway.
“I remember the first Bat Mitzvah at my temple. It was a Friday night in 1969. That was it. I don’t remember when it switched to Shabbat morning.”
For those concerned about Judaism’s future, Rheins suggests taking a good look at today’s Jewish children, teens and young adults. They are, both in the current idiom and historical sense, awesome.
“The kids at Sinai are so empowered,” she says. “They are 13 years old and are leading services. They’re not just reading a couple of lines of Torah, they are mastering it, chanting it; they are doing the Haftarah.
“These kids feel like this is their bimah. They are welcome to open the Ark; welcome to be Jewish — and they don’t have to wait until they grow up. It’s their synagogue, and they are very much a part of it.”
She dismisses the Pew survey with a shrug. “I think our kids are having a much deeper relationship with Judaism than any of us did growing up.”
As an educator, Rheins believes that one has to teach to the emotions in order to build a lasting foundation.
“You can teach names and dates and places and chronology but it’s not going to stick with fifth-graders. That’s OK. But they must feel an emotional connection to Judaism — and they do.
“Between our synagogues and camp movements and the number of kids going to Israel, I am very positive about the future of Reform Judaism.”
Last April, she escorted a women’s group to Israel. Some were strangers to each other, while others were tight. As dinner was dining down at the end of their first day in Jerusalem, Rheins announced that she was going to the Kotel. It was 10 p.m.
“I said, ‘I know it’s late, but I always go to the Wall when I arrive in Jerusalem,’” she told them. “ ‘If you want to go with me, please do.’”
Almost every woman accompanied her. Held in the vast starry solitude of the empty square, they prayed, talked, looked at the sky and each other.
The group returned to the hotel at 1:20 a.m. and slept in peace.
“Regardless of how many times I visit Israel, it always feels like the first time,” she says. “It’s like reading Torah. Everything is new.”
Asked whether she has anything to add to the interview, she cups her hands.
“Did I mention I’m an ardent Zionist?”
Before her husband accepted the position at Temple Sinai, Rheins says “it was important that it would be a good home for our family and not just a professional fit for one member.
“It is my home. It’s my family’s home. It’s the kids’ home.”
As the hour concludes, Rheins offers a final thought.
“I’m really happy with what I’m doing,” she says. “Some people would say that I haven’t been a successful rabbi because I stopped being a congregational rabbi in order to raise a family.
“I’m not a full-time anything. But I couldn’t feel more fulfilled with the way my rabbinate has evolved.
“I’ve been a rabbi for more than 25 years. I never would have predicted back then what it would look like today.
“But I can’t imagine doing anything differently — and being this happy.”
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
