Rena Abrams — the job meets the moment

Sometimes a person and a job just seem made for each other.

Sometime the person’s life, experience, and passions just perfectly fit what a job needs.

That seems to be true of Rena Abrams, the executive director of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills. She’s new in that position — but her ties to the community, the synagogue, the Jewish world in general, and the liberal Jewish world in particular — are lifelong.

Rena Kaufman Abrams is pure New Jersey. She’s from New Providence, and her family belonged to the shul then called the Summit JCC and now known as Congregation Ohr Shalom. She went to the school then called the Solomon Schechter Day School of Essex and Union — now it’s the Golda Och Academy — all the way through until graduation, in 2001.

Get New Jersey Jewish News's Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Free Sign Up

For college, she chose the joint program, called List College, that Barnard runs with the Jewish Theological Seminary — as with the similar program between Columbia and JTS, students graduate from both schools — and then she earned a master’s degree in informal and community Jewish education at JTS.

She’d been active in the Conservative movement’s United Synagogue Youth — she was president of her region, Hagalil — so after she graduated from college, she became director of one of the programs she’d loved as a participant, USY on Wheels, which takes Jewish teenagers around the United States. “It was a wonderful opportunity,” she said, but it involved a great deal of travel — the “Wheels” in the program’s name isn’t metaphoric.

From USY, Ms. Abrams moved to the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on the Upper West Side, where she was associate education director from 2008 to 2012. “I supervised and helped families through the b’nai mitzvah process,” she said. “Nothing gave me more joy than when we were picking out the date, and parents said, ‘Tell me about the Torah portion for that week.’ A fair number of parents did that.”

That was Ms. Abrams’ first move from the Conservative world in which she grew up and in which she was — and remains — firmly rooted. Stephen Wise is Reform, and “there is an authentic nature to the experience of the Reform movement,” she said. “It is a beautiful way to approach religion.” Both the Conservative and Reform movements continue to evolve, the way any living thing does — the Reform movement has incorporated far more Hebrew into its service than it once did — “and it is fascinating to see.

“Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch” — Stephen Wise’s senior rabbi — “wanted everyone who came into the building to feel comfortable. The meat served at the synagogue had to be kosher. I loved that approach — that Judaism should be a welcoming, inclusive experience.”

But eventually Ms. Abrams began to feel that much as much she loved education, she wanted to explore opportunities outside the field. “I realized that if I didn’t want to be an educator for my whole life, I had to try something new now,” she said. “So when a former USY colleague approached me about an opening at her firm, I felt I should follow up on it.

“As has happened throughout my professional career, opportunities have come my way, and I have embraced them. I was not specifically looking for them.”

Perry Davis Associates “is a consulting firm that represents nonprofit organizations both all over the country and internationally,” Ms. Abrams said. “Predominantly, they’re Israel-based organizations.

“I knew that I would be working for Jewish organizations,” she said. “I was ready to leave education, but I wasn’t ready to leave the Jewish world.”

She worked with Clalit Health Services, the largest of Israel’s health service organizations. “I very proudly helped them secure funding for the Soroka Medical Center. There had been no easy access to cancer care in the south of Israel before. And one of my proudest accomplishments was a grant we got for electronic medical records.”

Perry David specializes in fundraising and strategy, so Ms. Abrams learned valuable skills there. “I found that I love fundraising,” she said.

During that time, Ms. Abrams and her husband, Matthew Abrams, a trust and estate attorney, moved to South Orange. They both worked in Manhattan then, but their first child was just one year old, “and I thought that one of us should be closer to him during the day.”

So when she heard about an opportunity at the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, she followed up, and soon she was the director of what had been called the Young Leadership Division. “We went through a rebrand, and now it’s called NextDor,” she said — “dor” is the Hebrew word for generation. “We worked with a branding company to come up with that,” she added.

Meanwhile, the Abrams family — which includes two children, Jojo, 10, and Estie, 6 — joined Congregation Beth El, a Conservative shul in South Orange. Her children go to Golda Och, as she once did. She and Beth El’s senior rabbi, Jesse Olitzsky, have been friends since they were in Golda Och — née Solomon Schechter — together. “So I started getting involved there,” she said. “I was on the membership committee, so working on engagement became part of my identity.” She has been on the shul’s executive committee, and from 2022 to 2023, she was co-president.

Ms. Abrams learned more about fundraising through her work with Beth El. The last 10 percent of that task is the ask, she said, and that can be uncomfortable, but the rest of it is relationships.

In 2017, she was a bus captain on a federation-sponsored trip to Israel. B’nai Jeshurun’s senior rabbi, Matthew Gewirtz, its senior associate rabbi, Karen Glazer Perolman, a song leader, and B’nai Jeshurun members were on that bus. “At first, we thought, oh no, they’ll just be asking for money,” Rabbi Gewirtz said. “But there was Rena — and very soon all of us, including our lay head of development, who was there, said, ‘Wow. Look at her. She’s incredible.’

“So one day, she and I were walking in the desert, and I said, ‘Tell me who you are, and where you want to be.’ I was really curious. And she said, ‘In my mind, I can see myself in a synagogue some day.’ And I said, ‘You’re in a really great place, and I don’t want to poach, but when you decide you’re ready, call me first.’”

Eighteen months later, she called, they went to lunch, and in 2019, Rena Abrams became B’nai Jeshurun’s head of strategic development.

She loves it.

“I hadn’t been here for more than a year when the pandemic hit,” she said. “Under the leadership of Rabbi Gewirtz, we have learned how to pivot, how to shift and embrace change, and how to force innovation.” Now, October 7 and its aftermath are demanding even more change. “To me, it is really inspiring to work with a team that doesn’t just continue to do things the way we’ve always done them,” she said. “We’re always recognizing what our congregation needs and responding to that need.”

That’s why, when “the opportunity arose to serve as executive director, I took it,” Ms. Abrams said. “I just began the position on July 19.

“Now I am overseeing all the operational departments — finance, development, and membership. I really want to see the synagogue grow, but not necessarily to grow wider, although we welcome new members. I want our congregants to feel continually more connected and more engaged. I want to allow them the opportunity to separate themselves from the rest of the world when they’re here. I want to give them a place where they can ask questions, and not the easy questions. I want to give them a place where they can ask the questions that wake them up in the middle of the night.”

Who can answer those questions? “Anyone from our clergy to each other,” she said. “We want to encourage our congregation to be in dialogue with each other as much as possible.”

“I was struck, from the time I met her, and this has proven to be true, that she is one of the finest Jewish professionals I will ever work with,” Rabbi Gewirtz said. “There have been a few in my life, thank God, but you don’t get more than five or 10 — and she is one of them.

“She is very straightforward,” he continued. “There is nothing disingenuous about her. You don’t have to figure out what she means. She tells you what she means. But she tells you in a way that is wrapped in sensitivity and kindness.

“When people meet her, they feel that she is superlatively capable. When congregants meet her, they say they feel that they are in supremely competent hands — and also they feel that they’ve met someone who is not just a good businesswoman, but who really cares for the soul. They feel that they’ve been seen and heard and acknowledged.

“She also is Jewish to the core. She is deeply authentic. She is deeply real.

“And she is an innovator. She’s a dreamer. She is someone who believes that if the Jewish community is not to just survive but to thrive, it can’t work in the same way that it has been working.

“When I realized that, I realized that we will be not only co-workers but thought partners.”

Rabbi Gewirtz likes the porosity of the boundaries between the Reform and Conservative movements, and so does Ms. Abrams.

“Chancellor Schwartz” — that’s Shuly Rubin Schwartz, who heads the Jewish Theological Seminary — “sent me an email congratulating me on this new position,” Ms. Abrams said. “She was my teacher.” Dr. Schwartz had headed List College when Ms. Abrams was an undergraduate. “It shows how small and how connected the Jewish world is, and I was very touched by it. It’s the world of those of us who are working for the good of the Jews. I want to do good for the Jews.

“We are significantly stronger if we work together. If October 7 taught us anything, it’s that. We are stronger together.”