Feldman still has a few details to work out before getting a second semicha, this one from RIETS.
“There are a couple of bookkeeping issues,” he said. “There were a couple of grades that were not submitted by professors in time and things like that. I have semicha from Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg in Israel and at KJ it really didn’t make a difference whether I also had the YU semicha so I never made it my business to get all those things straightened out. I’m in the process of doing that now and that will be settled within the next couple of weeks.”
Even though Rabbi Goldberg is a halachic authority and chief justice of the Rabbinical High Court in Jerusalem, where he has made rulings on issues of gittin, ketubot, artificial insemination, and the commandment of living in the Land of Israel, the leadership at CBAJ “thinks it’s very important [to get the semicha from YU] so that’s why I’m doing this.”
He begins his term at CBAJ on August 1.
The roots of both KJ and CBAJ date back to the mid-1800s. KJ is known for the century-long leadership of the Lookstein family, and CBAJ is known for the longtime tenures of rabbis who served 28 and 25 years.
CBAJ was called Beth El when its first rabbi, Isaac Mayer Wise, took over as the spiritual leader in 1846. Wise originally was an Orthodox rabbi with liberal ideas he brought over from his native Bohemia. After a fistfight broke out during Rosh Hashanah services in 1850, Wise and 77 supporters organized Anshe Emeth, which became the fourth Reform congregation in the United States.
While KJ is a full-service synagogue with a Hebrew school, CBAJ has no Hebrew school attached to the facility. And while KJ is a wealthy synagogue, CBAJ struggles financially from year to year.