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Rabbi Joshua Bennett
of Temple Israel

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Rabbi Joshua Bennett

Josh Bennett has a new passion: Climb-
ing steep rock faces at Planet Rock in
Pontiac. He says it's a way to avoid "func-
tional fixiveness" or the certainty there
is only one way up.
"It's changed my entire perspective.
It's taught me about risk-taking and
trust," he says.
Rabbi Bennett, 28, has never taken the
easy road, nor readily accepted the way
things are. His choice of sports runs along
the "one step beyond the norm" kind.
Another example: As a fourth- and
fifth-grade student at Hebrew school in
his hometown of Flossmoor, outside of
Chicago, he got kicked out of class re-
peatedly. In retrospect, Rabbi Bennett
believes he wanted to get sent to the rab-
bi's office because he liked chatting with
him.
"I didn't think he was a role model
growing up, but I guess, looking back, he
really was."
Coming to Detroit — he joined Temple
Israel in 1994, fresh out of Hebrew Union
College — came at a time when he was
grappling with sea changes in his own
life. At the time, he was engaged to his
wife Meg and his mother Marian was
battling a long-term illness. She died
12 days after Rabbi Bennett took the pul-
pit.
He believes he is a better rabbi because
of his firsthand experience with the death
of a close relative, but the death also
meant that his life had radically changed
the same time he assumed his first pul-
pit.
"My mother was sick for many years,
and her death was very expected, but to

move to a new town and be in the process
of making friends and in the process of
starting a new career ... I realized an
enormous amount about my life and this
congregation. This congregation opened
its arms to me.
"Meg and I were nervous about start-
ing our lives together, we were nervous
about coming to a new community, and
all of a sudden we were given this sense
of real respect and honor," he says.
Like his peers, Rabbi Bennett is ab-
sorbed in his work at the temple — one
of the largest Reform congregations in
the country.
His wife, a freelance special-events co-
ordinator, is busy, too. That's a good
thing.
`There are weeks when I spend no time
with Meg, but she works hard. We also
play very hard," he says. Meg also likes
scaling walls.
Like Rabbi Michael Moskowitz, his
close friend, Rabbi Bennett was exposed
to the demands and the joys of the rab-
binate before he decided on a career. His
older brother Jim is a rabbi in St. Louis,
and for years, he spent his summers at
Goldman Union Camp, a Reform move-
ment camp, where he traces his com-
mitment to Judaism. He also met Meg
there, a point he makes to young people
when he recruits for the camp.
"I met rabbis, saw them playing soft-
ball, swimming with us, rabbis in a dif-
ferent mold from what I saw in my
congregation growing up — in a robe and
standing on the bimah. I was a high-
school student and I sort of began to think
in the back of my mind that it was a neat

career. I wanted to become the kind of
rabbi who went to camp, the kind of rab-
bi who changed kids' lives. And that's re-
ally where I focus all my energies today,"
he says.
But Rabbi Bennett chose to attend the
University of Illinois as an undergradu-
ate because it is one of a handful of
schools that offers a program in clinical
psychology. He also considered veteri-
nary medicine or law school.
His brother Jim's experience ulti-
mately led him to a career in the rab-
binate.
"He taught me a valuable lesson about
the rabbinate: You don't have to go to rab-
binic school with an enormous amount of
knowledge. You learn," he says.
His parents were not surprised at his
decision, given Jim's career choice. But
his friends were astonished.
"My fraternity brothers thought it was
crazy, absolutely and completely crazy,"
Rabbi Bennett recalls. "I didn't have
doubts. Becoming a rabbi for me wasn't
a scary thing. I wasn't giving up anything
like other clergy members may give up.
I had an older brother who I saw was
happily married with a wonderful fami-
ly and who loved his job."
For himself, the job fulfills all his per-
sonal and professional aspirations.
"I don't consider myself to be a person
who has a calling. I'm happy to have
found a career where I can help people
through religion. I consider myself part
psychologist, businessman, politician, re-
ligious leader: They all fit together in a
beautiful picture."
'Unlike his colleagues, Rabbi Bennett

is not under contract. He considers that
as another sign of respect, a willingness
on the part of the Temple Israel congre-
gation to nurture its rabbis.
"It's a different way of looking at the
rabbinate. The lives I change today and
I work with today become my colleagues.
The 10-year difference between a youth-
group teen and me becomes nothing. The
congregation wants to make things work,
and it has."
Like the rabbis he knew at Goldman
Union camp, Rabbi Bennett devotes him-
self to making Judaism relevant to young
students and his peers. "I think people
want to listen to a guitar, talk to one an-
other and connect to tradition in a dif-
ferent way. I haven't identified what it is
yet, but I know my friends aren't coming
to services here.
"At some level, Judaism has to move
into the home. A family that sits at home
and teaches friends and family what it
means to celebrate Shabbat is equally
important as a Shabbac experience here
at temple," he says.
Being young helps him to relate to
changing attitudes about religion and
spirituality, but naturally, it has elicited
lots of comments. Fortunately, they aren't
negative.
"I really take it as a compliment," Rab-
bi Bennett says. "I think people are
amazed that somebody can be so young
and actually know what he's doing. Every
time I do a wedding, I still get butterflies
in my stomach. But I don't think it ham-
pers me. If the worst thing people say
about me is that I'm young, I'll definite-
ly grow out of that."