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Israel Army Radio interviews •
Rabbi YO ffie in Jerusalem.

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JACOB SCHREIBER
Jewish Renaissance Media

Rabbi Eric Yoffie runs
the Reform movement
with intelligence, passion
and controversial candor.

New York
is high noon on a sweltering spring day in New York Cio, , and
people of various ages, races and fashion sense rush about Third
Avenue, darting through traffic, expertly navigating the frenzied
pace of the Big Apple.
Seven floors above the tumult, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the titular head of
one-quarter of America's Jews, sits at his desk in his spacious midtown
Manhattan office, poring over a letter from the Conference of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations that he's been asked to sign.
Here, the sunlight that bakes the pavement below seems almost
benign, streaming through a large window, gently drenching the sparsely
decorated, green-tinted walls. By design, it seems as peaceful as Shabbat
afternoon.
But this is not a peaceful time for the 53-year-old rabbi nor for the
organization he directs, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations
(UAHC) — the congregational arm of the Reform Jewish movement in
North America that represents 900 synagogues.
A dozen days earlier, "The Decision" hit the streets — and Rabbi
Yoffie is palpably uneasy, an unusual state for a man routinely described
by his colleagues and family as unflappable.
After a week of being skewered in Jewish living rooms from
Hollywood to Jerusalem — and being publicly raked over the coals by
fellow leaders, rabbis and Israeli politicians over his decision to cancel
the Reform movement's summer teen youth trips to Israel — Rabbi
Yoffie seems a tad off kilter. He isn't emotional. But he is stoic, careful.
Rabbi Yoffie stares evenly through his wire-rimmed glasses when
asked how he is handling all the darts being thrown at him.
"When you're engulfed in criticism, there are two dangerous reac-
tions: to take it personally, and to respond angrily and not listen," he
says.
"I learn a lot from people and I listen to their remarks and sugges-
tions. When you're wrong, you say you're wrong. But if you give in to
critics, you're finished. You give the impression you don't believe what
you said."
Rabbi Joseph Klein of Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, a classmate of
Rabbi Yoffie at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in
the 1970s, says, "He is certainly one of the more articulate members of
the CCAR (New York-based Central Conference of American Rabbis).
I've always admired his ability to think carefully before he speaks and I
think he continues to do that."

Security Issue Paramount

Eric Howard - Yoffie, by all accounts, certainly believes in himself.
"His ego is in good shape," says Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff, president
of the CCAR and rabbi of the congregation Rabbi Yoffie attends in his
suburban New Jersey hometown.

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