Appleton — For a long time, Rabbi Haim Cassorla — the new spiritual leader of Appleton’s Moses Montefiore Synagogue, which held his installation ceremony on Oct. 11 — did not want to be a synagogue rabbi.
Instead, Cassorla, 56, wanted to uphold the Sephardi tradition followed by his rabbi/businessman father — that being a rabbi was “not a profession, not a way to make a living, not something you want to depend on. You study and achieve [ordination] to teach and help build a community.”
So after years of rabbinical and secular study in New York and Israel — and service in the U.S. and Israeli armies — Cassorla was ordained in 1980 at Yeshivat Torat Banim in Brooklyn and moved to Phoenix to work as a computer consultant.
But the Greater Phoenix Board of Rabbis steered him toward prison chaplaincy work; and he became the Arizona Department of Corrections’ prison chaplain, which often compelled him to put in 20-hour days.
“I realized I was being pushed and driven to become a rabbi de facto, not just de jure,” Cassorla said. So, he began to seek congregational posts, gravitating toward Conservative synagogues in small towns — Niagara Falls, N.Y.; Valdosta, Ga. — and, as of Aug. 1, Appleton.
“I have found that’s where I’m supposed to be,” Cassorla said in a telephone interview. “I know rabbis like to go where they have other facilities, Hebrew day schools and two kosher butchers. But it is nice to have a community committed to Judaism [in which] people take care and believe and observe…. I’m a rabbi willing to come and help lead them and I find great joy in doing this in a small community.”
And this was one of the most important reasons Moses Montefiore Synagogue, which has been looking for a full-time rabbi for about two years, picked Cassorla, according to Jerry Zabronsky, chair of the synagogue’s board of trustees.
“He understands, values and appreciates the issues and challenges in a small community,” said Zabronsky. Moreover, “he’s a good people person, has excellent rabbinical skills … is good with the children.”
Above all, “he’s what I call a doer,” Zabronsky said. “He leads by example, rolling up his sleeves and getting things done. Which is what you need in a small congregation, because staff is very limited.”
Moses Montefiore has around 90 membership units and serves the seven communities along the Fox River, plus attracting other Jews within a 40-mile radius.
And the area’s Jewish community is growing. Zabronsky said the shul “has more new members this year than at any time in the past ten years.”
When asked about his plans for the synagogue, Cassorla pointed out that “I have 13 [bar/bat mitzvah celebrants] to take care of this year. That’s a full-time job by itself.”
But he also plans to “help mold, work with and build leadership” in the synagogue via adult education classes, and to do “more outreach to the general area.”
Cassorla and his wife, Rachel, have four adult children and two grandchildren.
MORE STORIES
Loading ...