c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Paula Mack Drill was in her mid-30s, a veteran social worker deeply committed to her profession, when she left her job to care for her terminally ill mother.

Drill, an observant Jew from West Caldwell, N.J., said she came out of that experience with a new perspective on the things that matter.

“Out of that experience grew this awareness that I could be doing more, that I needed to be doing more, that there needs to be more Jewish presence in the world of hospices and hospitals,” she said. “I thought, if I could do this for my mother, I could do this for the community at large.”

That was in 1996. Now, at age 43, she’s a fifth-year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, one of a growing number of older adults swelling enrollment at rabbinical schools across the nation.

All three major Jewish denominations have seen an increase in seminary enrollments in the past few years. Student population growth led the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J., to build a $4 million dormitory that is set to open this month, school officials say.

Enrollment also is up for rabbinical schools at Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew Union College _ among the most important schools in America for traditional Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis, respectively.

Seminary officials and students say several factors are responsible for the increase, including better recruitment, expanded job possibilities and enhanced interest in Judaism among American adults.

“There’s a greater sense of Jewish identity, commitment to Jewish knowledge and desire to commit yourself to work for the benefit of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Joel Meyers, executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly, an association for Conservative rabbis.

Other observers point to a growing trend among adults to shift careers and work later in life, as well as a sagging job market that is attracting more people to graduate school.

Yeshiva University in New York has about 70 entering students this year, up from about 50 five years ago.

At Hebrew Union College in New York, almost a quarter of this year’s 65 entering students (up from 39 in 1999) have work experience and a prior degree from a secular college, school spokeswoman Sarah Schriever said.

“We have adult students who … reached the conclusion their Jewish communal activities are more fulfilling than professional vocations,” Schriever said. “It’s a wonderful career direction for people who want to have a life of meaning on the one hand, and a challenging career on the other.”

A decade ago, second-career rabbis were unusual, said Rabbi Mark Mallach, a former pharmacist who now heads Temple Beth Ahm in Springfield, N.J., a Conservative shul.

“When I was in rabbinical school (from 1988 to 1994), I was a rarity,” Mallach said. “There used to be a track _ you went to Jewish day school and then you went to Brandeis (University) and then to rabbinical school. It’s changing.”

Many second-career rabbinical students say they decided to enroll after experiencing an epiphany about spiritual life.

Meir Feldman, a former federal prosecutor in California, began attending Hebrew Union College in his early 40s, a few years after ending his legal career in the mid-1990s.

“I woke up one morning thinking to myself, `You have 40 years of productive life left if you’re lucky; you have to do something meaningful and fulfilling,”’ said Feldman, who works at Temple B’Nai Jeshurun in New York. “The prospect of four to five years of school didn’t matter.”

Former physicist Rabbi Michael Lotner, who graduated from Hebrew Union College last spring, said his longtime interest in Judaism grew when his wife was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease in the 1990s.

“That makes you start asking questions that are inherently religious,” said Lotner. “Sometimes I think of my interest in religion as being part of a need to make deposits in a spiritual strength bank, from which I knew I would need to withdraw someday. The more I studied the more interested I got, and ultimately I realized it was possible for me to take a few years off and study full time.”

Second-career clergy certainly are not limited to Judaism.

Protestant and Catholic clergy are ordained, on average, in their mid- to late 30s these days, said Dean Hoge, sociology professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington. Four decades ago, those averages were in the 20s, Hoge said.

Jack Wertheimer, provost at the Jewish Theological Seminary (which has 30 entering students this year, compared with 25 five years ago), said Judaism is better served with second-career rabbis than without them. But they won’t solve the overall rabbi shortage in America that has affected temples for several decades, he said.

“It takes people a while, after they are ordained either as rabbis or ministers, to learn to negotiate their way through this particular field,” Wertheimer said. “By the time (second-career rabbis) learn it, they may be ready for retirement.”

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Across the United States, many rural congregations remain without rabbis, and urban and suburban ones continue to struggle to fill assistant rabbi slots, he said.

Part of the reason is that the breadth of job opportunities for rabbis has risen along with seminary enrollments. Over the last decade, more jobs have opened for rabbis at Jewish day schools, camps, hospitals needing chaplains and Jewish federations. The opportunities draw many away from pulpits, Wertheimer said.

“A great number of those who attend schools do this for their own personal education,” said Rabbi Moshe Herson, dean of the Rabbinical College of America. Though they graduate with a rabbinical degree, “They don’t use it; they go into other professions.”

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