At Temple Brith Achim in King of Prussia, the 2023 departure of their spiritual leader of nearly two decades was hard. The congregation’s most recent former president, Jan Biros, said that it forced members to ask a difficult question about their shared future.

“We lost more members, and we were fearful of the impact. And so we were really kind of at a crossroads,” she said.

Instead of hiring a new long-term rabbi, Brith Achim’s leaders opted for an interim rabbi in the short term.

“A lot of people felt that it was important for us to hire somebody right away and just get on with things,” Biros said. “I and others felt that was not a good idea, and that we really needed some time to figure ourselves out, to come up with a plan, do some reflection and some self-examination and be really deliberate about our decision making.”

As the second year of that transition winds down, the synagogue is in a much steadier place, largely thanks to the interim rabbi that was chosen for that tenure. Early on in her tenure, Rabbi Chana Leslie Glazer helped give congregants the space and time they needed to come to terms with the fact that they had just lost their longtime spiritual leader. Now, she is preparing to depart on June 30 after two years.

“People grieve in different ways, and there were people who weren’t done grieving yet. Sometimes, that grief comes out as anger, and I understood [that],” she said. “It was really important to allow people who needed space to vent that grief and that anger and whatever else they were feeling. And so we did.”

Glazer and a transition team of lay leaders held sessions to listen to congregants, sometimes all as one and sometimes in smaller groups or individually. There were 15 different events that the synagogue called “transition programs” that were held from October 2023 to May 2024. More than half of the synagogue’s member households participated in at least one of the events.

“I’d let them tell me about why they came to the congregation, what they loved about it, why they’re still there,,” she said. “And if they wanted to talk about missing the prior rabbi, that was their place to do it.”

Biros said that it was important for congregants to figure out what exactly they wanted before they sought out someone for the long run. The congregation’s new spiritual leader will be Cantor Tifani Coyot.

While there was another woman who served as interim rabbi 18 years ago, TBA had never hired a woman as its long-term spiritual leader. As Coyot prepares to take on the role, Glazer said she is glad that she got to help offer a glimpse of that dynamic.

“I think it was also important to be able to show what female spiritual leadership looked like, so the congregation could evaluate it on its own and make decisions about where they wanted to go next,” she said. “I find having an interim rabbi be a woman gives congregations that trial period to think about what they want in a way that’s experiential and not just intellectual.”

The trial period also offered the synagogue’s members a chance to think critically about what was best for them as opposed to making a reactionary choice. Glazer said that the natural inclination can be to reach for a long-term solution. Sometimes that is the answer, but sometimes it’s not.

“It was really important for the congregation to be able to take a breath and really think about what it really wanted and needed,” Glazer said.

The answers to what the congregation wanted were well thought out. For one, the process revealed that the synagogue’s passion for music meant that a cantor as a spiritual leader could be a good fit. Nearly 20 rabbis and cantors applied for the position, and of the three finalists, Coyot was the best fit.

Glazer said she also encouraged the congregation to use the two years of transition to make other upgrades. The synagogue created an internal list of 20 initiatives, and then leaders and members got to work

The congregation overhauled the Brith Achim website and the monthly newsletter, which is now electronic. It renovated its upstairs floor and created a youth lounge there. It also restarted the temple youth group, which held more than a dozen events during this most recent school year. Another major development was the Kaiserman JCC’s launch of a new preschool at TBA, which just completed its first year.

Biros said that the transition period served the congregation well.

“We learned about ourselves, and we learned about one another,” she said.

Glazer will miss the congregation she led for the past two years, but she is proud to be leaving Temple Brith Achim in a better place than she found it. She said that many congregants feel the same way.

“Back then, it took some convincing, but people see that we were really able to dig in and take a good deep dive into the congregation and who we are,” she said. “They have a great future ahead, and I wish them only the best.”

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com