When Rabbi Jennifer Weiner heard that Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria was looking for an interim rabbi, she jumped at the opportunity.
Weiner began in the role on July 1, after Beth El Hebrew’s Rabbi David Spinrad left in June to move closer to his family in California, and will remain until July 2026.
“[Beth El Hebrew is] just a great congregation with 160 years’ worth of history, and while they have had a female rabbi before, I’m the first senior female rabbi to serve the congregation,” Weiner said.
She added that the Beth El Hebrew community has received her with open arms.
“The people here are so warm and inviting and welcoming,” Weiner said. “Being able to work with the staff … and everyone in the office, it’s just been really wonderful.
“The whole interview process was very welcoming for me, just in how I got to meet all different people from all different committees and the board and the office staff and different congregants,” she added. “It was just a really wonderful, thoughtful process.”
Elizabeth Bayer, Beth El Hebrew’s executive director, said the Beth El Hebrew community was seeking a “team player” who would collaborate well with the existing staff.
“Beth El is about its members and also [finding] somebody who is really caring and can work on pastoral things,” Bayer said. “We have a longtime cantor — our members hold real high regard for Cantor [Jason] Kaufman, so our rabbi would be someone who would be a real partner and teammate there.”
Weiner brings more than two decades of experience “guiding congregations through times of growth, healing and transition,” according to Beth El Hebrew’s website. She led the historic merger of Har Sinai and Oheb Shalom congregations in Baltimore before serving a temple in Honolulu, Hawaii.
She is a lifelong activist, having served as a rabbinic legislative assistant at the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism in the nation’s capital. Weiner also served the country in the United States Navy Chaplain Candidate Corps and as a police chaplain in northern Virginia.
Weiner loves being an interim rabbi, something she’s done for the past six years at various other synagogues, most recently as an intentional interim rabbi through the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
“You get to go into a congregation with a set time, knowing that you really get to help them in their time of need and to help them through the transition of going from a rabbi who was here for seven years and helping them find another settled rabbi, and being here during that transition period,” she said.
Bayer said Weiner fit the bill as a spiritual leader who could keep the congregation operating smoothly.
“Rabbi Weiner has done an amazing job of that — [she’s] come in and kept a steady pace and kept things going as we get ready for the High Holidays,” Bayer said. “[It’s] been really easy to work with her.”
Years ago, Weiner had been the educational director at Congregation Adat Reyim in Springfield, Virginia, where Bayer was the executive director at the time.
“We had worked together for almost four years, and we had a really nice working relationship,” Bayer said. “She’s just a calm presence, and knowing that I worked with her before, I knew what I was getting.”
Though she started in her role less than two months ago, Weiner isn’t new to the Beth El Hebrew community.
“My in-laws have been members for about 60 years,” she explained. “They came here while my father-in-law was serving, and after he became a civilian for the government, they just stayed. My husband is the youngest of three, and he was born into the Beth El family.”
Weiner has taught in Beth El Hebrew’s religious school in addition to attending occasional services with her husband.
“How wonderful is it to serve the place that you already know?” she asked.
Teaching is one of her passions; she brings a background in kindergarten through 12th-grade education.
“I love working with people and helping them discover what’s inside of them, and bringing that out and helping them find their spirituality, creativity and innate sense of what Judaism means to them,” Weiner said. “I enjoy working with people of all different ages, especially children.”
Weiner looks forward to being involved with the religious school once again and the adult education program.
She plans to teach the Beth El Hebrew community about the prayer book and the Machzor, the High Holy Day prayer book. She’ll also teach about women in the Torah and what it means to be Jewish.
Working with the staff is also a highlight of the role for Weiner.
“Everyone really cares about what happens with the congregation and is working towards that goal of making the congregation the best that it can be,” Weiner said. “That, to me, has just been an absolute gift because that’s already half my job. … So, I don’t have to do that here because everyone’s already working towards that goal.”
