Overview
Sixth & I is a vibrant Jewish spiritual community for people in their 20s and 30s, and an arts and culture center featuring book talks, concerts, comedy shows, and podcast recordings. Sixth & I has gained a national reputation as a welcoming, fun, excellence-seeking, spirituality-growing, intellectual-discourse-building, risk-taking, and justice-fighting home for thousands of spiritual seekers and Washingtonians.
Our Jewish communal work is grounded in the following principles:
Radical welcoming no matter one’s religious background or political orientation.
Building kehillah kedosha among young professionals who may not even understand the term. Teaching/modeling compassion and responsibility for others. Creating a shared sense of belonging.
Teaching and learning sacred texts as a way to understand who we want to be and how we want to engage the world.
Connecting newcomers to Judaism, including those converting to Judaism, non-Jewish partners of Jews, and Jews who haven’t meaningfully stepped foot in a synagogue since their bar/bat mitzvahs (or possibly ever).
Creating transformative and meaningful prayer experiences.
Pursuing justice here in America and in Israel.
Associate Rabbi key character traits:
Dynamic and engaging, available and accessible, compassionate and curious, thoughtful and flexible, kind and nonjudgmental, people-loving, happy and funny, both vulnerable and prophetic at Yom Kippur and wildly off-color in a Purim shpiel.
Draws people in to relationships with the rabbi, the Sixth & I community, and the Jewish world (but not in that order).
Able to have meaningful conversations about Israel, politics, and contemporary Jewish practice with people from across the spectrum, and considers very few conversations “beyond the pale” or worthy of boycott.
Committed to the vision of Sixth & I and willing to be a recognized presence in the community.
Understands there’s still a lot to learn; hungry for new rabbinic experiences.
Excited for a wide range of young-professional oriented rabbinic roles, including trips with Honeymoon Israel, Interfaith Couples Workshops, and many weddings and baby-namings (to name a few).
In general, the Associate Rabbi will share in the full range of clergy responsibility, with a particular focus on the following:
Teaching: You have fluency in text and a deep love of teaching Torah. You understand that a class is successful when what happens in the room reverberates out into the street and into students’ lives. You are excited to teach a minimum two classes per week. Some will be fixed (adult b’nai mitzvah, conversion class) and some will be your choice.
Music, davenning: You have experience building meaningful davenning experiences. You believe that prayer can move people from one place to another. You have an engaging bima presence. You make the best use of the dual nature (religious and secular) of Sixth & I.
Sixth & I is a vibrant Jewish spiritual community for people in their 20s and 30s, and an arts and culture center featuring book talks, concerts, comedy shows, and podcast recordings. Sixth & I has gained a national reputation as a welcoming, fun, excellence-seeking, spirituality-growing, intellectual-discourse-building, risk-taking, and justice-fighting home for thousands of spiritual seekers and Washingtonians.
Sixth & I welcomes candidates from all denominations, although they must allow mixed seating at prayer services they lead, and must accept the conversions of their Sixth & I rabbinic colleagues. People who officiate at intermarriages strongly preferred, although not required. We welcome applicants of all sexualities and genders.
Minimum two years post-seminary required. Salary $110,000 FTE plus good benefits. Parsonage included. Applications accepted on a rolling basis.
Medical
Dental
Vision
Parsonage
401K
Maternity & Paternity
To apply, please submit the following to Jobs@Sixthandi.org:
Resume and cover letter (one page max) highlighting work with 20s/30s and answering the question: “Why Sixth & I?”
List of your favorite three classes you have taught, plus any videos, class outlines, text studies.
Video of you giving a sermon (actual sermon given in front of people preferred).
Video or voice recording of you singing a niggun or tune you would teach a group of newcomer young professional Jews at a kabbalat shabbat service. You don’t have to teach it to us; just sing. Don’t worry if you can’t sing well - we just want to feel the love.
About Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
Sixth & I celebrates intersections—the unexpected places where Jewish and secular culture meet.
Completed in 1908, our building—located on the corner of 6th and I streets in downtown Washington, DC—has undergone numerous transformations. To learn more about its’ history as a Conservative synagogue (1908) turned African Methodist Episcopal Church (1951) and nearly would-be nightclub (2002), click here.
Since 2004, Sixth & I, through its openness and pluralistic approach, has redefined the 21st-century synagogue and community space with impactful, entertaining, and thought-provoking programs spanning Jewish and cultural traditions.
Timely and provocative events with authors, musicians, politicians, comedians, filmmakers, journalists, actors, chefs, and other visionaries allow the community to plug in to what’s happening at the forefront of arts and culture.
At Sixth & I, what it means to be Jewish is up to you. With a multi-denominational and non-membership approach, identity and community intersect on your terms for a uniquely Jewish experience. Sixth & I’s 6th in the City program series offers a space for Jews in their 20s and 30s to connect—to Judaism, arts and culture, spirituality, and to each other.
During his reading here, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz called Sixth & I a “utopian model” for what is possible for a community center—a revitalized historic space that looks boldly toward the future of spiritual and cultural engagement.