Director of Learning and Practice at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation

• Reports to our Chief Innovation and Impact Officer
• Full-time; Salary range $100,000 – $120,000, plus competitive benefits
• Hybrid; Local to NYC preferred, or the ability to be in NYC regularly; qualified candidates outside NYC considered
• Application Deadline is Friday, December 11.

Working at Atra: Center for Rabbinic Innovation means joining a dynamic team committed to strengthening rabbinic leadership and supporting a thriving Jewish future. Atra equips rabbis, and the ecosystem that supports them, to grow, adapt, and lead the Jewish people in a rapidly changing world. We envision a future where every Jew and seeker can call someone “my rabbi” and, in that relationship, find wisdom, care, guidance, and connection to a living tradition.

Jewish life depends on great rabbis, yet too few people are entering the rabbinate and too many who do leave because of isolation and a lack of support. Atra works to change that. We are the leading pluralistic platform advancing rabbinic leadership across North America. In five years, we have trained and supported more than 850 clergy ordained at over a dozen seminaries, and reached more than 300,000 members of the Jewish community through their work. Atra is fiscally sponsored by Hillel International.

The Director of Learning and Practice leads Atra’s work to equip rabbis to lead well in a rapidly changing world, ensuring that Atra’s learning is shaped by where the field is heading and results in rabbis who have the skills, confidence, and clarity to lead. This role advances Atra’s strategic priority of equipping rabbis to lead in new ways (today called Atra Academy). This is one of three Director positions on Atra’s Innovation & Impact team, which reports to our Chief Innovation and Impact Officer, Faith Brigham Leener, and works together to carry out Atra’s strategic plan.

Rabbis receive deep training in seminary, but it rarely prepares them for everything modern communities now ask of them. The Director owns Atra’s learning across its cohort programs, fellowships, coaching, and workshops: setting a clear and emergent point of view on what rabbis need to learn and how, guiding the staff and educators who design and deliver it, and making sure learning changes how rabbis lead, not just what they know. The specific programs and formats will keep evolving. Drawing on what Atra’s research is finding and what rabbis in the network say they need, the Director sees where the field and the rabbinate are headed and recommends what Atra’s role should be within the strategy set by Atra’s leadership.

The Director also keeps Atra’s learning coherent, high-quality, and grounded in evidence, and represents Atra’s approach to learning with seminaries, funders, and peer organizations across the field.

The ideal Director of Learning and Practice is a strategic leader of learning with a real feel for adult learning, leadership development, Jewish communal life, and rabbinic formation, who has shaped a vision for how professionals are prepared and has led others to bring it to life. They bring experience teaching and training adult professionals, including curriculum and learning design, and are excited to help define what rabbis will need to lead well in the years ahead.

They believe rabbis are spiritual leaders as much as organizational ones, and can design for both. They are curious learners themselves, who keep up with the newest thinking on adult professional learning, innovation, relational engagement, community leadership, management, and emerging tools, and bring it back to Atra’s work. They move comfortably between conceptual and operational modes, and are collaborative, proactive, and motivated by strengthening the field as a whole.

• Shape and communicate Atra’s vision and strategy for equipping rabbis to lead, grounded in the field’s emerging needs, and identify where Atra should innovate, partner, or lead
• Shape the frameworks that guide Atra’s curriculum, weaving together practical skill-building, leadership development, Jewish learning, spiritual growth, and professional resilience, while keeping learning applied and connected to the real work rabbis do every day
• Stay at the leading edge of how adult professionals learn and lead, including new research, practices, and technologies, and bring what you learn into Atra’s programs
• Represent Atra’s approach to learning with seminaries, funders, and peer organizations, and help shape the broader conversation about rabbinic education

• Set direction and standards for the program staff and external educators who design and deliver Atra’s programs, and build a strong bench of facilitators, coaches, and curriculum writers who can hold practical skill alongside Torah and meaning-making
• Define what rabbis should be able to do after each program, and use participant feedback, outcome data, and research findings to improve what you build
• Recommend which offerings continue, change, or end, and how the portfolio fits together across career stages and settings
• Manage the learning budget and help inform annual budget planning

• Build IdeaLab’s tested approaches and findings into curriculum, and flag questions from the classroom worth studying
• Plan recruitment and continuity with the Director of Network and Partnerships so participants join communities as they finish programs and stay connected to Atra and to each other
• Support fundraising by sharing Atra’s learning approach and outcomes with funders and the board, alongside development and communications colleagues

Each director of Atra’s Innovation & Impact team owns one pillar of Atra’s 2025–2028 strategic plan, and the three pillars work as one system:

• Learn. IdeaLab studies what helps rabbis enter the rabbinate, stay, and thrive, and tests new approaches.
• Teach. Learning and Practice (Atra Academy) turns what we learn into learning that changes how rabbis lead.
• Connect. Network and Partnerships (the Atra Rabbinic Network), led by Rabbi Maddie Cooper, keeps rabbis and institutions in relationship, so good ideas travel and we hear what the field needs next.

Our directors listen closely to the field, test bold ideas, and grow what works. They share one picture of the field and plan priorities together, including what to stop.

Every director on the team brings these shared competencies, alongside those specific to the role.

• Rabbi-centered judgment: Starts from what rabbis and their communities need; earns credibility across denominations.
• Learning and evidence orientation: Decides using evidence and participant feedback, and changes course when needed.
• Cross-pillar collaboration: Shares learning early, plans handoffs with peers, and measures success by Atra’s whole impact.
• Ownership and prioritization: Holds a portfolio from idea to result and makes clear choices about what matters most now.
• Relationship-building across the Jewish world: Builds trust across denominations, institutions, and perspectives, and treats disagreement as information.
• Leading collaboratively: Gets results with consultants, partners, and colleagues by setting clear expectations and building buy-in, including where there is no formal authority.
• Vision and entrepreneurial building: Sees what the field needs before it’s obvious, tests ideas, and builds out what works; comfortable with ambiguity and willing to stop what isn’t working.

• Visionary Learning Strategist: Sees how adult learning, clergy formation, and Jewish learning fit together, holds a point of view on what rabbis will need to lead well in the years ahead, and turns it into a coherent learning strategy.
• Leader of Educators: Sets direction and a high bar for pedagogy, guiding educators and program staff in designing learning that is rigorous, relational, and built for adult professionals.
• Evidence-Informed Continuous Learner: Brings research and field learning into curriculum, revises programs as the evidence changes, and models the learning Atra asks of rabbis by seeking out new perspectives.
• Torah-Grounded Facilitator: Brings real knowledge of Torah and Jewish texts and builds learning environments that hold practical skill alongside Torah, meaning-making, and renewal.

• 5–8 years of experience in Jewish communal, nonprofit, or related settings and familiarity with the rabbinic landscape and broader Jewish communal ecosystem
• Rabbinic ordination or an advanced degree in Jewish education preferred, or equivalent experience: sustained, direct work with rabbis or institutions that sustain Jewish spiritual leadership
• Proven skill as an educator and facilitator who builds learning communities: creative in designing experiences where senior professionals form real relationships and learn from excellent teaching, new ideas, and each other
• A track record of shaping the vision and strategy for a learning or leadership development program or portfolio, ideally for clergy or other leaders
• Experience identifying needs, testing new ideas, and building and scaling what works, using participant feedback and outcome data to improve programs
• A demonstrated habit of ongoing learning, with curiosity about emerging approaches and new tools
• Experience managing a program budget and working with external educators or contracted partners

Rabbis lead best when they are prepared for the communities they actually serve. Yet too many leave seminary equipped for the rabbinate of the past, and too many leave the rabbinate altogether.

This role ensures that Atra’s learning is not a set of one-off programs but a coherent, forward-looking body of work that changes how rabbis lead, informed by research, by the field, and by what rabbis tell us they need.

After one year, we hope participants in Atra’s programs are deeply engaged, and that rabbis can point to specific ways they are leading differently because of what they learned, drawing on it in real time. We hope the portfolio is reaching a growing number of rabbis across denominations, settings, career stages, and regions. We hope Atra’s curriculum reflects current field research, not only the prior year’s design. And we hope the pieces are in place to keep growing: a clear learning strategy that Atra can articulate, a supported bench of facilitators, coaches, and curriculum writers, and a smooth handoff of graduates into an ongoing community with Network and Partnerships.

Our process has three stages. We review applications as they arrive, so we encourage you to apply early.

• Stage one: Applications and screening calls. Applications are due by December 11. We’ll begin reviewing them right away and hold short screening calls with a group of candidates on a rolling basis.
• Stage two: Interviews. Candidates who move forward will interview with members of our team, in person in New York City for local candidates and on Zoom for candidates outside the area.
• Stage three: Final panel interview and practical exercise. Finalists will meet with a final panel and complete a role-based practical exercise. We’ll share the details and timing of the exercise directly with finalists.

Atra is closed from December 24 through January 1 for winter break, so we’ll plan the timing of these steps around that break. 

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In 1923, Rabbi Benjamin Frankel started Hillel with humble means, a noble mission and a breathtaking vision: to convey Jewish civilization to a new generation. Today, Hillel International continues to enrich the lives of Jewish students and is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world at nearly 1,000 colleges and universities across North America and around the world. As Hillel evolves as an organization, the mission remains steadfast: to create lasting connections with every Jewish student that foster an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning, and Israel and train them to become the next Jewish leaders.

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