Rabbis Beth and Jonathan Singer, senior rabbis at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El since 2013, have announced they will retire in 2025.
Rabbis Beth and Jonathan Singer, senior rabbis at San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El since 2013, have announced they will retire in 2025.

Emanu-El senior rabbis announce retirement — in 2025

The senior rabbis of San Francisco’s largest synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El, have announced that they’ll retire in 2025.

Rabbis Beth and Jonathan Singer, who took up the leadership of the historic Reform congregation in 2013 as a married couple, will be stepping down together. Replacing them will be Rabbi Ryan Bauer, currently the senior associate rabbi at the congregation.

“We’re very thrilled to turn over the reins to the very capable Rabbi Bauer,” Beth Singer said in a video message to the congregation.

When the Singers joined Emanu-El in 2013, it was unusual that “the best candidate was not a single individual, but was instead an extraordinarily talented team of two,” then-board president Steven Dinkelspiel said at the time.

Both Singers are graduates of Pomona College, and both were ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1989. Jonathan Singer served at Temple Israel in New Rochelle, N.Y., before joining Seattle’s Temple Beth Am as senior rabbi in 1995. Beth Singer began her career at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y., then served at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle before joining Temple Beth Am as associate rabbi in 1997. In 2009, she became co–senior rabbi alongside her husband.

Rabbi Ryan Bauer, who first came to Emanu-El as an intern, will become senior rabbi when the Singers retire.
Rabbi Ryan Bauer, who first came to Emanu-El as an intern, will become senior rabbi when the Singers retire.

Bauer joined Congregation Emanu-El as an intern in 2005 and became a full member of the clergy in 2007 after he was ordained at the HUC in Los Angeles. (He’s also a 49ers fan and appears in a minidocumentary about people who love the team.) Bauer has proven talented at connecting with millennial congregants and has earned recognition from Emanu-El leadership for innovating at the synagogue, which was founded during the Gold Rush era.

“I just feel incredibly lucky and humbled,” Bauer said of his nomination.

In a statement, Emanu-El said its board of directors and the Singers unanimously decided that Bauer was the right person to carry on Emanu-El’s mission.

“We think the board made an excellent choice in Rabbi Bauer, who knows the community so well but also has his own large vision of how to bring Emanu-El forward, a vision that we embrace,” Jonathan Singer said.

The synagogue of more than 2,000 member-families, one of the city’s oldest, is also planning a massive $72 million renovation project to be completed by 2025, almost 100 years after the building was dedicated. Plans include new classrooms, a play area for children on the roof, new casual social spaces, easier access for clergy offices, a roof deck and important seismic improvements.