Welcome to our new web site!

To give our readers a chance to experience all that our new website has to offer, we have made all content freely avaiable, through October 1, 2018.

During this time, print and digital subscribers will not need to log in to view our stories or e-editions.

RABBI LARRY KAROL

Rabbi Larry Karol retires after nine years at Temple Beth-El

Posted

COVID-19 hasn’t changed Temple Beth-El Rabbi Larry Karol’s retirement plans, but it does mean he and his wife, Rhonda, will be staying in Las Cruces for another year. For Las Cruces’ singing rabbi, it’s also meant learning new skills and finding new opportunities as he has adapted weekly services and musical performances to the Internet.

Karol, 65, will retire June 30 after a 39-year rabbinate and nine years at Temple Beth-El. He will remain as rabbi emeritus at the temple until next spring, as a student rabbi from Los Angeles takes over the active leadership of the congregation.

It’s been “an interesting twist to have this new challenge put before me in my last three months of my congregational rabbinate,” Karol said. “I think I’m doing okay.”

He said he has mastered conducting services via Zoom and Facebook and has learned how to get the best sound quality from his voice and guitar as he performs original songs about continuity, transition and connections and conducts singalongs online.

Even without people physically in the temple, Karol has continued his regular duties since the onset of the pandemic.

“We never missed a service,” he said. That has included Friday night healing blessings, when a mourner’s prayer is said for those who have died during the pandemic and their families and for those struggling with COVID-19.

“This is still very fulfilling and rewarding and, in some ways, a major triumph to continue the engendering of a spiritual, religious community in digital space,” Karol said.

“With this situation, I see the hand of God in the response, not the cause,” he said. “God gave us knowledge that we could figure out what to do to keep ourselves safe. That’s the way God protects us. He is “going to help you find the tools within you to deal with this time.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been doing for 39 years anyway?” Karol asked. “It’s not just about navigating a pandemic. It is sometimes about navigating doing one’s duties to keep oneself competent and enthusiastic about the duties one is doing even when you’re a little bit tired and spent. It’s about navigating relationships, getting people to work with each other, and for you to work with them, and if one thing doesn’t work, trying to find another way (and) God giving us the strength to make those things happen. It’s really amazing those connections that are presented. It’s about a oneness we need to preserve among ourselves, holding us all together in the human community and the universe.”

After nine years at Temple Beth-El, Karol said now is a good time to retire and to begin a new chapter in his life. He plans to continue writing a course on sacred texts and downsizing his personal files and recordings. And, Karol plans to continue writing songs and his regular column in The Bulletin.

“Normally, I might describe a need to alter our course for the coming months by referring to the Yiddish saying, “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht” (Man Plans, and God Laughs),” Karol said. “I don’t believe in a God who would laugh at what is happening now. I do believe in a God who would help us to be grateful for our lives, guide us to find new ways to promote healing for ourselves and others, and inspire us to sustain communal hope and to brighten our days enough so that we won’t lose our sense of humor.”

The Las Cruces City Council has proclaimed Thursday, June 25, as Rabbi Larry Karol Day.

Temple Beth-El, Larry Karol

X