The Resnick Internship Program


Introduction

The Resnick Internship Program was developed by The Jewish Theological Seminary to provide rabbinical students in their penultimate year with the opportunity to observe and participate in rabbinic work in a supervised, supportive setting before embarking on their rabbinic careers. Opportunities for field placement exist across a wide spectrum of rabbinic services, including synagogues, day schools, college campuses, and communal agencies. Students who wish to complete internships in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) should visit The Paul A. Kaplan internship. Students who wish to complete an education internship should complete EDU 5312, EDU 5513, or EDU 5515. In the course of their internships, students work closely with their mentoring rabbis who each participate in JTS's mentor training program. The Resnick Internship Program is administered by the The Rabbinical School and the Department of Professional and Pastoral Skills. 

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Requirements

All rabbinical students are required to complete a two-semester internship prior to ordination. Each internship consists of 400 hours of supervised work. Students will generally begin their internship in the first semester of their fourth year of rabbinical school and work through the second semester of the fourth year. Summer internships are also available. When necessary, students may undertake their internships at other points in their studies, with the approval of the director of Field Education. Generally, if students receive approval to complete the Resnick Internship prior to their third year, they will then be required to complete an additional semester of Supervised Rabbinic Fieldwork; this additional semester will not carry a stipend.

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Selection of Internships and Mentors

A Directory of Resnick Internship Placement Sites can be found on this website. A binder with completed Resnick Internship Field Placement Questionnaires is available in The Rabbinical School Office. Most of the sites are within a one-hour radius of JTS by public transportation. Many of the mentors have submitted brief questionnaires about their congregations and agencies, with some comments on their personal styles. After checking with the coordinator of Field Education, students may call a prospective mentor to talk with him or her on the telephone, or to set up a preliminary meeting. Such contact constitutes no obligation on the part of either the student or the mentor to enter into a mentoring relationship. Both parties should feel fully comfortable with the internship before entering into the relationship. When you decide that you would like to complete the internship with a particular mentor, then you should immediately contact your preferred mentor. It is then up to the mentor to select the student who is most appropriate for his or her institution.

Timeline: Students should make initial contact with potential mentors during the month of January of the year during which they plan to complete their internships. Mentors will not offer an inquiring student a position prior to January 31, in order to give all students the opportunity to apply.

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Registering for Internship

Students should register for PRO 7401 and PRO 7402 during the semesters in which they are completing their internships. If you complete a summer internship, then you should instead register for the semesters that follow that summer.

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Orientation

A one-day orientation to the internship, run by the Resnick Internship Seminar Instructors, is held the week before classes begin. This orientation equips students to maximize their learning during the internship. Sessions include: voicing hopes and expectations for the internship, creating a learning contract, using the internship for learning, professional boundaries, making use of group supervision, and bonding with mentors.

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Working With Your Mentor

Mentors are students' guides to the communities in which they will be working. As such, students will naturally turn to them for guidance on interacting with community members. Your mentor may have expectations concerning dress or behavior in public. As members of the JTS community, we are particularly respectful of minhag hamakom. Students may not always agree with certain ritual practices in a congregation, but it is important to remember that interns should never question those practices in public. Students should instead question their mentors about such issues during mentoring sessions. It is wise to remember that to many members of the community, you are not only a student of The Jewish Theological Seminary, but in fact represent JTS and its faculty.

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Mentoring Meetings

The meetings you will have with your mentor are at the heart of the internship. In these meetings, you will review your work with your mentor, who serves as your supervisor. This is the time for you to bring any and all questions regarding your work, the community, and the rabbinate to your mentor. It is also a time for you to question your mentor regarding your own work. These meetings can become occasions for the genuine sharing of ideas between student and mentor. These meetings are invariably of great value to mentors as well, enabling them to articulate the positions of their own rabbinate and to reflect back to their early days of rabbinic work. The shape of these meetings will reflect your work style as well as your mentor's. Some mentors will come to meetings with a prepared agenda. Other mentors will rely on you to set the agenda, and will prefer to respond to your areas of concern. Rabbis lead busy, often hectic, lives. Our mentors graciously offer their time and energies. Please make sure that you express your sincere appreciation to them. Occasionally, your mentor rabbi may have to change an appointment because of an emergency. You might ask that, when possible, you receive notification in advance; you should also return the favor by contacting your mentor right away if you must cancel an appointment.

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Supervision at JTS

Students enrolled in the Resnick Internship Program will take part in the Internship Seminar on a weekly basis. By coming together with peers and a trained clinical supervisor, students will have the opportunity to reflect further on what they are learning in their placements, and to integrate it within the context of the formation of a rabbinic identity.
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Stipends

Students enrolled in approved internships are eligible to receive internship stipends. JTS pays $2,000 per semester, for a total of $4,000. A number of internship sites pay interns a matching $4,000 in stipends; totaling $8,000. These sites may have particular areas of responsibility that will be incorporated into the students' Resnick Internship Field Placement Agreements, in order to make the funding feasible. Students may also accept additional work at an internship site on a salaried basis.  Placement site stipends are paid directly to the intern.

For students who are already engaged in rabbinic employment, in a congregation or another rabbinic setting, the internship requirement can be fulfilled through their rabbinic work, if they contract for regular supervisory meetings with an approved mentor. Students involved in such an internship arrangement are not eligible to receive an internship stipend.

Resnick stipends are disbursed at the beginning of the semester and again at the midpoint of the internship, upon completion of all written work required at that stage. The first payment will be disbursed when the Internship Seminar Instructor receives the intern's Resnick Internship Field Placement Agreement. The second payment will be disbursed when the Internship Seminar Instructor receives the mentor's mid-year report and the intern's midterm self-evaluation. The method of disbursement is as follows: the instructor will communicate with the bursar to credit the stipend amount to the student's bursar account. If there is no outstanding balance, then the student can request that the bursar cut a check for the intern. If there is an outstanding balance, then the stipend will be applied to that balance.

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Reimbursements

The Jewish Theological Seminary will reimburse students for travel expenses to and from their internship sites, up to a total of $400, upon submission of original receipts and the approval of the Internship Seminar Instructor. Please allow several weeks for receipt of your check. Should you drive to an internship site, you should submit receipts for tolls; other driving-related expenses are calculated at 40¢ per mile.

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Materials for Interns

  • Field Placement Agreement

After students have arranged their internship field placements, they should meet with their mentors to discuss the parameters of their internships. By discussing potential responsibilities well in advance, interns will be able to commit to programming, such as teaching, which requires a great deal of lead time to organize properly.

Current guidelines for the internship program call for an average of eleven hours per week of on-site work, plus visits of two Shabbatot per semester for synagogue internships. Each Shabbat can count for ten internship hours. In addition, a student will do two hours per week of off-site preparation for classes, sermons, supervision, and record keeping. You may, of course, spend more time at an internship site, and many students have seized this opportunity to observe a mentor in different settings and to interact more fully with a community. However, in planning assignments and projects for the internship, it is wise to keep close to the guidelines.

In planning your role in the community, you should have both your strengths and your weaknesses in mind. The internship should allow you to exercise existing skills and to grow in areas in which you are less confident. If, for example, you feel less capable in delivering sermons, you should not avoid it, but should look instead for opportunities to preach and benefit from the guidance of your mentor in this area. While students often feel that they are best off when focusing on one area of major interest, we believe that it is in the students' best interests to obtain the broadest possible introduction to the field. Rabbinic careers provide frequent surprises, and it is best to prepare as extensively as possible. For congregational internships, we have prepared a list of distinct areas that we believe should be included in the general introduction to the synagogue.

At the beginning of your internship, you will complete a Resnick Internship Field Placement Agreement, which will include a learning contract and an agreement about mentoring. The learning contract should open with a statement of objectives in which you describe your major goals for the internship. The learning contract should also include an outline of your responsibilities to the congregation or agency. The agreement about mentoring should outline your mentor's responsibilities to you. The exact time and frequency of your meetings with your mentor should also be spelled out. We strongly recommend a weekly meeting with your mentor.

After the Resnick Internship Field Placement Agreement is completed, it should be signed by both you and your mentor, then submitted to your Internship Seminar Instructor. Your instructor is available to assist you in the process of developing your Resnick Internship Field Placement Agreement.

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  • Written Reflections

Written assignments will be submitted regularly for the Resnick Internship Seminar. In addition, written reflections should be completed and handed in regularly to mentors, allowing enough time for the mentor to read and think about what the intern has written. Written reflections are accompanied by an agenda prepared by the intern that raises the questions the intern would most like discussed. The agenda and reflections then become the content of the weekly mentoring conference. They are reviewed in detail and used to frame the discussion between mentor and intern. This type of reflection on your internship experiences will help you integrate and apply the learning gained during the internship. There are three useful devices for student writing reflections: process recording, critical incident report, and logs. Each format is better for writing about certain situations than others and so should be used differentially, based on each assignment the intern is given.

  • Logs and Evaluations

Students are responsible for submitting logs of hours spent at the internship site and activities done during that time. Logs should be given to the Internship Seminar Instructor twice during the semester. Interns are required to write and submit mid-year and final intern evaluations to both their mentors and to their Internship Seminar Instructor. Mentors will submit mid-year and final evaluations to the Insternship Seminar Instructor as well. All evaluations should use the learning contract as the basis for assessment. All written requirements must be submitted prior to the intern receiving credit for the internship.


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Conclusion

Your internship represents a wonderful opportunity for service, learning, and growth. Take advantage of this opportunity to learn as much as you can about the community in which you are working, your mentor, and the area of rabbinic service. If you do not hesitate to try a new experience, you will watch yourself and your perspectives grow through the internship process. We at JTS look forward to engaging with you as you learn and to witnessing as you develop into effective and confident rabbis, teachers, and preachers.

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Resnick Internship Site Links