The Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI) was created in 2013 as a two-year fellowship for rabbis, focused on 
organizational leadership, change management, and institutional transformation. CLI’s target audience has been rabbis of all denominations who are between years 5 and 15 of their rabbinic tenure. Most have been congregational rabbis, though each cohort has included a handful of rabbinic entrepreneurs who were seeking to develop entirely new models of spiritual community. Integrating the disciplines of adaptive leadership and the work of the synagogue transformation field that has developed over the past 25 years, CLI Fellows were supported to develop innovation projects that could inspire deeper engagement on the part of both members and potential members. CLI also sponsors a monthly Synagogue Innovation Blog, distributed widely in partnership with eJewishPhilanthropy, which documents some of the most innovative work happening in spiritual communities throughout North America.
In the fall of 2023, we announced that the current, CLI Cohort 6, would be the last cohort for the Fellowship 
program. When CLI-6 concludes in June 2025, we will have some 120 CLI alumni in the field. Each alumnus was equipped with strategies and a “toolkit” related to spiritual leadership and transformational change. In 2024, we launched CLI 2.0, working with CLI alumni to leverage their CLI training, helping to transform their congregations into compelling “covenantal communities”. The pilot CLI 2.0 cohort started in August 2024 and continues until June 2026. We are currently accepting applications for the second CLI 2.0 cohort, which will start in the early fall of 2025 and conclude in June of 2027.
The centerpiece of CLI 2.0 is personalized, executive coaching that is provided by CLI Director, Rabbi Sid Schwarz, to a cohort of four alumni, paired with a scholar in residence weekend visit (SIR), culminating in a Board retreat designed to take your congregation to the next level of engagement. Complementing the work done with Rabbi Sid, each rabbi selected for CLI 2.0 will be part of a diverse, 4-person, community of practice (COP). Like the COP experience of CLI, the monthly meetings of the COP provide opportunities to experience peer consulting from colleagues who bring to the table varied ideologies and Jewish practice. Recognizing the pressures that COVID and the Israel-Hamas War has put on rabbis, CLI 2.0 provides both peer support and high-level coaching to support participants in their rabbinate.
If you are interested in applying to CLI 2.0, please fill out the application form linked below and return it by February 17, 2025. Sid will be in personal contact with each applicant to better understand your needs. Four alumni will be selected. The small cohort allows us to customize the coaching plan to accommodate each participant’s particular needs.
