Rabbi Nichol describes his parents as brilliant, bohemian, hard working and musical. Listening to and playing jazz was a focal point of his relationship with his dad.
At Ruach Israel Rabbi Rich, as he is generally referred to, still plays his horn with the synagogue's several musical ensembles. He is also featured on several CD's.
When Rabbi Rich was nineteen years old he encountered the Messiah. It was at the height of the Jesus Revolution when many young people, including many Jewish youth, were discovering this unique Person.
After graduation from the Ithaca College School of Music, he married Susan, a classical bass player at the School of Music. The young couple moved to the Philadelphia area where Rabbi Rich enrolled in a Masters Degree Program at the Biblical Theological Seminary.
It was during that time that he began to ask a critical question:
It was 1976. I had just taken a course in the Jewish background of the New Testament. Sue and I were also beginning to think about our family's future. The question that blazed across my mind was this: "What exactly does it mean for a Jewish person like me to believe in a person who himself was Jewish and who lived in thoroughly Jewish space in first century Israel, but who today, is associated almost exclusively with the non-Jewish world?"
Asking that critical question led him to Messianic Judaism.
That same year I reconnected with the Jewish believer in Jesus I had met five years earlier who had helped me embrace the risen One. He had become involved in a synagogue in the Chicago area which combined a fairly high level of Jewish observance with belief in the Messiah. Sue and I were intrigued, visited the congregation in 1978, and got hooked! We loved it.
Following graduation from Biblical Theological Seminary, Rabbi Rich, Sue and their one-year-old son David moved to Chicago to help in the synagogue and to attend the Spertus College of Judaica. In 1981 an opportunity to become the rabbi of the newly-formed Congregation Ruach Israel presented itself. Rabbi Rich was ready for a change and the family, along with new baby daughter Julie, shuffled off to Boston. Rabbi Rich remembers those early days:
Our little group met in a hot, stuffy hotel room in Brookline. At that time Messianic Judaism was a very marginal religious expression. But there was love and commitment among our members and so, together, we let the experiment unfold.
By 1991 the congregation was ready to move into its beautiful new facility in Needham, a 15,000 square foot building jointly owned by Ruach Israel and an Evangelical Church, the Good Shepherd Christian Fellowship. The relationship has been a mutual blessing:
Our new friends at Good Shepherd had no problem with the Jewish symbolic world reflected in the architecture and furnishings of the new facility. On Sundays they rearrange things a bit for their needs. By sharing costs and being careful to maintain a master calendar of events, the relationship has proven to be a match made in heaven.
Rabbi Rich has always believed that formal education is a critical element for leaders worthy of their smicha (Hebrew for ordination). He received his doctorate in Homiletics in 1999 and is currently pursuing a Masters of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew College in Newton, MA.
Over the years, Rabbi Rich has served the denomination to which Ruach Israel belongs, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC). He has served in several roles, including President, Vice President, Chairman of the Theology Committee, and the Conference Committee. He has also served as the Vice President of the International Messianic Jewish Alliance (IMJA). He is currently the Director of the Rabbinical Ordination Institute and a Board member of Hashivenu, a Messianic Jewish think tank.
Rabbi Rich and Sue have raised four children, all of whom reside in the Boston area: David, Julie, Dan and Joel. He and Sue occasionally have time to play music together. The Rabbi plays flute in addition to his trombone. Sue took up cello many years ago. Reflecting on their 25 year tenure at Congregation Ruach Israel, Rabbi Rich comments:
Our journey has been no panacea. Life in community has had its difficult moments, but I would not do anything differently if I had the opportunity to re-live the past 25 years at Ruach Israel. Ours is a wonderful synagogue, with earnest people who are learning how to live as serious Jews who love Israel's greatest son, Yeshua the Messiah.
Other synagogues and churches in Boston have important contributions to make. But ours is unique because we seek to live out the implications of two great truths: First, God has made an eternal covenant with the Jewish people. Second, the resurrection of Yeshua is an historical fact with huge implications not only for the Gentile world, but for us Jews as well.
