It seems a strange and roundabout recipe for the rabbinate, except that to Alicia Magal, it all makes so much sense. The high school teaching? She has been teaching, one way or another, ever since. The tour guide gig? It was in Israel and has added a poignance to her preaching. The kids?"How can you be a rabbi without having raised kids?" Magal asks. "You're doing 20 things at once and still making sure the pot on the stove isn't burning."

And the tiny synagogue? She says she couldn't have asked for a more intimate and welcoming community than Makom Shalom, a Jewish Renewal congregation in the South Loop. The bond is so warm, the first page of the contract she signed is in the form of a ketubah, or marriage contract, outlining a mutual spiritual commitment.

"Ever been on a date and it just clicked? It's like that," Magal says of Makom, where she interned a year ago and was installed as rabbi last month. "I kept being surprised at how natural it felt. When I read their vision statement to my husband, he said, `It sounds like you wrote that.'"

So just when you're tempted to call her journey to the bimah, or pulpit, unconventional--presuming that rabbis are the ones who start out with a solid conviction of lifelong calling, while the rest of us explore different paths--you have to stop and ask: What better way of becoming a rabbi could there be? Is there a clearer description of the job than part teacher, part partner, part tour guide, part parent?

"I feel like I'm building on everything I've done before," says Magal, who was raised in White Plains, N.Y. "On being a mom, being a wife, working in the Jewish community for 20-some years. ... I use all of those tools. Not consciously--they just come up."

"Rabbis and ministers can be great scholars and just boring as anything in the pulpit," says Steve Rothschild, Makom Shalom's congregation president. "Or someone can be a great bimah rabbi and have no interpersonal warmth and not be a comfort to the congregation. Alicia really fulfills all three roles: great bimah rabbi, outstanding interpersonally and very scholarly; she's been an educator for over 20 years [including positions with the Jewish Federation Council, the Skirball Jewish Museum and the Bureau of Jewish Education]. That's really unusual."

Magal, who is 56 but looks and acts about 15 years younger, has gone through life neither wringing her hands with uncertainty nor blithely expecting the future to just fall into place. But she has learned that the unexpected can bring the biggest blessings. The way she arrived in Israel 30 years ago to work and study at a kibbutz, or commune, and the first person to serve her a meal eventually became her husband.

Or the way her life changed after hearing the apology of a man who had never wronged her. It was outside Berlin in 1999 at a meeting of the children of survivors and perpetrators of the Holocaust. Magal's parents had lost immediate family to concentration camps, and her mother narrowly evaded the Nazis several times. The son of a Nazi soldier rose to face the Jews in the room and said, "I'm sorry." They couldn't forgive him because he wasn't to blame, but they were grateful to hear the words their parents never did.

"I settled something after that," says Magal. "I felt that then I could go on, and I feel now that I'm living my own story, not my parents' story."

So it was a good sign when the unexpected showed up right on schedule after she arrived in Chicago a few months ago. On her first morning of work at Makom, Magal was talking with a woman at the bus stop. Turns out the woman was mourning the loss of her grandmother and was looking for a synagogue. They shared a cab, and Magal was reminded what she's doing here.

That assurance does not remove the challenge of becoming the first rabbi at Makom Shalom since Allen Secher, the synagogue's founder and mentor. Nor that, unlike the 1,000-member, well-staffed synagogue where she interned for three years outside Los Angeles, all eyes are on her at Makom.

"She has enormous shoes to fill," said Rothschild. "Our congregation [has] a lot of people who had drifted away from Judaism; almost inevitably, they had found something they connected with in Allen Secher."

When Secher retired to northern Montana and Makom's call to an interim rabbi was turned down, the danger of a leadership vacuum was immediate. So the congregation formed three committees: one to write up a vision statement, one to form a board, and one to find a new rabbi. They also got used to lay leadership of services between guest rabbis (which will continue on the Fridays when Magal is back on the West Coast with her husband, Itzhak, until he can find work here). Makom lost only a dozen or so members out of about 180, and even gained a few.

"There was a breath. There was a beat," says Magal, who was one of the first female graduates of the Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles. "I was told by the board not to give in to the W.W.A.D. syndrome: what would Allen do. It's the best of both worlds. The rabbi emeritus is available to me, but he's not looking over my shoulder."

That tension between The Way It's Been Done and the invigoration of new ideas is fundamental to the Jewish Renewal movement, which seeks to rediscover inspirational and mystical elements of ancient Jewish tradition while adhering to core teachings of Judaism.

"We seize upon what's resonant within the Jewish tradition," says Rothschild. "It's important to us to not just recite the prayers, but to understand why the prayer's there, what is it trying to speak to within us. [Magal] is able to do that very powerfully, very creatively."

Magal's services are seamless--reverent yet informal, liturgically consistent and yet continually original. Makom members can't remember ever having heard a rabbi sing so sweetly.

"This lady is something else," says Irwin Jarett, a longtime member of Makom. "Each service is really different, and yet we cover all the same prayers. You say, `I never thought about that prayer this way before.' She really is just that good."

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Makom Shalom worships at 8 p.m. Fridays at Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn St. This Friday, in lieu of a regular service, Makom Shalom will host a Hanukkah dinner and candlelight celebration at 6 p.m. For more information call 312-913-9030 or go to www.makomshalom.com.

Reprinted in accordance with Chicago Tribune Company copyright policy.