Call it serendipity.

Rabbi Helen Cohn had already decided to move here from San Francisco to serve as a rabbi-at-large when she learned of Congregation Chaverim’s need for an interim rabbi during Rabbi Stephanie Aaron’s sabbatical year.

Cohn, who spent the last 12 years as one of four rabbis at the largest synagogue in the Bay Area, Congregation Emanu-El, was hired for the part-time position at Chaverim. She is delighted, she says, with the opportunity to serve a smaller congregation and get to know the members.

“We’re thrilled to have her here; she’s a welcome addition to Tucson,” says Sheila Peress, Chaverim’s board president, adding that Cohn impressed her with a “quiet, commanding presence” coupled with a sense of joyfulness.

The Chaverim position also gives Cohn time to pur­sue her other rabbinic interests, which include teaching adult education and performing lifecycle ceremonies for the unaffiliated.

She’s already been tapped to co-teach a new program for aspiring young Jewish leaders for the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and two classes for Temple Emanu-El’s Adult Education Academy. She also has two weddings scheduled.

Cohn, who moved here last month with her husband, Dennis, says that after 12 years in San Francisco she was looking for a smaller city, but one with a Jewish community large enough to have the basic infrastructure, such as a Jewish Federation, a choice of synagogues, and Jewish Family & Children’s Service. An online search showed her that Tucson has all that and more, and her husband, who grew up in the chilly, hilly Bay Area, is happy that Tucson is hot and flat. Their other criterion was a city with a university, so Tucson is “really just perfect,” she says.

Ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1994, Cohn performed the full range of rabbinic duties in San Francisco, but teaching adult education was her main assignment. She created a “Jewish Knowledge College,” a three-year curriculum that covered, at a congregational level, the basic curriculum of rabbinical school: Bible, liturgy, history, philosophy, midrash and Talmud. The program was very successful, she says, with more than 100 people taking courses and more than 30 completing all six semesters.

Her other focus is on Jewish spirituality, which she defines as “making Judaism personally relevant in one’s own inner life, not only in one’s ethical behavior and religious practices, but in addition, finding the connection through Judaism to God, to the life of the spirit.”

She enjoys pastoral counseling, helping a person who has a life dilemma and wants to know, “what does Judaism say about this; what does the rabbi say in her or his wisdom?” She further explains this as looking inward to discover “what your inner compass is telling you, what’s really the deeper truth — but doing this through a Jewish slant.”

Cohn is a trained spiritual director, which she describes as someone who companions a person “who is wanting to cultivate their inner spiritual life.” She completed a three-year program at the Mercy Center in Burlingame, Calif., plus an additional year of training in group spiritual direction. Although she doesn’t know yet in what form she’ll employ this skill in Tucson, says Cohn, “it’s something I’m very interested in.”