Three of four positions vacated in recent months by professionals serving the needs of Lawrence Jews have been filled  including an opening for a new spiritual leader.

A contract is being prepared for Rabbi Scott White of Kansas City, Mo., to begin serving the Lawrence Jewish Community Center, 917 Highland Drive, on a part-time basis starting Aug. 1.

White, 45, has worked part time as the rabbi of B’nai Sholem in St. Joseph, Mo., for almost six years and will continue to serve in that capacity.

He recently resigned a longtime teaching position at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park to accept the opening at Lawrence’s Jewish center.

White will replace Rabbi Judith Beiner of Overland Park, who served the center on a part-time basis from February 1997 until earlier this month. She is moving to Atlanta, Ga., with her husband and three children in a few weeks.

Beiner was the first rabbi to serve the center on a permanent, year-round basis. Before that, the congregation had been led by a lay person since it was founded in the 1950s.

The center has about 250 members, including roughly 80 families.

Beiner and White were colleagues for several years at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, where they both worked as teachers.

That’s how White found out about the opening for a rabbi in Lawrence and grew interested in it.

“Probably the main thing that led me to this (position) is that I know Judy used to speak very highly of it. It seemed like something she was very gratified in doing,” White said.

“She felt a keen interest in having some rabbinic continuity in the job, and she thought it would be equally gratifying to me.”

White was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City in 1986. The seminary serves the Conservative movement of Judaism in America.

A native of the Kansas City area, he graduated from Kansas University in 1979 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He spent his junior year studying abroad at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

White and his wife, Civia, have two sons, Jacob, 11, and Benjamin, 9. The family will continue to live in Kansas City, Mo.

Meanwhile, two of three open leadership positions at the KU Hillel Foundation, 940 Miss., have been filled. The organization serves the needs of the university’s Jewish students.

Jay Lewis, formerly the assistant director of the Bureau of Jewish Education of Orange County, Calif., will be the new executive director of KU Hillel.

Lewis, a native of Overland Park, graduated from KU in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He has a master’s degree in Jewish communal service from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

Lewis, 32, and his wife, Kim, have a 6-month-old daughter, Mckenna. He will arrive in Lawrence July 8.

Lewis replaces Susan Shafer-Landau, who has served as KU Hillel’s executive director for three years. She is moving with her family to Madison, Wis.

Allyson Tash, 21, will serve a one-year internship as a Jewish Campus Corps Fellow at KU Hillel. She will arrive in Lawrence in August. She replaces Andrew Zidell, a 2002 graduate of KU from Minneapolis, Minn.

Tash, who is from New York City, graduated from Brandeis University a year ago with a bachelor’s degree in American studies and Near Eastern and Judaic studies.

She previously worked as a production associate at the Long Island Jewish World.

The job of assistant director at KU Hillel has not been filled yet, according to Shafer-Landau.