Rabbi Stephen Pearce likes to tell an old joke about temple-goers arguing about whose rabbi is the best.

The first man claims his rabbi’s sermons are so brilliant, he is always baffled by them.

Undaunted, the second man replies that his rabbi’s latest Shabbat sermon was so brilliant that he was baffled by it to a greater degree than he was ever baffled by a sermon in the past.

Baffled? Good. You should be. But so is Pearce upon learning that he was included on a list of “The Top 50 Rabbis in America” reprinted in Newsweek magazine and heavily forwarded around the Web.

“I got an email congratulating me and I thought ‘What the hell is this?'” recalled a chuckling Pearce, senior rabbi at San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El who cracked the list at No. 46.

“The only thing I can assure j.’s readers of is, this is not going to change me. I am not going to quit my job tomorrow.”

The list is the creation of media mavens Michael Lynton, the CEO and chairman of Sony Pictures along with Gary Ginsberg of Newscorp and Jay Sanderson of JTN productions. The power brokers devised an elaborate system for ranking the nation’s rabbis: Does the rabbi have a media presence? That’s good for 10 points. Is he or she internationally known? That’s 20 points. Have they made an impact on Judaism? Ten more points.

The resultant Top 50 was published in the April 2 edition of Newsweek and can be viewed online at Newsweek.com.

In addition to Pearce, three other Bay Area rabbis made the list: Renewal Rabbi Michael Lerner of San Francisco’s Beyt Tikkun notched the 28th slot, Reform Rabbi Janet Marder of Los Altos Hills’ Congregation Beth Am ranked 34th and Lawrence Kushner, a scholar-in-residence at Emanu-El, placed 43rd.

“I’m honored to be on the list with Steve, of course. I joked with him that I can’t wait until they come out with the ’50 Sexiest Rabbis’ list next year,” said Kushner.

Like all the rabbis j. spoke with, Kushner was bemused by the honor.

“What about a rabbi in some medium-sized congregation somewhere in the Midwest who’s never gotten on an airplane, never been on a commission but is beloved in his community? Obviously we’re not talking about rabbis like that because we don’t know who they are. [Some] rabbis, through luck, deliberation or just good chance wind up receiving a lot of good PR. Often, it’s deserved.”

If nothing else, the complex, arcane ranking system employed by the list’s creators resembles nothing so much as a group of sports nerds preparing draft lists for an upcoming fantasy sports league. Lerner laughed when presented with the tongue-in-cheek possibility that he might be a sleeper pick in someone’s upcoming fantasy rabbinical draft.

“I would prefer for people to be praised not for their influence but for the degree to which they promote the message of love, kindness, generosity, peace and social justice that Torah and Judaism are all about,” he said.

Marder noted she was happy to make the cut, but referred to the compilation as a “rabbi celebrity list.”

In addition to the quartet of Bay Area rabbis, a pair of former longtime local spiritual leaders made the list: No. 11 Peter J. Rubenstein of New York (formerly of Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo) and No. 13 Harold Schulweis of Los Angeles (formerly of Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham).

Incidentally, the list’s Top 5 are: Marvin Hier (dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center), Yehuda Krinsky (CEO of Chabad), Uri D. Herscher (founding CEO of L.A.’s Skirball Cultural Center), Yehuda Berg (controversial founder of L.A.’s Kabbalah Centre), and Harold Kushner (author of “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.”).

For Lawrence Kushner, a prolific author, it was not his first brush with fame. But it will not be dismissed as brusquely as in the past.

“Our children are all grown up now, but when they were little, my wife told my daughter, ‘Your daddy is highly respected — in some places, he’s famous,'” he recalled.

“But my daughter, who is now a rabbi, asked how come I’m not on ‘The Muppet Show’?”