Here’s to the Rabbis

We are privileged to have met with many rabbis and future rabbis from abroad this week, all part of the gathering of the Rabbinical Assembly in Jerusalem that ended today. When I see my colleagues whom I know from professional collaborations or shared study or simple friendship over the past quarter century of Jewish life and leadership, I think of the gift it must be for them to step away from the intensity of managing the needs of their congregations to convene and commune with so many others who face the same set of gifts and burdens that come with being a spiritual leader. But, I also think of the communities to which they will return, those thousands and thousands of people who count upon these rabbis for emotional counsel, ritual direction, and practical advice, or as models for living with meaning and purpose. 

I’ve always shied away from, if not run away from, gurus. Wisdom cannot be acquired cheaply or with arrogance, and so often those who claim to know what to do and how to live because of some supposedly unique knowledge or gift are actually blowing their own horn, rather than acting upon an honest calling for service. Religious hierarchy is a tool for getting things done, not an indication that any person is more important or distinguished than another. The religious leaders I admire know this and that’s how they live.

Once, many years ago in New York City when I was studying for my doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary, one of my then-young children asked me if I had any friends that were not rabbis. (I did and do know a lot of rabbis!) Yes and no, I said. There are rabbi-rabbis who have the title, and then there are people whom I respect so much that I think of them as rabbis. That pretty much covers everyone we know, I said. My kid shrugged her shoulders and went on with her day, but her question got me thinking, and it still does.

For me, a rabbi is a person who has wisdom to teach, patience to learn, capacity to help others carry their burdens, and skills to unlock realtime answers and ideas from traditions they have learned with grit and prodigious time-in; a person who can shape identity through the right questions; someone willing to give time to others when the only reward is in the giving of the time. 

So much of religion in our day — and perhaps it has always been this way — is a means to an end: to exacerbate difference, to claim triumphantly how one path of the spirit is better than all others, to cover up political and material motives, to aggrandize the self. 

But I know so many rabbis, friends and colleagues, working 70-hour weeks and interrupting family life time and again to lay someone to rest or to ease a congregant through a moment of crisis. They hold together the morning minyan, set up the chairs for shiva, manage the needs of unstable people with pure hearts who are so hurt that the synagogue is the only place that will have them. They name babies and wed partners and ensure that a grumpy, distracted pre-teen realizes that something profound is happening when they rise up to read from the Torah for the first time. Just like us, they are workers and doers. They get tired and frustrated. They punch the clock and do their best. Their moments of greatest satisfaction are probably the ones about which no one but their closest associates even know.

So here’s to the rabbis that carry Jewish purpose forward in difficult times. We salute you. I hope that your brief reprieve in Jerusalem offered time for inspiration, introspection, good food, and reconnection with the maddening, singular, heaving, hopeful, troubled, and ever-evolving country we call Israel. I hope you catch a good movie and some shuteye on the flight back home. Countless people are waiting for you on the other side of the world, and they are very lucky that you, Rabbi, do what you do.