Mocking Rabbis Has Become a Sport

A culture of casual contempt is eroding Jewish life.

In one of my favorite comedy bits, Modi Rosenfeld contrasts how Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews speak about their rabbis. The Sephardi character beams: “This rabbi is special. He knows Torah, he knows Gemara, all the books – we love this rabbi!” Then Rosenfeld shifts voice and facial expression into an Ashkenazi foil and says about their rabbi: “What a schmuck. What a putz. Why is he even at the board meeting? He’s just a rabbi – and I’m more of a rabbi than he will ever be!” People laugh because it is uncomfortably recognizable.

The Reflex to Tear Down

Somewhere along the way, we turned criticizing rabbis into a communal sport. Not principled disagreement, but reflexive fault-finding: the sermon was too long or too superficial; they should have signed that Israel letter  or refused; they should have spoken out  or stayed silent; they handled a funeral “incorrectly”; they changed a melody; the salary is “outrageous for a rabbi.” At some point the rabbi stops being a person and becomes the surface onto which we project our dissatisfaction.

I am embarrassed to admit that I have participated in this – in boardrooms, family rooms, and in shul. But my late wife Andrea (z”l), who was a Jewish community professional, taught me how corrosive those comments are, and Jewish ethical sources reinforced her lesson.

And it does not stop with rabbis. We do this to federation executives, educators, and camp directors – anyone who works in Jewish life becomes a permissible target. We will praise a physician for competence we cannot evaluate, yet casually dismantle the reputation of a rabbi or school director when we have no expertise in their work or insufficient context for their decisions.

Some of this cynicism is rooted in real hurt. There have been failures of organizational leadership, unmet pastoral needs, and moments when people felt dismissed or unheard. In those cases, critique not only is legitimate but necessary; healthy communities need honest accountability. The problem is that instead of channeling those grievances through constructive pathways, we have slipped into habits of gossip, ridicule, and public second-guessing. Those reactions are understandable but slowly corrode the very people and systems we still expect to serve us.

 The Irony and the Injury

The irony is that we expect our nonprofits to operate as professional institutions, yet we often don’t treat the people who lead them with the basic respect that professionalism requires. We want professionalism, but often behave in ways that make it unattainable.

What troubles me most is the moral injury inside this habit. It does not just critique – it degrades people. Real people. Jewish people. Each created b’tzelem Elokim (in G-d’s image). We permit lashon hara (disparaging speech) disguised as “concern” and off-the-record character assassination, but we forget that these people have children who overhear it, spouses who absorb the hurt, and a finite capacity to withstand contempt while still showing up to serve.

They are Not Amateurs

Rabbis and communal professionals are not untrained hobbyists. Rabbis complete the equivalent of a doctorate plus supervised practical training; Jewish communal professionals complete graduate preparation and residencies in nonprofit leadership. They could earn more money, with far less gratuitous criticism, in secular fields. They choose this work out of devotion to the Jewish people. Yet we strip them of the dignity granted in every other sector and then act shocked when professionals leave, candidate pools collapse, burnout becomes epidemic, and institutions cannot recruit mid-career talent. We punish those who serve us and blame “the pipeline,” as if the disappearance of talent were a mystery.

The Ethical and the Spiritual Breaks

When we engage in this sort of tearing-down, we break the ethical spine of the community by violating norms we claim to live by, and we break our organizational capacity by making it impossible for professionals to lead under constant low-grade assault. It’s a moral failure and self-inflicted wound. You cannot repair governance, culture, or leadership while the communal atmosphere is saturated with contempt because it undermines the very conditions needed to make reform possible.

Classical halachic sources treat lashon hara not only as forbidden speech but as a defect of vision: to speak negatively about another Jew is to fail to perceive the tzelem Elokim in them. In that frame, lashon hara isn’t just discourteous – it’s a betrayal of ahavat Yisrael (our obligation to love and protect fellow Jews).

Professional Expectations

We expect synagogues, federations, schools, camps, and agencies to function professionally, but when it comes time to treat their staff professionally – by using evaluations instead of gossip, by disagreeing without defaming, and by setting healthy norms around informal critique – we revert to shtetl norms because “everyone is an expert.”

Andrea modeled the opposite. She worked in Jewish communal life with dignity and restraint, and was careful about how she spoke of people in public settings. After she died, we created an award in her name for Madison Jewish community professionals who serve the Jewish people with excellence in outreach, engagement, and communal impact. Each year when we present it, I feel the contrast: we honor them for one evening, and the next morning they return to institutions where they are again fair game for drive-by disparagement.

New Communal Norms

The rule should be simple: if you would not say it directly to the professional in a structured setting with your name attached, do not say it at all. If it is serious enough to raise, it is serious enough to address through formal channels. If it is not serious enough to address formally, it is not serious enough to say in the hallway or by e-mail. That is how strong institutions function.

This is not new wisdom. Pirkei Avot teaches that one must judge others with the benefit of the doubt and that rebuke, when necessary, must be given to the person for their betterment – not behind their back and not in ways that humiliate.

The cost of refusing to change is that we will lose the people who serve us, we will fail to recruit the next generation, and the institutions we depend on will collapse under the weight of our contempt. But if we treat rabbis and Jewish community professionals with the respect that is the norm in every other sector – and demanded by our sages – we will build stronger communal capacity.

No community survives long when it devours its own leadership.