#WhatRabbisDo
Mishnah Avot 1:1 teaches:
“Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly.”
Yet we ponder: #WhatRabbisDo
We learn and we teach.
We pray and we preach.
We counsel and we pastor.
We answer questions and ask even more
We paskin halakha and we drash aggadah.
#WhatRabbisDo
We stand in the aisle of the local ShopRite, our hair in a messy bun, and we pray with a woman who learned only hours ago that someone she loves might not make it to next week.
#WhatRabbisDo
We spend a beautiful weekend welcoming a new baby into the covenant of our people.
We celebrate a sweet girl twirling into Jewish adulthood as she chants her haftarah.
We talk with teens gathering for a long weekend to be Jewish together.
And as we head home, ready to take a day of rest, we learn that we will close out the weekend with an unexpected, but very expected, funeral of a family matriarch.
#WhatRabbisDo
We say to the funeral director, whom we just saw at the baby naming and the bat mitzvah, that if only there had been a wedding, we would have had a rabbinic full house.
And we chuckle.
And we do not.
Because this is life.
And this is sacred.
Even though Rambam wrote in his Commentary on the Mishnah:
“Anyone who decides to engage in Torah study without working, and to derive his livelihood from charity, desecrates the Name of Heaven, dishonors the Torah, extinguishes the light of religion, brings evil upon himself, and deprives himself of life in the World to Come.”
Rambam did not see #WhatRabbisDo today.
He did not see how extraordinarily lucky rabbis are to be present across generations:
of joy and sorrow,
love and pride,
to help craft family traditions,
to be embedded in community,
to offer sacred touch.
What an incredible gift it is to do this work.
#WhatRabbisDo
We worry about antisemitism in our schools.
Antisemitism on the college campuses our students attend.
Antisemitism in Australia.
We know the work of Nachmanides, the thirteenth-century kabbalist, standing in the Barcelona Disputation in a post-Crusades world.
And we do not want to be the next Nachmanides.
And we do not want to believe we are facing another Crusades era.
#WhatRabbisDo
We go out for a run and run into someone with a question about preparing a kitchen for Passover with an induction stovetop, a new technology that demands ancient wisdom.
And while the rabbi may leave behind the hope of finishing a three-mile run, explicating halakhah, stretching back centuries, activates the mind the way running stretches and activates muscle.
#WhatRabbisDo
We go out on a rare night off to see a movie and find ourselves wondering:
Is this a blog post? A sermon? Or something relegated to the synagogue bulletin?
And we reflect that a Times of Israel blog will never carry the gravitas of the Mishnah Berurah, written by the Chofetz Chayim. Or will it?
#WhatRabbisDo
We create community.
We create home.
We help shape family. Friends who are family. Strangers who become community, or more.
#WhatRabbisDo
We see people Every person
for the deep humanity within them
and the sacred potential they carry as creations of God,
even when no one else sees it yet.
It is messy.
It is hard.
We do this work because, since summer camp,
we have been reminded in song, al tistakel bakankan,
where Rabbi Meir has chided us:
Do not see the vessel,
but that which is within it.
#WhatRabbisDo
We pour our heart and soul into people we know deeply and people we have never met.
#WhatRabbisDo
We know we should never have favorites.
We are not Rashi, who tells us almost defensively in his commentary on Genesis 3:8:
“There are many aggadic midrashim; our rabbis have already arranged them in their proper place in Genesis Rabbah and other collections of midrash. I, however, have come only to explain the peshuto shel miqra, the plain meaning of Scripture, and the aggadot that clarify the words of Scripture, each word in its proper place.”
We are not Rashi.
We do not pretend we have textual neutrality.
We do not claim only the plain meaning.
We have favorites.
A favorite chapter of Bible.
A favorite page of Talmud.
A favorite niggun that opens something we cannot quite name.
A favorite prayer that meets us when words fail.
And we will share them with anyone who asks.
#WhatRabbisDo
We raise rabbis.
Through teaching and mentoring, we take quiet pride when someone says,
“I wrote about you in my application to rabbinical school.”
As if we ourselves are going to solve the rabbinic pipeline crisis the ATRA study identified,
with the five rabbis we inspired,
as if each of us were Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish himself.
And maybe we are not.
Or maybe our actual profession
the one Rambam wrote about Rabbis having
will be one small solution in one other place
With second-career students,
with online study,
wherever they are,
in their home communities.
“…in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you.” (Exoducs20:24)
Implementing with religious conviction and academic rigor #WhatRabbisDo
#WhatRabbisDo
in another place,
in another space.
And maybe… that is the point.
We are not Rashi.
But we are the commentary
written on daily life,
in real time,
in this digital age.
We are marginal notes scribbled between meetings and emergencies.
Footnotes added in hospital hallways and grocery store aisles.
Responsa composed between text messages and late-night emails.
We are not Rashi.
But the tradition is still being written.
And #WhatRabbisDo
is live inside it every single day.
#WhatRabbisDo
is answer the call, issued since the mid 1880’s, when Abraham Lincoln appointed Rabbi Frankel our first Jewish chaplain
#WhatRabbisDo
Serve as military chaplains:
escorting our troops through long days overseas,
standing with them in moments of crisis,
defending our democracy across the globe,
and ensuring that all Jews, every Jew, have the opportunity to talk to a rabbi.
And behind that rabbi stands a community
the one that sent them,
that carries the weight of their absence,
that sustains them through long months with unwavering support,
unconditional care,
and deep, abiding pride.
And by extension, our communities at home
are part of this essential, sacred task.
#WhatRabbisDo
is determine pathways to their calling.
Some are Rashis: teaching Torah and commentary all day, every day.
Some are Rabbi Jonathan Sacks,: seeing education not as obligation but as sacred vocation.
Some are Rambams: choosing a profession beyond the rabbinate, becoming rabbis and physician, rabbis and professor
Some are Rabbi Sally Priesand and Rabbi Amy Eilberg: halutzot, pioneers, the first to step forward when no path yet existed, to answer a calling that reshaped the rabbinate itself.
#WhatRabbisDo
All have sacred imagination in supportive communities
to write our next best versions of ourselves
all of us together
And what a blessing it is to be invited.
What an honor it is to be trusted.
What a gift it is to be allowed to be together with a special community: a kehillah kedoshah.
As I was invited into #WhatRabbisDo,
I was a Rabbi with you
exploring a small voice that lives inside me
and as I served you,
in turn, you served and inspired me.
At the end of the day,
when the texts are closed
The words stop writing themselves
and the phone finally stops ringing,
#WhatRabbisDo
is show up, again and again,
trusting that being present,
fully and imperfectly,
is itself a sacred act.
#WhatRabbisDo
is return, to our calling, to our profession
deliver our notes
for a smooth transition, back
as if Joshua could bring Moses back
after they entered the Promised Land
but this time, in this so-called JEPD version
Moses was simply away, not present but never fully absent,
the dream is fulfilled,
and the transition will be complete next week.
#WhatRabbisDo
Will always be
teach and imagine and prepare and connect and write and share and talk and convey
knowing that the return will be smooth,
and that in the rhythm of daily life,
these two months will become
a small wisp of our collective memory.
And yet
#WhatRabbisDo
will be an experience we each carry differently and deeply,
because we knew what it meant
to miss,
and to yearn for,
our Moses
while he was deployed.
#WhatRabbisDo
#WhatALLRabbisDo
We chose this job.
We want to be rabbis –
the rabbis we want to have are the rabbis we will become,
doing this work, in this space.
We are as varied as the newly kashered, multi-colored Skittles
messy, vibrant, coloring our palms with every sugary hue,
unlike the M&Ms of past generations, we melt in your mouth and in your hands.
We leave our mark, and we make the Torah taste alive.
we stand in the unbroken chain from Sinai to now,
shaped by the world,
wounded by it,
and still willing to serve.
This is not a job.
This is a covenant.
This is hands that lift Torah’s weight,
arms that bear its wisdom into the streets,
feet that carry justice across uneven paths,
eyes that watch for those left unseen,
hearts that nurture courage so it may grow
strong, just, and safe
for us and our children and the children of our children.
This is #WhatRabbisDo
*With gratitude to Taylor Mali and What Teachers Make for inspiring this spoken word
