The Ex-Rabbi's Succos Vacation

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

Spent Succos with my wife’s family, and enjoyed it very much. A beautiful Yom Tov in a beautiful community. Time with the Rebbetzin, time with family, good food and good company, and - most relevant for this post - a good antidote for my most recent bout of “I should go back into the pulpit” misgivings.

What did I enjoy about not-rabbi-ing over Yom Tov, 14 months after leaving the pulpit?

Anonymity
A simple pleasure, but still. To daven, to dance, to sing, to lein, to listen to a shiur, without the fishbowl of being the Rabbi, community employee and community role model. To offer a thought to someone who gave a shiur, without it being the Rabbi’s comment. To step out of hakafos for a minute to talk with a friend, without having people note the Rabbi’s absence. You get the point.

Learning Torah lishmah
Another simple pleasure – To be able to learn during Yom Tov lishmah (for the sake of learning Torah), from any sefer I chose, instead of preparing the next derashah in the marathon of derashot required by the Tishrei schedule.

No stress
Succos was always filled with stress for me. Concern that I might have approved an esrog incorrectly. Concern that we might not have enough hoshanos to go around. Concern that we were starting davening too early on Hoshana Rabbah, or that we were davening too fast. Concern for what hakafos would be like. Concern about the last-minute shailah that came in right before Yom Tov and that I might have mishandled in the rush, and this right after I klopped al cheit on Yom Kippur for incorrect halachic rulings. Concern for the erev yom tov funeral. And so on – but not this year.

My kids
Davening with my kids. Learning with my kids. Dancing with my kids. Amazing.

The Rabbis
Getting a chance to shul-hop and so to hear divrei torah from other rabbis, and to schmooze with them as well. As opposed to the all-Torczyner-all-the-time monotony of being the sole speaker in a smaller setting.

Scouting
This isn’t really a product of leaving the rabbinate; it’s a product of becoming a rosh kollel: Scouting the YU Torah Tours talent to see who might be coming down the pike as a potential avrech in a couple of years. The signs are encouraging.

Yes, I enjoyed this Yom Tov. And so, at least for a little longer, I can appreciate the positives of my career change.

I am so bad at rabbinic vacations

One of the most cliché rabbinic job interview questions is, “Tell us about something you don’t do well,” or, “What do you find to be your greatest challenge.” To which rabbinical candidates traditionally reply with pablum like, “I care too much.” “I’m too sincere.” “I get very caught up in my work.”

Well, my answer should probably be, “I can’t vacation well.” In fact, I suspect many rabbis have the same problem.

Vacationing is important for anyone whose career demands 24-hour days and whose regular interactions involve matters of physical or emotional life and death. Surgeons, therapists, rabbis, we really do need to get away; if we don’t, we overload and burn out.

I can always tell when burnout is coming: I start to feel nervous all the time, like there’s something I haven’t taken care of.
I start to prepare for classes that I won’t give for two weeks.
I’m in the middle of Shabbos morning and suddenly five different to-do items pop into my mind, items I know I’ll remember afterward and yet I keep mentally repeating them lest I forget them before Shabbos ends and I can write them down.
I see people and immediately ask myself whether I haven’t congratulated them for an accomplishment or consoled them for a loss.

So I know that vacationing is important. I tell other people to take vacations. I tell myself to take vacations. But I’m just bad at it.

One day in, and I’m nervous about how things went in shul that morning.
36 hours in, and I’m thinking about the people in the hospital.
Two days and I’m on the phone to aveilim (mourners).
Our shul secretary laughs at me when I call in; she knows.

One reason I’m so bad at it is that I worry about people. These are my people, and I want to make sure everything is all right for them.
Another reason is that I worry about all the work building up for my return.
Another reason is that I put on my rabbi outfit for Shacharis in the morning and then need to put it on again for Minchah, and changing in between is too much of a pain, so I end up in a tie all day.
And a fourth reason is that being a rabbi has become so much of what I do, and so much of a justification for my existence, that I have a hard time seeing myself - justifying myself - as anything but a rabbi.

Which is not healthy. And which is why I haven’t taken vacation time since last December (unless you count two days in New Jersey).

And then I wonder why I may have prehypertension.

So we’re going to my in-laws for a few days.
I'm packing my mental list of people with whom I want to check in from the road.
I'm packing a few sefarim to prepare a major shiur for mid-January.
I’ll still post my daily Torah Thought and Jewish Law emails, because Torah cannot take a vacation.
I’ll probably put up a couple of blog posts, too, since I find blogging more restful than not, actually.

And I’ll enjoy having hours at a time to spend with the Rebbetzin and our Rebbekids. And, Gd-willing, I'll return prepared to tackle the world again.

Customer Review: The State of New Jersey

Far, far too many things going on today, and I need to take a moment to breathe. So, I’ll scribble a quick blog entry before diving back into the thick of work.

My rebbetzin found a way for us to get a couple of affordable days away from town this week, so from Monday midday through Wednesday midday we took our big summer vacation: 3 days and 2 nights in lovely New Jersey, at the Hampton Inn and Suites in Fairfield.

As someone said to me this morning, a trip with kids is a “family trip” rather than a vacation, but thank Gd we have kids. It was a good trip… despite the fact that we were in New Jersey.

My apologies to Leora and any other New Jersey bloggers, but I must admit that when I was growing up on LongIsland, I was never much of a fan of New Jersey. We mocked the state for anything and everything, deserved or not. Just saying “The Garden State” was enough to evoke gales of laughter. That they took the Giants and Jets, and then later the Statue of Liberty, did not add to their cachet: Once a swamp, always a swamp. (I know that’s a little glib for a rabbi, but this predated my semichah.)

One of my longtime gripes about the state was, and remains, its signage.
*Highways tend to lack adequate exit signs, but the long stretches of frontage roads are filled well beyond eyesore-level with oversized signs for every mall, store and gas station within miles.
*Signs for highways, when they do exist, are entirely misleading; it is not uncommon to see a sign which includes the Highway Number, with the word North above an arrow and the word South below the arrow, and no way to tell which word goes with the arrow.
*You also see signs telling you “Garden State Parkway 10 miles” or “Right turn for New Jersey Turnpike,” when what they really mean is that in ten miles (or after a right turn) you will find yourself on a road which will eventually take you to another turn which will take you to another road which will lead you to that highway.

I could go on and on with examples of the signage issue (try travelling from Route 80 West to Route 46 West, just east of Fairfield), but my favorite complaint is that New Jersey is like a Venus flytrap – there is no toll charge to enter, only to leave.

But enough about the negative: I was pleasantly surprised to find that the State of New Jersey has improved its demeanor. Drivers were calmer than I remember seeing in a long time. I was let into traffic several times. People on the streets smiled on occasion. In stores in Passaic and Teaneck, I heard Please and Thank You addressed to counter-people, who were also very cordial and patient to this slow-paced out-of-towner. In minyan in both Passaic and Teaneck, I sat where I wished and no one signaled me to move over. It was a positive experience.

The food was excellent. We enjoyed Yochie’s Bakery (spelled Yoichie’s on the front window, Yochie’s on the awning?), Jin’s Chinese, Noah’s Ark, Kosher Konnection, and more. [I’m always a little leery of posting the names of places I’ve eaten; I worry they’ll lose the hechsher next week, and then I’ll have promoted a treif place to later Googlers… so please check the up-to-date kashrus status of these businesses before frequenting them.]

Minyanim were plentiful, and well-paced (meaning: precisely my speed). I was not disturbed by any talking during davening, and I heard only one cell phone ring. Excellent divrei torah between minchah and maariv. I would name the shuls, but I can’t because of the next paragraph.

One complaint: In both minchah-maariv minyanim I attended, a few baalei bayit saw fit to conduct private conversations while someone taught the brief shiur between minchah and maariv.

I was very surprised; that just seems to me to be very rude. In one shul it wasn’t a rabbi delivering the shiur (as though that were justification), but he read aloud from the Rambam, and I am very certain that he was a rabbi. In the other shul the speaker was, indeed, the shul rabbi, and the talkers were not far from the front, either. I was quite dismayed by this.

Overall: Good trip. New Jersey, I’m glad to see some real improvement. Now, if we could only do something about those hotel rates...?