Why Do Rabbis Crash?

In an article titled "Rabbis on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown", Jay Michaelson contends that the special political/emotional/psychological pressures of the rabbinate, coupled with the workload, could be one reason behind the regular appearance of scandalously poor decision-making by people who are trained to be wise, selfless community leaders.

In the comments on his piece, the author is taken to task by readers who think he is exonerating misbehaving rabbis. But I don't think he's finding criminals innocent; I think he is trying to identify a flaw in the system, which is making their crimes more likely. And I think I have something to add to that useful endeavour: 

Many articles have documented the link between exhaustion and impulsivity and poor self-control. Perhaps one of the best is a 2002 piece by the incredibly well-published psychologist and professor Dr. Roy Baumeister in The Journal of Consumer Research, titled, "Yielding to Temptation: Self-Control Failure, Impulsive Purchasing, andConsumer Behavior". [It's certainly influential; according to Google, it's been cited in 625 separate publications.]

Per Dr. Baumeister, one of the key ingredients of self-control is "the capacity to alter the self." And he contends, citing studies, that someone who perpetually exercises self-control can actually deplete it, making it unlikely that he will be able to continue to apply self-control. In one study, "participants in various control conditions were exposed to similar stimuli but did not have to regulate their behavior. For example, they watched the same upsetting film without having to regulate their emotions, or they were permitted to eat the chocolates and cookies instead of the radishes. Afterward, we measured self-regulation in ostensibly unrelated other tasks, such as physical stamina on a handgrip exerciser, persistence in the face of failure on unsolvable anagrams, or refraining from laughing and smiling while watching a comedy video. The findings repeatedly showed that self-control was poorest among people who had already performed a prior act of self-control."

Now imagine a rabbi who is involved with congregants on many diverse levels – pastoral, administrative, ritual, social, organizational – for 90-100 hours per week, including Shabbat. And imagine that yes, he owns impulses for grossly inappropriate behaviour. But he doesn't have daily time to flee the situation and recharge. How long will it be before he yields to a grotesquely wrong impulse?

Of course, other jobs also involve long, intense hours – and we see these breakdowns of self-control among professionals in those fields, too. We see it among politicians and doctors, police officers and nurses. And we see it among mothers. [It may exist in the modern wave of stay at home dads, too; I don't know.]

The uncomfortable reality, which I observed in my own synagogue rabbinate days, is that the job we have created for synagogue rabbis is impossible. Not "impossible" in the sense of "boy, that's hard". "Impossible" in the sense that there are not enough hours for them to do the job demanded of them, and recharge.

Here's a breakdown of a sample rabbinic week, acknowledging it depends on the nature of the shul/community:

3 classes = 3 hours of class, 9 hours of preparation = 12 hours

Shabbat sermon = 4 hours of preparation (on a good week!)

Hospital visits = 6 visits = 4 hours

2 funerals = 4 hours for the funerals, 4 hours beforehand with the families, 3 hours of attending the shivah homes = 11 hours

Nursing home visit = 1 visit to see various patients = 2.5 hours

Shul bulletin responsibilities = 1 hour (will vary widely across shuls)

Pastoral counseling = 8 appointments (if he's lucky) = 6 hours (if he's even luckier)

Answering halachic questions = 45 minutes each non-Shabbat day = 4.5 hours

Answering email questions/comments from the community = 30 minutes per day, including Motzaei Shabbat = 3.5 hours (if he's absurdly lucky)

Community organization meetings (schools, UJA Federation, JCC, etc) = 2 per week, 2 hours each = 4 hours

Tzedakah disbursement = 1 hour (will vary widely)

Attend 2 weddings = 4 hours per wedding = 8 hours (seasonal, of course, and depends on community)

Attend 2 L'chaims = 30 minutes per L'Chaim = 1 hour (ditto)

Work with shul committees to plan programs = 3 meetings = 3 hours

Preparing divrei torah/articles for special events = 2 hours

Participate in three shul programs (Sisterhood, youth, social, etc) = 3 hours           

This list is already at 70 hours, and it does not include:

Shabbos responsibilities

Pre-Yom Tov responsibilities
Community dinners and fundraising events

Responsibilities to the Eruv, Vaad haKashrut, Chevra Kadisha – and, yes, mikvah

Daf Yomi, which is standard for rabbis in many communities

Responsibilities to community organizations beyond attending a meeting

Learning with conversion candidates
Other life-cycle events - Bris, Pidyon haBen, Unveiling, etc.

Teaching Bar Mitzvah and Bar Mitzvah students

Meeting with couples to prepare for marriage

Mediating disputes within families or between people

Writing articles for local newspapers

Calling shut-ins to wish them Good Shabbos

Oversee Adult Education efforts

Legwork to help people find work, a shidduch, a chavruta or a pair of tefillin

Meet with potential donors for the shul

And contrary to popular belief, this is not subject to synagogue size. A smaller community will have fewer hours devoted to some of the items on this list, but that will be balanced by greater responsibilities in other areas. In a smaller synagogue, rabbis have greater administrative responsibilities, and greater roles in communal institutions. They also do the programming/promotional work which is managed by committees in larger synagogues.

So yes – I'm not exaggerating when I say this is an impossible job. There is no opportunity to recharge the resources of self-control.

Is there anything we can do? Maybe, but I think that the best shot comes not from the rabbis or their organizations, but from the communities. It's Reality, for at least these three reasons::

1. There are more rabbis than there are positions, and so a shul can create an unrealistic job description and find a dozen or more qualified applicants. There is no check on the Search Committee and its polls of the synagogue membership, and no one saying, "Does that actually work?"

2. Rabbis are poor time managers. I believe it's a product of the system of yeshiva education, in part, in which we just throw time at our learning without spending a lot of energy figuring out whether we are learning efficiently. All use of time for Torah is good, right? [I also suspect that the rabbinate self-selects people who fit this mold; anyone with a sane understanding of how time works would find a different life.]

3. Rabbis are heirs to a tradition that idolizes total dedication, as I discussed here.

So I'd like to see the communities take the lead on recognizing the problem posed by their job descriptions.

I once counseled a friend who was interviewed for a shul job that was advertised as 20 hours per week. I suggested that he ask the committee how they wanted the 20 hours used. As I sit here now, I think that would be a good exercise for search committees in general, before they ever see candidates – break down the hours of the week and see how they fit your job description.

I have much more to say on the topic, but the reason I post only infrequently is that I am also doing one of those ridiculous jobs. I think my self-control is saved by the time I spend locked in traffic on Bathurst; if I don't use the phone at those times, and I let go of the fantasy that switching lanes will get me to my destination sooner, then that becomes time for my recharging…

But I have written a lot on the Rabbinic Job Description over the years; click here for other posts on the topic.