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.

After scandal, a simple mikvah proposal

[Update 8:09 AM - Within a few minutes of posting this, I received a notice from a rabbinic friend, who informed me that the "Mikvah Emunah Society of Greater Washington" has already sent out a notice listing steps that they are taking. One of them is, "Male volunteers who assist MES with maintenance issues at the Wallerstein Mikvah will no longer be permitted to enter the mikvah without a woman accompanying them." Baruch shekivanti, although I believe that having a committee of women control access is a more practical method than accompanying, as outlined below.]

I am still processing the rabbinic scandal from Kesher Israel in Washington DC. (I am not hiding his name to protect him; I am refusing to type it because looking at it makes me ill.) I have many thoughts going through my head, but I'm not ready to post on it today. I'm not sure which ones are logical yet.

However, I do want to make the following proposal: No male should have unfettered access to a mikvah, even a supervising rabbi. 

Like any male, the rabbi should have neither the keys not the combination, whatever system of access is used. There should be a small committee of women who are licensed to let him in (and who will have the ability to inspect it after he leaves, should there be any concerns).

I say this as a rabbi who supervised a community mikvah for eight years, during which time we actually had two mikvaos – an old one, which needed halachic maintenance, and a new one, which needed the halachic attention that comes with a new mikvah. I had the keys and I used them, but in truth, I could have done everything I needed to do by working through a small committee of contact people.

Of course, men also use the mikvah, and the rabbi could have access like any other male during those times. But women should be in charge of making sure the mikvah is open during those times, and should be the ones to lock up, and check the facility as needed, afterward. [And where possible, the men and women should have dedicated changing areas, with the women's changing areas locked when the mikvah is in use by men. Where this is not practical, women should inspect the changing areas from time to time.]

This is not about accusing all rabbis, or all men, of impropriety and evil intent. Rather, it's like in hashgachah in the kosher food industry. Just as we recognize that a religiously observant business owner has a yetzer hara for profit, and therefore we don't allow him unfettered access to his food service establishment, so we must recognize that most males have a yetzer hara in sexual matters, and therefore we should not allow them unfettered access to a place where women are unclothed.

Does this make sense to you?

Rabbi Motti Elon, Rabbi Leib Tropper, and our Yosef Mistake

[This week’s Haveil Havalim is here]

The more I think about the scandals of Rabbi Elon this past week, and Rabbi Tropper a short while ago, the more I believe that the Jewish world makes two mistakes:

1. We have a very low bar for entering leadership

Many people have desires which go unfulfilled because they lack opportunity. Admired leaders, whether overseers of conversion processes or heads of yeshivot and seminaries, have that opportunity on a daily basis. We should be doing more to vet people before putting them in those positions of opportunity.

I’ve actually believed this for a long time, ever since I was put in charge of various things at a pretty young age. A leader, a Gadol, someone we will trust with our institutions as well as our hopes, cannot be a work in progress other than in his own humble mind.

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that we hunger for leaders. We look at generations past and see their great figures, we look at the recent ones, like Rav Moshe Feinstein, and we long for their kind. And so we look to people who have yet to prove themselves, and we make them leaders. But Rav Moshe, to use him as an example, was a long time in the making, decades before he was recognized as a leader.

A leader should spend decades proving himself before the nation turns to him with that level of respect and trust. In learning, in chesed, in publishing, in apprenticing, a potential leader must prove himself before we place the Jewish world, and our trust, in his hands a la וגם בך יאמינו לעולם (Shemot 19:9).


2. On adultery, we overstate Yosef’s greatness

The Torah portrays Yosef passing the test of Potiphar’s wife (Bereishit 39) with little hyperbole. Yosef went to work, she approached him, Yosef ran away. Gittin 57a also notes that Yosef's deed was a one-time event; righteous, certainly, but not truly heroic.

We, on the other hand, play it up as an incredible deed, this refusal to commit adultery with the wife of his employer.

I wonder whether this hyperbole doesn’t provide a subtle heter (permission) for adulterers: “Well, Yosef was a great tzaddik, and that’s why he didn’t stumble; I’m not Yosef, it’s not the greatest problem if I stumble once or twice.”

I know you could (and perhaps should) argue the point, but I’m just wondering about it.

Why the Tropper Scandal Scares Me

I have not the slightest inclination to listen to the infamous audios floating around on the Internet, for a few reasons.

One, because we are trained (Pirkei Avot 4:18) not to look at others בשעת קלקלתן, at the time of their corruption. We have nothing to gain, and much sensitivity to lose, by such voyeurism.

Another reason is that I saw this coming years ago. I didn't predict his specific downfall, but I attended an EJF conference in Boston several years ago, where it was obvious that the people in charge were taking advantage of the benevolence of their major donor, Tom Kaplan.

Mr. Kaplan spoke at a dinner during the event and outlined his vision of an organization which would help intermarried couples return to Judaism. From what I could see, this was not the agenda of the people running the conference, and it was not what was being implemented on the ground. The man with the dream was being used by the people charged with carrying it out.

I turned to the person next to me – turned out to be the Executive Director – and I commented, “He reminds me of Peter Pan.” After that comment I didn’t get invited back, which was neither a surprise nor a disappointment; it was clear that agenda had already trumped ethos.

But the major reason I don’t want to hear those conversations is the thought of how many others could end up doing what he did.

The profile for leaders who fall into this trap is straightforward:
People whose great ambition overwhelms their personalities;
People who abandon tzniut as they put themselves into the spotlight;
People who think they are the smartest ones in the room.

Taken with their ambitions, they overstep lines in pursuit of their goals, until the act of breaking rules becomes meaningless;
Abandoning tzniut, they stand front-and-center, eating up the accolades and thinking themselves unbounded heroes whose foibles are nothing to their successes;
Believing themselves the smartest in the room, they ignore the concerns of others and they imagine that any danger they don’t perceive must not be real.

And so they feed their egos, and so they break rules, and so they fall, thinking all the while that they are in pursuit of the greatest good.

There are lots of ambitious, talented, charismatic leaders in the Jewish world. They are many leaders who are quite capable of ignoring red lines on issues that are dear to them. I am very concerned, worrying who will be next.

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here.]

Religion leads to immorality (Derashah Vaetchanan 5769)

Richard Dawkins, among others, has alleged that religion inspires immoral behavior.

Judging from the events of last week, I’d have to concede the point; numerous rabbis were arrested for involvement in money laundering, tax evasion and, allegedly, even organ marketing. Add those allegations to several scandals in the recent past, and the evidence certainly seems to indicate that religion – or, at least, Judaism - does not provide moral guidance.

The community knows it, too. This past Tuesday night, Borough Park, New York hosted an אסיפה, a gathering, of the chareidi community. The title was “A Legal Symposium,” and the goal was to discuss an American Jew’s obligation to obey the laws of the United States. Agudas Yisroel officials, chassidic rebbes and an attorney all agreed: A Jew is obligated to obey the law of the land. A Jew is obligated not to steal. A Jew is obligated to be honest.

A חידוש, what a novel idea! For this we needed an אסיפה? For this we needed a 'legal symposium?' Several years ago, Governor Ed Rendell cited his father as saying, "The ones who spend the longest time in synagogue on Saturdays are the biggest crooks from Monday to Friday." Gd forbid! But doesn't it sound like he's right? Does this bizarre phenomenon not prove that Dawkins is right as well, that religion – or, at least, Judaism – fails to provide a moral compass, and may, in fact, provide the opposite?


I think the answer is Yes, in part. Religion can lead to immorality, Judaism can lead to immorality, and I believe it is, in part, because Judaism inspires an arrogant complacence:

• The Torah sets a standard of behavior which includes being careful about what we eat, careful about how we dress, careful about what we say, careful about how we engage in business.
• The Torah gives us timetables for when to eat and when not to eat, when to pray, when to celebrate and when to mourn.
• The Torah gives us guidelines for raising our children and honoring our parents, helping our neighbors and helping those who are not our neighbors.
And the Torah says regarding all of these standards, “This is the way to live. These are the values to have. This is the way to be.”

The result is that a Jew can look at her Torah, a Jew who is even minimally observant can look at his own behavior, and feel superior to others, saying, “Based on the Torah’s priorities, I do all right! I see that other people don’t pray, I see that people value selfishness over philanthropy, I see that people eat whatever they wish – I may not be a saint, but I give tzedakah, I come to shul occasionally, I don’t eat treif… Compared to what I see around me, I’m doing pretty well!” And so the complacence and arrogance begins.

Even worse: The more scrupulous a person is in his observance, the closer her behavior adheres to the Torah’s recommended lifestyle, the greater the temptation to arrogance.


That’s when the crime begins, because this sense of superiority leads to terrible rationalizations:
Just as a husband might rationalize in his superiority, “I’m better to my family than other guys are, so it’s all right for me to do other things on the side,”
And just as a business owner might rationalize in his superiority, “I’m more honest than other business owners and so it’s all right for me to file private receipts as business expenses,”
So, too, a Jew in his superiority might fool himself, saying, “I do more to satisfy Gd’s expectations than other people do, so it’s all right for me to take a little money under the table, it’s all right for me to cut corners.”
And so Dawkins is proved correct: Religion encourages sin.


But our parshah provides a way to avoid that sense of superiority, when it directs us away from comparing ourselves to others and away from self-satisfaction with partial achievements, and toward a higher goal.

Right after proclaiming how wonderful it is to be a nation with such righteous laws, Moshe warns, ”רק השמר לך ושמר נפשך מאד פן תשכח את הדברים אשר ראו עיניך ופן יסורו מלבבך כל ימי חייך, Be very careful! Guard your life - and מאד, guard your life intensely! – lest you forget what your eyes saw, lest it stray from your heart, at any point in your lifetime! Guard your life intensely!”
What are we supposed to remember so closely, and with such a powerful warning? “יום אשר עמדת לפני ה' אלקיך בחורב, The day you stood before HaShem your Gd at Har Chorev, Har Sinai.”

Not, “Remember to keep the Torah’s lifestyle,” and not, “Keep a checklist of the mitzvot and make sure you satisfy every one of them.” Rather, “Remember that you encountered Gd at Har Sinai!”

The goal of the Torah is not simply to meet a certain standard of behavior, such that I might be satisfied with being better than others. The Torah's standard of behavior is meant to bring me to a greater goal:

The goal of the Torah is for me to encounter Gd once again, to live with Gd, as Adam and Chavah did in Eden and as our ancestors did at Sinai, whether in shul or at home or at work. It means to feel when I rise in the morning “מודה אני לפניך – I thank You, Gd, as I rise before you,” to daven with a sense of “דע לפני מי אתה עומד – Know before Whom you stand.” To go to work with “שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד– I place Gd before me, always.”

My gauge of success is whether I have a total awareness of HaShem in my daily life.


When I have that goal, I look to achieve perfection, and I am less likely to slip into immoral behavior. This is implicit in the Torah’s repeated warnings, "‘ויראת מאלקיך,’ You shall live in awe of Gd.”

• לא תקלל חרש ויראת מאלקיך – Don’t curse a deaf person – live in awe of Gd
• ולפני עור לא תתן מכשול ויראת מאלקיך – Don’t place an obstacle before a blind person – live in awe of Gd
• מפני שיבה תקום והדרת פני זקן ויראת מאלקיך – Rise before the aged and honor the elderly – live in awe of Gd
• לא תונו איש את עמיתו ויראת מאלקיך – Don’t oppress others – live in awe of Gd

And so on. The Torah repeats it again, and again, and again. And the gemara explains: In many cases I will think I can get away with it. I will be seduced by the lure of easy money, of social status. I will know that, hey, everybody does it. And at that point, remember: The goal is not to be better than others, the goal is to encounter Me. My goal is “שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד,” to be perpetually aware of Gd, and this does not allow for immorality, this does not allow for criminality, this does not allow for cutting corners just because everyone else does it. Regardless of where I stand in relation to others, my concern is my relationship with HaShem.


This morning, we read the Haftorah of Nachamu, Yeshayah’s message of consolation to the Jewish people. After the desolation of Tisha b'Av, after the brutal massacres and painful exiles, HaShem tells us to be comforted. HaShem pledges to take us back into that close relationship we had long ago.

But when will this happen? When we are עמי, when HaShem can say that we have become עמי, My nation. When none of us overlook sin, commit crimes and immerse ourselves in scandal out of a misguided sense of superiority. When יום אשר עמדת לפני ה' אלקיך בחורב, standing with HaShem at Sinai, is again a reality, when שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד, when we perpetually stand with HaShem.

-
Notes:

1. I am not leaping to legal conclusions. I know nothing about the specific guilt or innocence of the accused in this case. However, I am speaking about the collective set of scandals which have engulfed Jewish communities in the past few years, and specifying this most recent case only because of the אסיפה in Borough Park.

2. I know that there are multiple causes for scandals. I don't claim to be able to simplify any of them down to some easy formula. But I do believe this is a key factor.

3. The gemara on ויראת מאלקיך is found, among other places in Bava Metzia 58b.

4. Also tying into this idea: Akavya ben Mahallel's idea (Pirkei Avot 3:1) that one will never sin if he is contemplates the fact that as low as his physical origin and ends, he will still end up standing before Gd one day.

5. Motzaei Shabbat Update: Having now delivered this derashah, I'm troubled that quite a few listeners took this as a "them" derashah - as in, "Boy, rabbi, you really gave it to them!" Not explicitly, of course, but people seemed to think this was about some other group, those nasty people, and not themselves. Perhaps I could have mitigated the effect had I noted that the same sense of superiority and failure to fulfill part of Torah applies to people who are honest and fair to others, but feel they can cut corners on their service of Gd...

How to avoid the next Gmach Shefa Chaim scandal

I’ve blogged quite a bit about the issue of irresponsibility and transparency in Jewish philanthropy and tzedakah organizations – see here and here, for example – but the newest scandal, the New Jersey/New York money laundering (and organ sales?!) scandal, demands a response.

So far, it sounds like a basic money-laundering scheme, for all of the complexity of the different pieces involved. Criminals run illicit businesses, and send checks to so-called tzedakah funds, which then spend the money for “program services” that funnel the money back to the criminals. The tzedakah funds benefit by receiving a commission or a fee.

We can’t prevent these altogether – criminals will always find ways to commit crimes – but I believe we could do a lot to stem the tide with the following four rules:


First: Give only to tzedakah organizations that file a 990 or similar financial disclosure of their funding sources, their program services, and their oversight.

I don’t care if they are exempt. Yes, preparing a 990 will cost them money. But it’s a responsible way to function. I hate to say this, but I will no longer give significant money to Ner Yisrael, to the OU, to National Council of Young Israel, to Chaim Berlin, etc. They are all legally exempt from transparency, but as the Rama wrote in Yoreh Deah 257:2, tzedakah distributors must transcend their legal obligations in order to demonstrate innocence in the eyes of ה' and the Jewish people.

I would accept an annual public meeting with an explanation of the organization's finances, though. (Many synagogues, including my own, do this.)


Second: Give only to organizations that can explain their mission and program services in a clear, coherent way.
Open-ended gemachs, as well as Rabbi’s Benevolent Funds that don’t offer a clearly defined mission, are too open to abuse.


Third: Give only to organizations that mail you an annual report.
The report should summarize and explain the information outlined in Item 1 above – funding sources, program services, and oversight, and any significant changes therein. I do this for my Benevolent Fund (this year's report is here), and it has made me much more careful about how I handle the Fund.


Fourth: Eliminate the culture of winking and nodding.
As I discussed here, communities often assume that tzedakah funds, including the Rabbi’s Benevolent Fund, can somehow operate outside the law.

I have had people try to give me honoraria by writing checks to the Benevolent Fund;
I have had people try to write checks to support individuals and claim a tax deduction by doing it through the benevolent fund (you can’t claim a tax deduction for checks written to a specific person) [Yes, a fund can collect for individuals if the collection is in-line with the mission, but this is easily bent and broken.];
A few years ago a local bank went public and offer shares to local people, and I had out-of-town people try to get me to open an account with benevolent fund money, as their partners.

This is wrong, and it creates a culture of approving illegal operations. It must stop.


Ultimately, nothing will deter a determined criminal - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't bother with security systems for our homes, and for our communities.