Eleven years later

I came across the following old letter on my computer recently, and it reminded me of a time long gone, the year 2000, when my Rebbetzin and I were moving from our first shul.

We had been solicited to apply for a shul in a large American city [henceforth known as "BigCity"], we had visited for Shabbos, we had been very impressed by the reception there and they seemed to like us quite a bit, but we knew there were other candidates. On the advice of the Rabbinic Placement Office at YU, we interviewed in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as a "just in case". It was Parshat Vayyetze; this Shabbos is our 11th anniversary of that proba Shabbos in Allentown.

We fell in love with Allentown that weekend; it was just what we wanted: Great people, a warm, united and learning community, institutions to build, an attractive place.

We compared this with BigCity. The membership size was comparable, but BigCity had dozens of Orthodox shuls, a vaad hakashrus large enough that community members didn't know the names of any mashgichim, an eruv run so remotely that we didn't meet anyone involved with it, and so on. We were somewhat intimidated by the scale, I think, but our visit to Allentown also crystallized the more fundamental realization that the large, schismed community wasn't what we really wanted.

Two days later, we called the chair of the search committee from BigCity and told him we were withdrawing our names. Here's the text of our follow-up letter to the committee; the details of the community are excised:

December 12, 2000
15 Kislev 5761

Dear Members of the Search Committee,

As I am sure [Search Committee Chair] has informed you by this time, Caren and I have decided to withdraw our names from consideration for [Shul name].

In visiting BigCity, we were very impressed by the strength and breadth of your Jewish community. We found institutions which serve the people well, both on the level of physical needs (i.e. Kashrut, Eruv, Mikveh) and on the level of spiritual needs (i.e. [local Torah institutions and schools]). We also found the people very welcoming and friendly.

Our decision to withdraw is linked to that strength which we found in BigCity. After serious introspection, we believe that we are best-suited for building a community on a fundamental level – creating and strengthening those very institutions which make BigCity a thriving Jewish enviroment.

Thank you very much for all of the time and effort you invested in this process, and for introducing us to your wonderful community. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at ...

Sincerely yours,

I am still kind of stunned that we did this. Getting the position in Allentown was far from a foregone conclusion; in the end there was a run-off, such that we had to go back for a second visit, as did our rival candidates, and the final vote was a close call. But we had the sense that this was what we wanted.

Thank Gd, we are very happy with the decision we made. I'm amazed at the Divine aid we received then, particularly in deciding to go to Allentown for that "just in case" visit at all, and then through the rest of the way. הרואה את בנולד is an unusual gift; who ever knows where their decisions will lead?

Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma and the Out of Town Rabbi

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

The story from the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avot is familiar: Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma, a sage from the 2nd century CE, is travelling. A man greets him, and he returns the greeting. The man asks where he's from; R' Yosi ben Kisma replies that he is from a place of great scholars. The man offers him a great deal of money to come live in his town, and R' Yosi ben Kisma replies that no matter how much wealth he would receive, he would not live anywhere but in a "place of Torah," for wealth is only of value in this world, but Torah remains with us.

The classic question: Does this mean that rabbis should not go live in small towns? What of outreach, and bringing Torah to those who are not fortunate enough to live in a place of many teachers? Was I wrong for going to live in Allentown all those years? Who should teach in schools in some communities, and who should lead their shuls?

I've heard this discussed a great deal over the years, and it seems to me that there are three basic approaches to explain this mishnah:

1. R' Yosi ben Kisma only meant to promote Torah over money
Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma does not actually decline to live in his interlocutor's community; he only preaches on the value of Torah over money, a lesson which is consistent with the themes of Pirkei Avot. "I may well go with you," Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma says, "But not on the basis of the money you offer. I will go only if it is a place of Torah."
This then resolves the conflict of the small-town Rabbi - he may go to a place which is focussed on being/becoming a place of Torah.

2. This case was unique
In this school of thought, R' Yosi ben Kisma indeed declined, but it was not because he rejected outreach. Rather, it was because he discerned some impropriety in the man's request for him to come live there. Perhaps it was that the man only wanted him to live there, but did not ask him to teach Torah. Or perhaps it was that the man thought money could buy Torah. And so R' Yosi ben Kisma decided that in this particular case, it would be inappropriate to move to the town to engage in outreach. Rabbis who are recruited on proper grounds, by good people, certainly should go to small towns.

3. R' Yosi ben Kisma was arguing against [solo] Outreach
Either because he did not believe in the value of Outreach in general (an argument I first heard this Shabbos, and one that requires some thought), or because he was concerned about his own deterioration if left on his own, R' Yosi ben Kisma felt that the price he would pay in going to this man's town to teach Torah was not justifiable. Similarly, rabbis should not go to smaller communities if they will lack colleagues with equal Torah training.

This last approach is particularly important to me. Certainly, you can learn a lot of Torah on your own, and you grow a great deal from teaching Torah. Further, today we have the blessing of email communication, which makes long-distance interaction easier. Nonetheless, living in a place where you lack peers who challenge you and force you to your limits is dangerous, because it does stunt your growth on several levels, including:
• Your own learning is not pushed;
• Your creativity in Torah is not stimulated; and
• Your focus and time allocation are framed by local needs [chesed, shiurim, psak, officiating, counseling, administration] without the input of the world of scholarship.

To me, this means that rabbis in smaller Jewish communities need to find a way to import peers, or to test and sharpen and emphasize their learning with colleagues from afar. There must be a challenge that regularly takes them out of their normal environs, giving them a new goal to pursue and a new horizon to attract their vision. With this stimulation, the Rabbi will benefit, and so will the community.

Still Homesick

[This week's Haveil Havalim is here]

I just spent a wonderful Shabbos in Calgary's Jewish community, enjoying the hospitality of a great shul and the warmest of families. I've never been here before, but it made me terribly homesick.

Regular readers here know what I mean (and for those who don't know, try here, here and here for starters). My reasons for leaving the rabbinate to move to a community with a high school were real and legitimate and right, and I love what I am doing with the kollel in Toronto. I'm learning and growing, measurably. Nonetheless, two years down the road, being in Calgary intensified the emotions I have for Pawtucket and Allentown, and for the shul roles I held.

The community - Toronto is great, on many levels, but most parts of it can't compete for warmth, for camaraderie, for the "ownership" sensibility of individuals, with smaller Jewish communities. During the past two years I've spent Shabbos in Hamilton and Ottawa, and now Calgary, and in these places I've seen again what I saw in my old stomping grounds – the people who live and love, and are engaged in building, a shul. A place to recognize Gd. A place to raise kids. A place to congregate and celebrate and commiserate. A place to learn and grow.

It's funny to see people and think, as you look at them, of the people who played their roles elsewhere. To look at a gabbai and think of a gabbai in Pawtucket. To look at a person making announcements and think of a person making announcements in Allentown. Not that people are interchangeable - we bring our selves to what we do – but that these are the key roles which define Jewish community, like a baseball team has a shortstop and a hockey time has a right winger and so on. I naturally see a person playing a position and think of others I've known who have played the position on similar teams, elsewhere. It brings a powerful nostalgia.

And the shul role - It also made me homesick because I had the chance to observe a shul rabbi who knows what he's doing; the Rav of the shul here in Calgary is first-rate. I am under no illusion that I was perfect in the pulpit, but I know what perfect looks like, in terms of the academic, intellectual, teaching role, and the intertwined human, social, engagement role. I love having the chance to watch shul rabbis do it well… and, again, it brings pangs of homesickness.

There is no upshot here, no practical takeaway. Just some musings on a Motzaei Shabbos in the Canadian Rockies.

The 39 I have become

[Post that made me smile today: Telling it like it is, from Jack]

[Warning: Navel-gazing ahead. With apologies to Three Days Grace, but the song fit.]

In the Torah, 39 is always “almost-forty.” Think of the 39 lashes given by a beit din (court), counted in the Torah as 40. Or the 39 prohibited melachot (tasks) of Shabbat, which are counted as "40 minus one." So it’s natural that I think of today as my almost-fortieth birthday.

Technically, I can get away with saying it’s not really my birthday; I was an Adar baby, and so I have a few weeks until my birthday comes up in Adar Sheni. But inside, I know I’m 39 today.

I am happy today. Thank Gd, I have everything I could need in my family and my health. (Dentist said to me last week, “Your teeth look pretty good for someone your age.” Thanks!) My job is crazy, but it provides satisfaction, some personal growth, and a solid income. My kids are in a good school, and while I will always want more for them and from them, they are doing well. So I have no right to complain.

And yet, I complain.

In particular, I’m feeling disappointed today that I didn’t end up having a serious, 40- or 50-year career in a single community.

Part of this disappointment is because I grew up in one community, and I’d like that for my kids. But part of it is professional.

I interned in Englewood, New Jersey. On Shavuos night at the end of my year there, I delivered a shiur as part of the shul’s Tikkun Leil Shavuot program. Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm was there, and afterward he asked me where I was headed after the internship. I told him, and he said something very close to, “That’s good. You’ll make your mistakes there, and then you’ll be ready to move to a bigger shul.”

I was very offended, and not only by the suggestion that I would make mistakes. I wanted to live in one place, for a very long time, have a career that was substantive and whole, see generations of families grow and flourish, and know everyone and be known by everyone and be a part of the community and make a mark that would be real and enduring. I wanted to celebrate birthdays and bar/bat mitzvahs and weddings with the same people, over the years.

Then I lived, and learned and experienced. I wanted to stay in Rhode Island, but that wasn’t realistic for the shul we had. Ditto for Allentown, due to the lack of a yeshiva high school. The moves were the right moves, I believe, but the result is that if I merit to turn 40 next year, it will be in a city of people who just met me yesterday, and not with the people who celebrated 30 and 35 with me.

The only thing to do now, I suppose - in the absence of aliyah for reasons too long for this post - is to make Toronto long-term. That would be good. It’s a late start, and too late to change what has been done… but, Gd-willing, there will be plenty of time to build from here.

Ageism in the rabbinic search process

[This week’s Haveil Havalim is here]

It’s been alleged that rabbinical bodies are guilty of impropriety for the way they control search processes. That's an interesting point, but I'd like to talk about a question of practice on the hiring side.

Off and on over the years, I’ve heard it claimed that congregations are “age-ist” in hiring rabbis, because they seek rabbis who are south of middle age. (And, of course, I wrote about my own aging process and concerns a couple of years ago, in Young and Dynamic and 124/78.)

My sense is that shuls are entitled to look for rabbis of a particular age or stage of life. This is not a case of age discrimination. Beyond prejudicial concerns for the appearance of vitality in the shul, and the question of how long the rabbinic candidate intends to stay or how much energy he intends to invest, I think there is a substantive issue of how well the older rabbi will relate to younger congregants.

Parents of young children tend to associate most with other parents of young children – people who are dealing with the same challenges, who meet at school events and birthday parties, whose children play together in homes and sports leagues. So it’s logical that a shul trying to attract those young families would seek a rabbi who would have those natural connections to that group.

Of course, that young rabbi may also have difficulty identifying with older congregants, and counseling people with mid-life crises, or people who are losing their ability to drive, their ability to hear, or their independence. But: Shuls are often more forgiving of youth than they are of seniority, possibly because the former tends to be cured by time, while the latter is rather difficult to reverse. And, I think shuls – rightly or wrongly – assume that older congregants are more likely to remain with the congregation despite having a junior rabbi, while younger congregants are more likely to jump ship in search of the young and dynaimic.

What do you think?

What do rabbis want?

In response to my Purim post, Fruma asks: What would the ads look like placed BY rabbis seeking congregations?

How about these:

* LOR seeking an L to serve as their OR. Versatile and open-minded and non-judgmental, willing to engage all types of Jews, left and center and right, who obey his every word without question.

* Rabbi with a generous heart and enthusiastic desire to serve looking to give, give, give to a likeminded community which also gives, preferably in US dollars.

* Recovering from a difficult relationship, seeking warm and understanding shul with caring congregants, active committees and sincere students, to counsel, lead and teach. Allergic to lawyers.

But to answer your question more seriously:

Some rabbis want a relatively quiet community where they can teach Torah, build relationships with people and help Jews live good Jewish lives. They are not looking for political intrigue, and they don’t particularly care to comment on the major quarrels of the greater community so long as their congregants are not directly affected or influenced. Perhaps they might publish a sefer, someday, so that all of the work they put into their shiurim and bulletin articles and derashos might have a life beyond the moment.

Others want a platform, a shul in which they can develop Big Picture ideas, the better to shape the future of local and global Jewry. They love their congregants, but they also believe that doing more for the greater world will also aid those who are geographically closest to them. They believe themselves a Moshe, or a Dovid haMelech, an architect of the Jewish world. Further, they believe that their own meta-thinking will influence their congregants to think in such terms, to contemplate the isms of the day: The Role of Government, Feminism, Universalism vs. Parochialism, and so on.

There are rabbis who would like to be halachic authorities and Torah teachers, presenting classes and learning with chavrutot and writing articles. They may seek a more cerebral community, with a commitment to intellectual growth.

There are rabbis who are entertainers by nature, seeking to connect with people on a personal level, forging relationships and, through this channel, helping bring them closer to Judaism. They may seek a class-going, participatory community with which to engage.

There are rabbis who are administrators and builders by nature, seeking to create, manage, and sometimes micro-manage institutions which will serve the individuals of today and tomorrow and the next. They may thrive in a variety of communities, because Jewish communities are forever identifying needs and creating institutions to serve them.

Fruma: This is incomplete and a bit rushed this morning, but does it help?

The Hick Rabbi and the Metrorabbi

I’ve been in Allentown, PA now for almost eight years, and have found my position here incredibly rewarding, as well as incredibly challenging.

But there are times when I meet someone from out of town – like New York, say – and they ask, “Where are you a rav?” And I reply, “Allentown,” and I can see them think to themselves, “Oh. That’s not a real rabbonus.” Or they seem to assume that this means I (a "hick rabbi") am somehow less competent than a metrorav, a rav from a major city.

It’s silly, of course. The rabbi in a non-metropolitan community tends to have more responsibilities than a rabbi in a big city. Kashrus, Eruv, Mikvah, Chevra Kadisha, it’s all in our bailiwick. We teach everything from Daf Yomi to Jewish history, we are counselors, ambassadors, lifecycle officiators, teachers for Bar Mitzvah, teachers for gerus, newspaper columnists, etc.

The Rabbanim I meet tend to understand this, but, as I have said, others do not. I suppose their reaction is just part of the metrocentricity which many people, Jewish and otherwise, feel. It’s the “If I can make it there (New York), I can make it anywhere” approach that implies its opposite, that one who makes it anywhere else could not necessarily make it in New York.

But I never wanted to be a metrorabbi:
I don’t like a lot of the politics I see in larger Jewish communities; better to be in a community where the focus is more on the meat of Judaism.
I also want to be in a place where I feel I make a substantive difference for people's lives, not a city where I am one of an army of rabbis competing to provide the same services.

So I first served a small shul in Rhode Island, and then moved here when I wanted more to do.

In retrospect, I suppose that this wasn’t the greatest “career move,” because of those people who dismiss the hick rabbi. If I were to try to publish a sefer, I'd probably meet some resistance from publishers who would wonder who I am. But I love being here...

Ah, well. All may change eventually. We only have a day school through eighth grade, and my kids are getting older. The oldest is in fourth grade, so I have four years to ponder sending my kids away for school, finding a rabbinate in Israel, or becoming one of those metrorabbanim myself...

[In light of the first comment on this post, I hasten to add: I am not announcing any resignation here! I have four years until High School is a reality.]