Some shuls (synagogues) have one and some have a whole faculty. Other shuls deliberately choose to have none. Rabbinic seminaries are churning out a steady stream of rabbis each year, but do we actually need any of them?
I was
ordained as an orthodox rabbi, in Israel in 2003. It was the best of times and
the worst of times, but I loved it. Though
I’ve moved away from that younger me, it helped make me into who I am today. My
beliefs and outlook are now far removed from the passionate modern orthodoxy of
my yeshiva days but I’ll probably never truly loose much of what my intensive yeshiva
education gave me. At yeshiva (In those days, I never really viewed myself as a
trainee rabbi, but more as an aspiring talmudic scholar and teacher. I therefore
always refer to my rabbinic seminary as a ‘yeshiva’) I had personal ups and
downs and the trauma of living in the West bank during the second intifada. The
fear of violence was almost constantly humming in the background. I was near suicide
bombs on two occasions and as a yeshiva, we felt the collective trauma of our
teacher, Rabbi Brovender, being kidnapped and beaten (close to death) by Palestinian
Policemen.
Putting
aside those aspects, I loved my years living in a Torah learning intellectual
bubble. When you measure a bad day as one in which you didn’t fully get ‘pshat’(the
correct explanation) in gemara (talmud) class, you know that in a cozy ivory
tower you surely dwell.
The Director
of Studies of a well known rabbinical school recently told me that, at his
school, their programme’s aim was the ‘creation of a rabbi’. According to the
Torah, God, in His efficiency, took just a week to create our majestically
diverse and beautiful world. A fully formed rabbi, with pastoral and homiletic
skills, I guess takes a little longer. Joking aside, why do we need rabbis? Is it
not more empowering to educate Jews to look after their own spiritual lives,
unmediated by clergy?
In Hasidic
communities, the rebbe or Zaddiq and increasingly in modern yeshivot,
the rabbi or ‘Rosh Yeshivah’ (academy head) is viewed as a way to connect
to heaven. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, a twentieth century Haredi (Ultraorthodox, Lithuanian,
non-Hasidic) yeshiva head exemplified this paternalistic idea of rabbi as spiritual
mediator and heaven’s representative or spokesman on earth. Hutner’s students
would not just ask his opinion about small things like for whom to vote in
elections, they would sometimes decide who to marry based on his nod. His charisma
and authority was so powerful that students would tell him their personal news
before thinking to pick up the phone to call their biological parents. This
authority on topics or knowledge of the world beyond Halacha (Jewish Law) or talmudic
scholarship is often referred to as Daat Torah (normally said with the Ashkenazi Hebrew pronunciation - Daas Torah - meaning the authentic Torah
view/outlook).
Scholars such as Lawrence Kaplan have written about Daat
Torah’s historical origins and modern impact. To have ‘Daat Torah’,
in short, is to be a man (women would be excluded automatically) with tremendous
in-depth intimacy with Torah, meaning the Talmud and all of Jewish law, which
is viewed as the mind of God. This in depth knowledge transforms the
individual, giving him an ability to know exactly what God wants elsewhere in
life, beyond the law. Like the Hasidic Rebbe who connects you to heaven, the
Rosh Yeshivah (Head of Talmudic College) now is also your only true authority
on history, politics and even love and relationships. Anyone else cannot really
know the truth fully, since they don’t have Daat Torah. Other opinions
are disqualified. Indeed Rabbi Hutner, in his writings discusses, often in
poetic beauty, rabbinic authority. Hutner leaves the uncritical reader, who has
no sense of the history of ideas, to conclude that Daat Torah is indeed a
fundamental principle inseparable from all of Jewish thought, despite its
relatively recent borrowing from the Hasidic world. A deeper discussion of both
Daat Torah and Rabbi Hutner I shall leave for another time.
As a Modern
Orthodox Jew, I never fully bought into this Daat Torah idea and I was
taught by rabbis who didn’t really either. (I do though have to thank them for many
things, including introducing me to the thought of Hutner, over whose words I
have labored many hours). However, I invite you to look around Anglo Jewry. How
many UK rabbis consciously or subconsciously believe that his/her congregation
should do as they say simply because, as a rabbi, they somehow magically know
better? Rabbis often feel that status or title alone should create authority,
irrelevant of intelligence, people skills or if they actually have anything
interesting to say. Not only is this patronizing, it infantilises congregants.
It turns spirituality from something real and personal into something mediated
through the clergy, the establishment, through official religion.
What about,
what Rabbi Eli Kaunfer refers to as “empowered Judaism”? Or DIY Judaism,
meaning, doing it yourself?
Let’s be honest, you don’t need a rabbi to have a Bar
Mitzvah, officiate at a funeral, have prayers at a shiva house (house of mourning
), to get married, lead services, read the Torah or even teach Torah. Indeed,
as Jay Michaelson points out, Jews who don’t regularly attend a synagogue may often
only meet their congregational rabbi at funerals. Why would we ask the rabbi to
officiate at a funeral of someone he hardly knew? Would it not be more personal
and meaningful and even respectful to the deceased to have a loved one
officiate at the funeral instead?
DIY Judaism means that you take ownership of your Judaism,
taking ownership of your rituals and observance. You can decide how to do your
marriage. You can actually decide which passages are meaningful for you to be
said at your shiva house. You can decide the format and content of your child’s
Bar/Bat Mitzvah. In a progressive Jewish community, the role of the individual
can be so much more than we currently expect it to be. In an orthodox
community, there is more scope for personal choice than many realise. Orthodox
Jews, your relationship with God need not always be mediated through clergy.
Progressive Jews, your relationship with God is yours to create, every minute
of the day.
Of course it’s not that simple. As Michaelson himself points
out, writing your own Ketubah (marriage contract) or sheva brachot
(wedding blessings) takes time, skill and education. Why bother doing it
yourself, why reinvent the wheel, just use what we already have, I hear you ask?
But being real and making things personal and genuine expressions of who you
are and what you love and care about, will always take time. But it will be worth
it. Being a consumer of other people’s products may save you time and sometimes
that’s good. But answering God’s call to partner Him in creation is our Jewish
duty. Relying on others can feel disempowering, boring and uninspiring.
If you can DIY and create your own Judaism, what is the role
of the communal rabbi?
We have created a professional Jew, and s/he is called a congregational
rabbi. S/he has a contract, a pension, and (hopefully) a job description. All these
things are actually good. Professionalism is important and leads to
accountability and boundaries around expectations. Yet rabbi as ‘employee’ also
has its problems. It can be disempowering for the rabbi, who, like a politician
just before an upcoming election, has to pander and please her/his line
manager, the synagogue board or denominational leadership before s/he can please
God. It can be disempowering for congregants who rely on the rabbi to run their
community. The synagogue gets turned into more of a clergy run community centre
for rabbi led events rather than an empowered community run by its members.
Congregational rabbis often setup things so they are serving
the average, or often lowest common denominator congregant’s needs. It’s
normally the more committed who wish to take an active role in their own
Judaism – to DIY it. But why can’t we educate everyone to take hold of their own
practice and Judaism, rather than expecting the synagogue or rabbi to take care of
it for them? Of course, not everyone has the time or inclination to do it
themselves. But shouldn’t we offer it to everyone as a real possibility?
For most of our congregations, our overworked rabbis are our
salaried employees. We expect them to provide us with life cycle events. Is
this not a little like how many Catholics view the parish priest? Meaning that many
Jews see their lifecycle needs as the responsibility of the rabbi, not their
own. The rabbi happily (or unhappily) officiates at everyone’s weddings and Bar
Mitzvahs in the hope that the sacred space created, may inspire those involved
to investigate spirituality more closely.
Back to DIY. Many Jews are educated, but even educated Jews
need a ‘consultant’ about how to ‘do’ Jewish practice. Rabbis can be our spiritual
consultants. Rabbis can help you create your own rituals or help you decide how
Jewish tradition works or is applicable as regards whatever it is you have
going on at present.
Rabbis can and should empower you through education to
make your own choices, rather than dictating what they consider to be the
‘right thing’ to do. How uplifted your local rabbi would feel if you called up
to ask about guidance on creating a ritual or writing a blessing following a
happy occasion or important event. That’s taking your Judaism and making it
personal and meaningful. The rabbi in this sense can help you DIY, do it
yourself.
Rabbis are also, what I would like to call “conveners of
sacred space”. There are of course, some places where we more naturally feel
God, spirituality, presence, being, oneness or however you wish to refer to that
feeling of being somewhere spiritual. For you it might be the desert, on top of
a mountain, in silent meditation or in prayer, with family, in a synagogue or in the
maternity ward surrounded by newly created life. Some places we actively create
as sacred space. Some, like the biblical burning bush, we chance upon whilst we
walk along the way doing other things.
Rabbis should teach Torah and inspire activism as regards
relevant political or societal issues, from poverty to discrimination, from
crime to disease. That is all important but, personally I believe that the main
role of a rabbi today is to facilitate the creation of sacred space. I hope
that rabbis or clergy reading this know what I mean when I say that.
I feel that I have done this many times. It is
saying a prayer before a business meeting, it is visiting the sick and being present
enough to show real empathy, it is sharing words of Torah that inspire. Yes,
anyone can do this but only really rabbis focus on it as their lifelong
calling. I have worked in hospice chaplaincy. It was in that context that I
really noticed and thought about this role of a “convener of sacred space”. Imagine
the scene – crying or anxious relatives by the bedside of a patient. As
chaplain, I needed to ‘hold the space’ for all present. ‘Holding space’ or
creating space, gives an invitation for all who wish to do so, to express what
they felt and needed at that time. Death and illness, times of fear and
anxiety, just like times of love and joy, are exactly when our spiritual selves
come out and ask to be recognised and expressed. It’s when we turn inwardly to ourselves or outwardly towards the universe, looking for support. We
need a space in which to do that. For some that may be through prayer or study,
for others through talking and sharing and for others through silence. Silence
is often the most sacred of all.
Sacred space doesn’t normally appear without preparation, it
needs to be created. It takes skill and insight, humility and maturity. I would
compare this understanding of the rabbi’s role to the therapeutic space a good
therapist creates with a client. The space of trust between therapist and
client is, in a real sense, a sacred one. You can’t really point to that space,
but you certainly quickly notice when it’s gone. The client no longer feels safe
to share his/her inner world. Good rabbis create that space too, and perhaps
that’s why many clued-in people get that being a rabbi is more than just
delivering a witty sermon.
What is sacred space?
Sacred space is the creation of
possibilities, a blank supportive canvas that allows the congregation to feel
that they are legitimate, deserving, whole and good, never to be belittled or
patronised. Sacred space is an opening, an invitation for you to freely express
and explore your spiritual self, supported, and loved, without guilt, shame or
fear. This, to me is about spiritual empowerment. A rabbi when acting as a “convener
of sacred space”, as a true spiritual leader, will never dictate what you
should or should not do. S/he will always look to you, a unique individual, for
guidance on what spirituality means at that moment for you.
You don’t need a rabbi to become Bar Mitzvah and I would suggest that you don’t need a
rabbi to tell you what does or does not constitute rest on Shabbat. You can research
or sort those things out for yourself and no one need come between you and God.
Yes, I get that this DIY approach is not for all and of course your decisions
and choices are always to be the guide.
We need to train and inspire rabbis to be our spiritual
leaders, to be facilitators of spirituality for our communities. Whether a
rabbinic programme can actually create a rabbi, fully formed and ready for
action, we can discuss at greater length. For now let’s just say that my
yardstick of whether a rabbi is worthy of the title is whether s/he has the
skills to facilitate the spiritual experiences of themselves and others.
Is
your rabbi a “convener of sacred space”, able to create and hold spiritual
space? Does your congregation feel empowered and supported to really be
themselves in their relationship with God and Judaism?
* My thoughts
flow, reflect and build upon an article, published in The Forward, by Jay Michaelson
(see: http://www.jaymichaelson.net/20110908/). I would direct you to that
article and the readers’ comments as well.
