Thoughts on Ten Years in Pittsburgh - Toledot 5786

Reflections on lessons learned in the rabbinate, and lots of gratitude.

As you may know, I was honored this past weekend by my synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, for my ten years of service as the Senior Rabbi. Over the last few weeks I have become increasingly reflective of my experience here, and on Shabbat morning I shared some of the lessons that I have learned in the past decade and in all my 18 years in the rabbinate.

To start with some Torah, remember that the opening words of Parashat Toledot are (Bereshit / Genesis 25:19):

וְאֵ֛לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֥ת יִצְחָ֖ק בֶּן־אַבְרָהָ֑ם אַבְרָהָ֖ם הוֹלִ֥יד אֶת־יִצְחָֽק׃

This is the story of Isaac, son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac.

There is so much to say about this verse, but I’ll just focus on one word: תּוֹלְדֹ֥ת / toledot, which could be translated as, “begettings,” As in, Avraham begot Yitzḥaq, who begot Ya’aqov, etc. It is actually used in modern Hebrew in certain circumstances to mean “history of” something. תולדות ישראל / toledot yisrael, for example, means, “the history of Israel.”

(I think you all know by now that I love Hebrew grammar, and for the record, the word toledot is in a construct form; that is, it requires another noun after it for it to make sense. The stand-alone form is “toladot.”)

And the essential meaning of toladot is clearly “generations.” History, at least in the Jewish mind, equals generations. We measure history not in terms of events and kingdoms and wars, but rather according to overlapping lives of parents and children and grandchildren, and the chain of tradition which connects us all. We reflect on our story to the extent that it teaches us who we are and how we relate to one another and the world.

Just over a decade ago, as I was preparing to move to Pittsburgh from Long Island, I was honored by my previous congregation. And I gave remarks at that dinner about things I had learned in my eight years there as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi. I returned to that list this week to see how much of it held up. And, in light of what I just said about our history, our story, and its connection to our individual roles as links in the ongoing chain of our people, I’m proud to say that I have continued to learn these lessons every day here at Beth Shalom.

Here are the seven observations:

1. Rabbinical school does not teach you how to be a rabbi.

This is something you can only learn by being a rabbi, a pastor, a teacher, a counselor and halakhic decisor. Sitting in the beit midrash at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I learned a lot of gemara, a lot of halakhah, a lot of midrash. But nobody taught me how to teach benei mitzvah students, or to stand under the ḥuppah with a bride and groom, or all the more so to meet with them for a year beforehand to discuss building a marriage, or how to be present in the context of death and mourning, or how to navigate Board and committee meetings, or so many other practical skills. I learned that from all of you.

2. The rabbi’s job is not to impress the Jews in the pews with his/her knowledge. It is, rather, to find a way to make Jewish wisdom and practice come alive today.

Ours is a living tradition. An essential principle of Torah is that God did not stop talking to us when Moshe came down from Mt. Sinai. Torah (and I mean that in the greater sense of the word) continues to be revealed to us today. The revelation continues to flow from Mt. Sinai. And it is up to us to connect the accumulated wisdom of the Jewish people to who we are and how we live today.

3. Judaism is primarily about relationships.

Our tradition is rich and varied, and while it may look like the end goal of Judaism is to get you to read ancient books or recite words in a language we do not speak or practice arcane rituals, these things are only a means to an end. The goal, rather, is that Jewish practice is there to raise us up, and to highlight the holiness in our relationships as we navigate growing up, education, marriage and divorce, parenting, sexuality, illness, grief, death and mourning.

But the ultimate goal is not the observance of Shabbat merely for Shabbat’s sake, because God said so, or even because it’s good for you as an individual. Rather it is that God wants us to be a holy people, to live lives framed in holiness, and to see the qedushah / holiness in everybody else. And I really do mean everybody, even the people you do not like, or who do not like you.

4. Be a realist, not an idealist.

Newly-minted rabbis see the world through Talmud-colored glasses, thinking, “I will teach. My congregants will learn. I will lead by example, and they will follow. I will thereby change the world.”

But the reality is that my 18 years in the rabbinate have taught me that I can only really change myself, and perhaps the waves of change will eventually radiate outward, but these things take time. Cultural change is laboriously slow, especially in big institutions.

5. There is no shortcut to listening closely.

Perhaps one of the most important things that a rabbi does is to listen. The holiest work I do is not in the front of the room, or really in the Sanctuary at all. It takes place in my office, in the quiet moments when people come to me to talk about their daughter becoming bat mitzvah, or their upcoming marriage, or the loss of their father.

We live in a world in which finding somebody who will listen to you seems more and more difficult. But the synagogue should be a haven of listening, and this is perhaps the most effective tool we have for shaping relationships and community.

6. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.

The palette of the Jewish world should never be reduced to various shades of Eastern European Ashkenazi. We are multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-political, multi-racial; among us are gradients of age, income, gender, sexuality, engagement with tradition, skin color. We are in-married and inter-married; we are both theologically skeptical and deeply committed to God in all the ways we understand the Qadosh Barukh Hu. We are born Jews and those who have opted in. We may agree, disagree, love and hate each other. But we’re all trying to wade through this messy tradition and find spiritual fulfillment together, and what binds us together is our shared Jewish peoplehood and our Torah, our prayer and rituals. And those things are much stronger than what divides us.

Temple Israel of Great Neck’s Youth House trip to Israel in 2014

7. לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה.

It’s not up to you to finish the task, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. (Pirqei Avot 2:16)

Some of you know that this is my favorite mishnah. The original context is about learning Torah, but I have often taught this mishnah in the context of gardening - the work in your garden is never finished, and so too our knowledge of Torah. But it’s even more applicable to the rabbinate. In my time here, I have never reached the bottom of my rabbinic to-do list. There is no end. And in moving to Pittsburgh to take this position as Senior Rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom, the bottom of that list somehow got even further away.

But the flip side of this phenomenon is that there is much work to be done, and I continue to love my work and the sense of communal connection it brings me every day. And I have tried to do it while keeping my wits and my sense of humor about me.

***

So that was the list of essential lessons learned during my first eight years in the rabbinate. And a decade later, I still draw on all of those lessons every day.

As I grow older, I am much more inclined to see the world through the lens of toladot, of generations, of our people handing down our texts, our customs, our ideas and prayers and language and music and philosophy and foods and everything else that comes along with being Jewish and living Jewishly. We are a people, and that sense of peoplehood – of connectedness, of shared culture – has become much more important to me in recent years.

I gave more thanks on Saturday night, but for the benefit of those who could not be there, let me just say this: תודה רבה. Thank you so very much for giving me the opportunity to be your humble servant as we move forward across these toladot, as we grow and mature and change. Thank you for allowing me in to your moments of joy and grief, for being with you at your high points and low points, for letting me listen to you and offer words of guidance and comfort, for making space for me and my family and my words of Torah in this most wonderful neighborhood, for occasionally allowing realism to undermine the idealism to which we aspire, and for forgiving me for never reaching the end of my to-do list.

The Talmud teaches us (Ta’anit 7a), “Rabbi Ḥanina said, I have learned much from my teachers, and more from my colleagues, but from my students the most of all.”

You have all been such wonderful students, but as teachers, you have far exceeded expectations. Thank you for teaching me all of these lessons, and so much more.