by Rabbi Lewis Eron

Congratulations and may you find blessings in your memories of your journey so far and in the paths you will follow in the years ahead. And welcome to one of the world’s oldest guilds – a community dedicated to learning, teaching, and service. 

Forty-two years ago I received the title “rabbi” and I’ve felt honored and privileged to carry it ever since. It has set boundaries that have restrained me and, at the same time, freed me to grow in ways I would not otherwise have expected. It has channeled my talents, challenged my strengths, and helped me overcome my weaknesses. I wish you the same as you walk forward into your new life. 

I do not know what brought you to this moment. We all have different paths to the rabbinate. Some of you may have grown up in a vibrant Jewish community and your desire to enter the rabbinate grew out of your positive experiences and feelings. Some of you may have found your way to Judaism and the Jewish tradition through a deep spiritual search or may have felt called by God. Others may have come from other traditions and chose to be part of the Jewish people and follow our ways. Still others may have fallen in love with our texts and history and wish to share that love.

Your journey into the rabbinate is yours alone, but your journey from now on is one which you share not only with those with whom you graduated but with all those who earned the title of “rabbi.” Your ability to succeed greatly depends on their wisdom and accomplishments; their failures and missteps are yours to overcome. 

Although the title “rabbi” is in some sense an academic degree, it carries far more weight than an academic Ph.D. and requires a broader scope of knowledge than a professional doctorate. Unlike an academic diploma, which gives you not only a title but also “all the rights, privileges and honors appertaining to the degree”, your rabbinic certificate most likely only instructs you to go out and teach Torah and serve the Jewish people. The title it confirms not only testifies that you have achieved a certain level of knowledge but it opens up doorways into the lives of people and communities. It comes with a precious heritage that is yours to enhance and preserve. This heritage, which I hope inspired you, will allow you to be a source of inspiration to others.

When we accept the title rabbi, we claim an authority to which we, as individuals, have no right. Alone, we are not as smart as we think we are, or as learned, or as righteous, or as spiritual. We need each other. We need to work with each other. We need to find ways to walk with each other in this very complex world. We need to listen to each other and learn from each other. Our colleagues, however, are not only our contemporaries but also our predecessors and we need to find ways to hear their voices as well.

As personal and as distinct as your Torah might be, it still has to resonate with the teachings all of us have received. Deuteronomy reminds us that Torah is neither in heaven nor across distant seas, but with us where we find ourselves. What makes it real is its setting in human life. We see it, teach it, and try to embody it in that moment that connects the future with the past. While God’s Torah may be pure, simple, and perfect, our individual Torah lives in our muddy, complex, and imperfect world.  We need the crucible of dialogue and debate with those present and those who went before to refine and mold it. 

Human beings have the tendency to privilege our time and place. The successes and challenges we face at any moment are the most real. The past is history and the future is yet to come. As a rabbi, however, you are no longer living solely in the present. You are part of and speak for a people’s tradition that has its roots in the deep past and that envisions a better future. This moment is yours but it stands in conversation with the past and future. Do not retreat from the dialogue.

How and why you chose to be a rabbi is important. It will guide you in the future but it can no longer be the focus of your spiritual life. Your journey is now entwined with those of the people you will teach, serve, nurture, and guide. All aspects of your life, but particularly your spiritual life, will be intimately connected with those of all other Jews, not only those in your small, immediate world. You have become a public person. As a rabbi, you will be speaking to, for, and with Jews over time and space whose situations, understandings, and experiences differ as widely from yours as they do from each other. 

That is not to say that you will not have a private life. You will. You will need time off; time to care for yourself and your loved ones. Take it and cherish it. You need the opportunity to pursue your talents, follow your curiosity, and nurture your soul. Seize it and use it wisely. But if you are honest with yourself, you will always be a rabbi. You will find that the values you profess in public with others, will guide you in private and when you are alone. And if they don’t, you will find yourself broken and lost. You will lose your sense of authenticity and fail either as a rabbi, a person, or both. 

The Torah you will teach is not yours alone but needs to be part of the heavenly Torah that according to our tradition was God’s loving gift to God’s beloved people Israel. There are many ways to unpack that statement but at its heart, it says that teaching Torah is an act of love. One must love Torah, love teaching Torah and, above all, love the people to whom you are teaching it – the Jewish people.

Loving the Jewish people is hard. If our calling simply required us to love God, be enamored of the Torah, and serve creation, it would be much easier. It is not that these are simple tasks, they are not, but there is a very abstract, personal, aspect to them. You won’t avoid these challenges, but as a rabbi, you will face them not only for yourself but as part of and for the Jewish people. 

The important word in the expression Jewish people is people. Yes, Jews are above all people, just like any other group of people. Jewish people behave as all other people, That is to say, Jews, like everyone else, do not always manifest the best they have in their tradition or in their hearts. No Jewish community is perfect. Human vision is limited. We are all burdened by our personal and communal traumas. We all long for safety and security. We all trip over our egos. 

Remember that despite the universal nature of the Jewish people’s spiritual and ethical heritage, the Jewish tradition is narrowly focused. Our sacred texts, including the Tanak (Scripture), were composed for and by the Jews. Our customs and traditions are those of the Jewish people. The Jewish path to tikkun (repair) on whatever level you seek tikkun, starts with our immediate situation – with ourselves and our local community. Then the circle slowly expands to the broader Jewish world at home and then abroad to Jews everywhere and, hopefully, to our entire world. Our task, as rabbis, is not only to embody Torah – Jewish practice imbued with Jewish values but to create communities of Jewish people that embody those traditions. Your success in doing so will enable you to work with people and communities of other faiths and backgrounds. If you carry your title with authenticity, you will gain credibility.

And you are part of the Jewish people. You do not stand alone. You do not stand only with your friends, with those like you, or with those with whom you agree. You are connected covenantally even with those with whom you dislike and disagree.  These connections are the foundation for your validity – your ability to teach Torah, to offer tochecha (rebuke), to offer counsel, compassion, and consolation. It is hard to maintain these connections. It is a struggle to reach out and listen to others, especially when it feels so safe to retreat to those comfortable places where we feel we’re in the right, our vision is clear and our God is close. 

Remember that you are a human being. You will not or need not always be just or loving or wise or helpful. There will always be places where you should not go. You cannot be everything to everyone, nor even to yourself. Cultivate friends and colleagues. Find teachers and mentors. And remember that they too are human beings. Find and use your gifts, but do not abuse them. Work from your weaknesses and you will gain strength. Above all, have compassion on yourself. 

You will fail and sometimes you will fail miserably or beautifully. You will make mistakes, embrace that. But you will also have success. Do not let either define you. Who you will be as a rabbi depends on how you respond to both failure and success and not the events themselves. 

Never forget how privileged you are. No matter what your background, you are far more educated than most people. Your title will give you access to people’s minds, hearts, and souls. While you most likely will not be wealthy, you will have access to opportunities and experiences that most, even people far more financially successful than you, will never have. When these opportunities arise, seize them, learn from them, and add them to your Torah.

Your personal experiences are invaluable. The challenges you met, the obstacles you overcame, the issues that confounded you and still may confound you – all are part of who you are. They may have given you many things – insight, wisdom, patience, tolerance – but they haven’t given you answers. 

Remember that for many, if not most, of life’s challenges, there are no answers. There are only responses. Some problems never go away and cannot be solved.  However, not all responses are equally good or helpful. 

So as we accompany people on their life pilgrimage, we are no more, but no less, than guides. We can draw from our own experiences and learn from others and we are not alone. As rabbis, no matter where we are, we are part of a team. We have access to colleagues and other people in helping professions. We serve organizations designed to support others. When our personal experiences are too limited, we have access to a four-thousand-year-old tradition of responses to life’s issues and as you draw from this tradition, you are adding to it. 

Above all, love the people you serve, care for them, and be attentive to their needs. This will set you free. So long as they feel your love, they will allow you to be yourself. Once you lose their love, nothing you do will be right. 

Say your truth modestly and speak so that you can be heard. Allow others to disagree. They will respect your opinions if you respect theirs. What people believe, say, and feel rests on their experiences, knowledge, and emotions more so than their logic. Honor that even when you need to adjust or correct their ideas and actions and know what motivates you. 

To be a rabbi also means serving God as God is known to us through our lives filtered through our engagement with the Jewish tradition – its customs, its practices, its calendar, its places, its literature, and its people. To do so we need to articulate our understanding of the divine in what we do, what we say, and, most importantly, how we interact with others and with our world. We need to remember how limited and conditional our ideas about God are and when we and others speak about it, we reveal far more about ourselves than we do about God. Our understanding of God is determined by our time and place in the world and in society. Our vision of God reflects, at its best, our understanding of what human fulfillment means; what it means to be a whole human being, and what is that guides us to strive for the best we can imagine for ourselves, our people, and our world. 

To do all this we need to be in dialogue, not only with other people or with other faith traditions, but with ourselves – our past, present, and hope-for-future selves. We need to observe and listen, more than speak and act. Our goal is to help others cultivate a living understanding of and relationship to the Divine. We need to understand the poetry of theology, the metaphors of liturgy, and the power of speech. Ultimately, we must remember that we do not speak for God, but about God, and that the God we speak about is God as we understand God at that point on our life journey.  

Remember that there is really no such thing as Judaism.  There are only Jews with their memories, traditions, customs, practices, rituals, hopes, and aspirations. At best “Judaism” is a short-hand for the spiritual practices and beliefs of the Jewish people over time and space. 

Judaism is a construct that can help present ourselves and our traditions to the world, but Judaism is silent, it says nothing. Jews, however, have been saying lots of things for a very long time. As rabbis, one of our jobs is curating that collection so that it is accessible and meaningful to the people we serve. 

To be Jewish means living in creation – living in the dirt. Expect to get your hands dirty. Even God played in the mud. Not all Jews were or are prophets, sages, psalmists, or mystics and even the great sages of old had to work for a living. Holiness is not an abstract concept, it is found in the details of daily life. Every action we take can be informed by the Torah and can manifest holiness. 

Our tradition is ancient and reaches back at least as far as the late bronze age and, perhaps, even longer. Our customs and practices are basic and elemental and connect us to a world in which the space between the wild and tamed was narrow and easily bridged. We count months by the cycles of the moon. We sound ram’s horns, eat matzah, fill in graves, practice circumcision, wave branches, dance for rain, and sing melodies so ancient that their origins are lost. Don’t run from this. Don’t hide nor let your people hide in the cocoon of a cultured and civilized life. Be real.

Yes, be real, but also be honest, brave, kind, resilient, and loving so that you will become more than you are today. You have taken on the crown of Torah and of wisdom, wear it proudly, do not tarnish it and someday you will be able to pass it on to someone else.

Chazak v’ Amatz – Be Strong! Be Brave!