My Post Rabbinic Stress Syndrome

This is always a time of angst for those in the Jewish community who take the forthcoming Days of Awe as they are intended. The metaphor of having one’s life in balance, being judged for sins of omission or commission, and having one’s destiny determined by some combination of that judgment and the sincerity of intention to improve is about as heavy a burden as any holiday can impose. [For those for whom these holidays are the only experience with the Jewish liturgy, it certainly must be unsettling – and in fact distorts the more complex and less guilt-inducing themes of the rest of the Jewish liturgical year.]

As one gets older, the refrain of “who shall live and who shall die” becomes less metaphoric and more descriptive. We become aware of the inevitability of mortality. More people we know as peers fall victim to illness or accident; the generations above us become fewer; there are tragedies which take the lives of those younger than we. I may aspire to the proverbial 120 years and am doing everything in my power to be as fit and healthy as I can to get there, but in my more sober and honest moments I have come to know how vulnerable and fragile all of our lives are.

For me these holidays have held a particular angst. For 40 years, I entered these High Holidays with “responsibilities” – I conducted services. Long after my career had gone beyond the active rabbinate, I continued to rabbinate at synagogues which needed someone for a supplementary High Holiday service. I was always a bundle of nerves on this day, the day before Rosh Hashannah evening, hardly speaking and trying to focus my thoughts and fine tuning my remarks. I was fortunate that early in my career I learned that the real job of rabbinating is enabling others in the congregation to have the fullness of their own experience rather than to be the center. If my occasional eloquence and even more rare erudition mattered at all, it was only when it helped those in attendance to achieve some sort of transcendence.

They tell me I was pretty good at this. But more to the point, I enjoyed it. It provided a context to actualize that part of me which must have been why I became a rabbi in the first place. One could be orator, teacher, spiritual guide, and community builder all in three intensive days. And remarkably, people remembered what I said or taught: even years later, I meet people who remind me of a sermon or teaching which made a difference to them – remembering specifics which I had long since forgotten.

But as of two years ago, all that came to an end. The place I conducted High Holiday services for the previous 9 years had a new rabbi who, quite legitimately, no longer saw the need for a supplementary service. And for many reasons irrelevant to these thoughts, the market for High Holiday rabbinic positions is quite diminished. So, barring some surprise, and let’s face it, life never ceases to hold surprises, I suspect I have concluded my active rabbinic career.

Approaching these Days of Awe, I see that I am still suffering from post rabbinic stress disorder. I am still not clear where I want to go to services: I am not yet comfortable attending any place which is similar to where I might have conducted services. We are not a part of any synagogue community so there isn’t a default locus. So for the second year, I consciously choose places quite different from where I would consider natural landing spots: we will attend services whose style and even content diverge quite a bit from our own inclinations. Doing so allows me to not sit there and think about whether I might do it differently or, dare I admit, better, but rather to be engaged by the difference and by the holiday itself. It is as if I need the contrast to allow me to not focus on my changed roles.

It is quite interesting. It is rare that I miss the active rabbinate in any other part of my professional life – a professional direction that has given me great gratification. But on these days, at this time of year, it is still an unresolved personal matter. We’ll see if I recover in the years to come.

In the meantime, I wish all of my Jewish friends, colleagues, and fellow travelers all the best for a good, healthy, and gratifying year to come.