Essay A: Why The Rabbinate?
April 06, 2003
this document as a 
(85 kb)
I feel blessed to have attended the Abraham Joshua Heschel School when I did. In 1986, the school was new and experimental, driven by the energy and idealism of several dedicated teachers and a clutch of families. No transdenominational day school existed like Heschel, bringing children from across the spectrum of Jewish observance into the same classroom. Heschel has now grown to become a respected model, with duplications attempted elsewhere.
The special chemistry of my peers and our teachers was remarkable and irreplaceable. My small class was intimate and our relationship with our teachers was familial. Learning was exciting. Relationships I formed there continue to this day.
The Talmud teaches: “Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own.” Ben Zoma famously asks, “Who is wise? Those who learn from all humans” — our teachers accordingly treated us with utmost respect. We were guided to find and explore our own voice within a living sacred tradition, to be active participants in a divine conversation.
We were taught, in the words of Rabbi Heschel, to “build our lives as a work of art.” Creativity — in thought, language, music, movement — was critical to our growing betzelem elokim, in the image of the Creator.
While learning to respect diversity within and outside of the Jewish community, we were surrounded by the poetry and song of the Hebrew language and tefillah. Every morning we were led in prayer, and learned to be service leaders.
Directly outside the school’s small sanctuary on the first floor was a utility closet. Inside, rustling the hanging silk talitot one day, I discovered a deadbolt. Turning then pulling the lock, I swung the door open to reveal a dark room. Walking across it quietly, slowly, I found a second doorway. This opened onto a bima — cobalt and amber light poured through stained glass, under a glorious vaulted silver ceiling.
This passageway connected the Heschel School with the adjacent Synagogue B’nai Jeshurun. I grew up freely exploring these two remarkable institutions. They were both growing rapidly, responding to the need for open and dynamic communities on the Upper West Side. It wouldn’t be until years later that I would begin to appreciate the special access I had to these houses of God, or the unique sweetness of the meaningful and vibrant Judaism I received.
When I became bar mitzvah, Rabbis Marshall T. Meyer z“l and J. Rolando Matalon officiated. All of my Heschel School teachers were there. Marshall called me to the Torah, using my Hebrew name for the first time:
One would think, Sam, that your name in Hebrew would be Shmuel. And I was just so overjoyed to see one of the most beautiful names I’ve ever seen.... Shir means song, melody... what is so extraordinary is that everything about you suggests a song. Yaakov, of course, to me doesn’t mean song. Yaakov means to me much more of a struggle, but together you have the two elements of life.
Some people only hear the echo of the melody and that’s very fortunate. My hope for you, Sam, is that you wont only have the echo around you, but that you’ll be able to make your own music. And that’s hard. You can’t sing anybody else’s song when it comes to living.
read the full speech
I graduated from Heschel and enrolled at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School for Math and Science. I was excited by the transition — from a class of seven to a class of seven hundred. I was thrilled to meet so many new people, from varied cultures and backgrounds, to be amongst, as we were told upon induction, the ”smartest in the nation.“
I was a youth ambassador in Israel during my sophomore year. Rabbi Meyer died suddenly shortly after my return. I was moved to write a poem, which I was asked to read during services — His Harmony in Mind. Marshall’s blessing to me, and his power as a rabbi, was not to impose his melody upon me, but to insist that I find my own. His life was a sung accompaniment, harmonizing with so many hundreds of lives.
I realized I was out–of–place at Stuyvesant. Raised through experiential and dialogical learning, I was drained by the regimented and soulless classrooms. The relationships I had with Heschel teachers and students were founded on basic mutual respect and fueled by debate and deep questioning; I was now being fast–tracked to operate within a depersonalized hierarchy, and to archive answers by rote.
I transferred to City–As, a school which helps students to design individualized programs of internships, apprenticeships, and college courses. I was much more engaged, participating in my education, exploring my creativity, learning through hands–on experience. My schooling continued in design labs, darkrooms, museums, theatres, poetry workshops. My passion as a writer and a designer deepened.
I was satisfied and challenged by life as my classroom. Although I decided not to apply to college, my learning never ceased. I continued to travel, reading wherever I went — my luggage was predominantly book–weight. I explored spiritual modalities outside of the Jewish tradition, including yoga and meditation. I always carried a pen, and continually wrote poetry and song.
I grabbed the dot–com wave. Beginning as an assistant producer, I found my niche within the burgeoning internet industry in a role called Information Architecture. I met with clients, assessed their needs, helped them to define their product, and created vehicles for the communication of concepts. I explored the limitations and possibilities of an ever–changing medium.
I was a good IA, successful and personally sustained. Although I was respected and well–paid, there was something deeper I desired from my work. After three rigorous years, I needed to recharge, to gain perspective on the path my life was taking. I took a one–month hiatus to spend the High Holidays with my family and shul community.
I arrived in Manhattan the night before September 11th. It seemed to me that events had conspired in order that I should be in my hometown during this time of crisis. I felt obligated to help in anyway I could and, after yom kippur, made the decision to leave my job, in order to help rebuild New York City.
I began sitting shmira for the remains of 9/11 victims. This was my first intimate encounter with tehillim. I was awed by their beauty, the poetry of torah. I continued to read the psalms regularly even when I wasn’t guarding the dead, and was drawn deeply into the Hebrew letters, language, and prayer.
Seeing dapim with new eyes, I realized the Talmud was the seed of information technology. The ammoriam were IAs — architects of ideas, canonizing and categorizing wisdom. What I had been doing as a producer — meeting strangers, gently interrogating them, generating dialogue, and clarifying our mutual direction — was in fact an artifact of very ancient Rabbinic technology. Through information design, I had enabled and engaged people. I was beginning to see connections between my talents and technical skills, and the values and knowledge of my early education.
I returned to morning minyanim. Tefillah bubbled from my depths to the surface. I chanted torah from the bima at B’nai Jeshurun. I became engrossed in learning, and reveled in shabbat.
On my birthday, we were told that my grandmother had only days to live. For thirty years, osteoporosis has slowly caused her skeleton to crumble, now her bones wasted away terminally, excruciatingly. Grand mother of grace, I spent the last week of her life with my father by her side in the hospital.
I slept at the foot of her bed as her respiration audibly slowed. I wrapped myself in my tallit, and extended shacharit just long enough for my father to arrive that morning, so that he was there when she breathed her last breath.
When he left the hospice to make funeral arrangements, leaving me alone with the body, I realized I had been preparing to sit this shmira. And that this shmira would prepare me for the next... the holy act of accompanying the dead became a clear calling.
Growing up, I had been told I had ”Grandma’s blue eyes.“ Now, I felt my life literally indebted to hers — her yartzeit falls on my Hebrew birthday — and to all of my ancestry. Her last words to me were, “Be happy. Be somebody. Be successful.” I realized that by becoming a rabbi, I could satisfy all of her charges.
this document as a (85 kb)
Posted April 6, 2003 11:29 PM
©1996-2005 sixthirteen.org All Rights Reserved.