A Rabbi in the Pews

This past Shabbat I had the opportunity to attend the bar mitzvah of the son of one of my oldest and closest friends.  The young man did a fabulous job, leading a good part of the service both Friday night and Shabbat morning, reading flawlessly from the Torah, and chanting the haftara text with aplomb.  All in all, a great Shabbat and a great weekend to share with dear friends.

What made it even nicer for me was that I got to simply sit in the pews and participate in the service like any other congregant.  No official duties.  No speaking, page calling, sermon giving, no directing of bima traffic or concern about the ebb and flow of the service (a greatly under appreciated aspect of rabbinical responsibility, by the way).  I will confess:  I loved it.  And I will confess a bit more:  given my druthers, I would rather sit in the pews than up on the bima.  Any day.

This may be unusual for rabbis, who often seem to have trouble watching a service unfold that they have no control over.  Some years ago I was speaking with a colleague for whom I have great respect.  He was going away on vacation, and I asked him whether he would be attending services in the town where he would be staying (I happened to know there was a Conservative shul there).  He told me he had no intention of going to services, and in fact said that he never ever attended services when he was not at his own shul running the show.  “Why should I go if I don’t have to be there?” he asked, somewhat rhetorically.  “Maybe just because you like to go to services,” I thought.  “After all, you are a rabbi.”  Of course being the polite person that my mother trained me to be, that thought stayed in my mind.  It is still there to this day.

It is a strange game, the rabbinate.  There are many traps and pitfalls.  Ego is one.  An over inflated sense of self-importance is another.  The tendency to evaluate yourself (both personally and professionally) based upon what others say about you.  But one under appreciated challenge of the rabbinate is that it can rob you of many of the things that drew you to it in the first place.  A love of study and prayer, the chance to sit in community in quiet reflection, the desire to go to services, as opposed to staying home.

There is an old joke, often told.  A mother tries to wake her son.  “You have to get up!  Its time to go to shul!”  “I don’t want to go to shul,” he responds forcefully.  “You have to go!  its Shabbes!”  “I don’t want to go, I just want to stay in bed and sleep.”  “You have to go,” said the mother, “there is a bar mitzvah!”  “I don’t want to go, I’m tired, I don’t like going to shul.”  Finally, the mother said “You have to go, you are the rabbi!”

Going to shul in another community can give you a deeper appreciation for what you have in your own congregation.  It can also give you a deeper appreciation for what you have in your own heart.