Author: Rabbi Ellen Lewis

Categories
Healing member support mental health Rabbis spirituality

The Good Enough Rabbi (Redux)

Who among us hasn’t seen the so-called chain letter entitled, “The Perfect Rabbi” (modeled on “The Perfect Pastor,” author unknown)? You know, the one that says “the perfect rabbi preaches exactly fifteen minutes. He condemns sins but never upsets anyone. He works from 8:00 AM until midnight and is also a janitor. He makes $50 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books, drives a good car, and gives about $50 weekly to the poor …” etc., and then tells you to bundle up your rabbi and send him (yes, him) to the top synagogue on the list. It’s hard not to wince while smiling at this description of our laypeople’s fantasies about us. We wince a second time when we recognize how we ourselves fall victim to believing this fantasy. 

Some years ago, frustrated by the way both laypeople and rabbi had internalized this image of perfection, I wrote a parody of the parody and called it “The Good Enough Rabbi” (inspired by the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s concept of the “good enough” mother). A parody, yes, but one with underlying seriousness: What would it mean for us rabbis if we gave up the aspiration to be perfect and instead accepted the good-enough? Would we be less successful or less loved? Would we feel more inadequate, less in control, more disappointing, or more hopeless?

While you might argue that now is not the time to raise this issue once again, I would suggest that the present crisis offers the perfect (okay, good-enough) opportunity for this conversation. The coronavirus crisis highlights the basic conflicts with which we already struggle. If we normally work a little too hard, we are working even harder now. If we usually worry about how long the temple will stay afloat, we are even more concerned now. If we normally have difficulty maintaining self-care practices, whatever little we might have done before falls apart at a time like this. If protecting a day off always requires some effort, that effort feels herculean in this moment. 

It’s true that we live in desperate times. We’ve been called upon to shift our entire rabbinic life onto Zoom. We’ve been challenged to offer pastoral care remotely, a seeming contradiction in terms. We stand alone by the graveside. We scramble to create an appropriate backdrop to our teaching and services, all the while watching the disappearance of our carefully guarded boundaries between home and work. And how again do you enhance your appearance on Zoom when your gray roots are showing and you haven’t been able to get your eyebrows waxed?

The ramping up has taken every bit of our energy and then some. Many of us are exhausted. And yet we also feel strangely gratified. We’ve been surprised at how intimate a remote funeral can feel. We’ve been overwhelmed by the number of people logging on to Shabbat services. We’ve found support from each other on our CCAR and WRN Facebook pages like never before. We’ve been stretched thin, but at the same time, we feel needed and productive. 

“This is a good moment to turn that sense of self-judgment into self-inquiry. What do you yourself need in this moment? Whatever you usually do for self-care, the solution now is to do more of it.”

We rabbis love to fix things, so this productivity can be like a drug for us. The more we experience its rewards, the more we crave it.  So we feel tempted to say yes to everything. We think about what else we can offer, how much more programming we can create, how many more phone calls we can make. At the same time, we bemoan the loss of the usual time off. We complain about how many hours we spend on Zoom. We are either sad to be alone or crazed by having children underfoot. We are in such constant motion that we have lost touch with what we might be feeling and how we are really doing. We need to sit still in order to grieve all that has been lost, both the personal and the communal. And frankly, we need to accept that we just can’t fix this.

It would be lovely to offer the perfect prescription for self-care at this point, but a self-care practice just isn’t a “one size fits all.” You first have to know yourself before you can craft what constitutes self-care for you. We have all been told we should meditate, exercise, do yoga, avoid junk food, and be in therapy (guilty as charged). It’s hard to argue with any of that. But what makes one person feel restored isn’t always the same for another. Prayer might work for you, but it might not for me. Knitting might bring solace to one, while reading does it for another. Cleaning your house and rolling out your refrigerator to vacuum the coils can be surprisingly satisfying (okay, I confess). Breaking up with Facebook is the way for some, while connecting with friends on Facebook comforts others. And what would happen if we gave ourselves permission to do nothing at all. I think of the wise words of that bear-of-very-little-brain: “Sometimes I sits and thinks,” said Winnie the Pooh, “And sometimes I just sits.” What if we, the people who gave the world the Sabbath, actually allowed ourselves a Sabbath rest?

Self-care doesn’t require conformity. If anything, it asks of us greater tolerance of the variety of ways in which we live our rabbinates. We can get a little preachy, those of us who are trained to preach. And we rabbis are a sensitive lot. We bristle at others’ telling us what we should be doing. Most of us don’t need help criticizing ourselves. We already see what someone else is doing and imagine he/she/they is the “Perfect Rabbi” against whom we don’t measure up. How often do we read our own perceived failures in other peoples’ successes? This is a good moment to turn that sense of self-judgment into self-inquiry. What do you yourself need in this moment? Whatever you usually do for self-care, the solution now is to do more of it. Rest more. Clean more. Talk more. Knit more. Binge-watch more. And if what you normally do isn’t working for you, try something else. Take advantage of the CCAR coaches who are offering pro bono sessions. Find a chevruta. Try self-compassion. And most of all, let yourself feel whatever it is that you yourself need to feel. 

We don’t know yet where and when this will end, but it will. And in that future time of recuperation and assessment, our role will be even more important. That is reason enough for us to work at self-preservation in the present so we will have energy left for tomorrow. We need to remind ourselves that working harder isn’t necessarily working better. We need to remember that being resilient may be our greatest talent of all. Our people have survived calamities and disasters by virtue of our adaptability and creativity.  Save your energy. In a time where perfection isn’t the gold standard, give yourself permission to be good enough.

* With gratitude to a wonderful Supervision Group for their suggestions and inspiring support of me and each other.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis is a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and in New York City. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies and has served on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis. She is also certified as a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors.

Categories
News

Post-Election Reflection

I’ve had a few weeks to reflect since our post-election call; I imagine you all have.  I have experienced a heightened awareness of something I feel at a lower level the rest of the time, and that is the knowledge that there are times I miss being on the bimah and there are times I don’t.  This is one of those times where I do – and I don’t.   I miss the sense of exciting opportunity but not the dread of momentous responsibility that rests heavily on rabbinic shoulders at a time like this.  This post-election moment continues to be a wonderful-terrible time to be a rabbi.  It’s wonderful because people need us; ditto for terrible.

Let’s start with wonderful.  Most rabbis are kol bos.  Because we are called upon to do many different things and may even do many different things well, we often feel an amorphous sense of purpose.  We look at other colleagues who seem to have found a particular visionary path – those we think of as a social action rabbi, a scholarly rabbi, a pastoral rabbi, or an entrepreneurial rabbi – and we find ourselves wishing for a similarly defined objective.  This kind of thinking  (largely a fantasy) often devolves into an excuse for the self-punishing question, “How come they have it figured out and I don’t?”

Well, this may just be the moment you’ve been wishing for (and yes, I know what they say about getting what you wish for).  If you have ever longed for a clear definable purpose, you have it now.  You don’t have to consider yourself a “specialist rabbi” to find a renewed sense of mission in the days ahead.

That doesn’t mean that it is clear exactly how you should carry out that mission.  That specific decision will depend upon who you are and what the needs and desires of your constituency might be. This is not an emergency although our feelings may be urgent.  An emergency requires instantaneous response; we have time to consider our next step. It also makes no sense to think that every rabbi will or should take the same path. But it does make sense to start thinking and talking about your own possible courses of action.

What principles should you keep in mind in figuring out where you want to focus your own energies?

First, we all know the usual difficulties of finding committed volunteers. We often grumble as we find ourselves doing what we had hoped our laypeople would do. What’s different now is that our laypeople have been roused to action by this election.  We have a chance to partner with them in choosing a course of action.  This means that we need not take on the burden of changing the world alone; it may start with us but it can’t end there.  Adding more to our plates is not a long-term solution; finding a genuine sharing is the goal.

Second, we have an opportunity to widen the Jewish tent. If we can publicize our plans to make a difference in the world, we might draw people to our communities who previously have seen no purpose to organized religious communities. We can show them the power of community in a new and real way.

Third, we have constituents who disagree with us. That isn’t a problem if they are making themselves heard in ways that are appropriate. Working with people who are cooperative is something we do well. It’s when we are working with the uncooperative that we run into trouble.  Some people really do desire to talk; others simply seem to be discharging aggression with us as the target.  It’s important to find a way to relate to these more aggressive people without letting ourselves be abused on the one hand or responding aggressively on the other.  The best response for us is to avoid “fight or flight” and instead hold our ground and choose to engage.  We can say things like: What should happen if you and I disagree? Why should that be what happens? Could something else happen? Should we agree on everything? How could that be possible?

Fourth, whatever your feelings might be, you can’t let them get in the way of the task at hand.  Yes, you need to be in the moment and have your feelings.  But it’s also important to keep the future in mind at the same time. As the rabbis did centuries ago, we have a religious mandate to dwell in both places, balancing today’s concerns with planning for those of tomorrow.

And finally, find a place where you can speak your truth in an unfettered way (RavBlog is a good place to start).  One of the challenges of being a rabbi involves knowing when to speak and when to stay silent, how to say things and to whom.  No one can operate with that level of self-restraint every moment of every day. Find those safe places where you can feel relieved of that responsibility even just for the moment.

Many of us felt such overwhelming grief in the aftermath of the election that we used the analogy of death and shivah.  Our intention was never to trivialize grief, although some mourners heard it that way.  Having had a few weeks to sit with this, I prefer now to use the language of loss.  We grieve losses the way we grieve death to some degree.  Yet while this election may carry some sense of finality, it is not final like death. It is hard to escape the fear of more losses to come. We need to plan for them.

Buy that parcel of land in Anatot. Lead with hope for the future.

—

Rabbi Lewis is a certified psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, NJ, and New York City. She is a member of the Society of Modern Psychoanalysts  and the National Association for the  Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

Categories
General CCAR News Rabbis Reform Judaism

Gender and the Rabbinate: Difficult Issues

In the final session of the recent two-day CCAR conference on “Gender: Difficult Issues,” there were no epiphanies.  Instead, we acknowledged that while gender is more fluid than we had once thought, it also can seem more intransigent.  As we talked, we concluded that looking at these difficult issues requires a multi-layered approach to gender.

In the early days of women in the rabbinate, most of us thought that once the novelty wore off, people would relate to male and female rabbis in similar ways. Now we know that they do and yet they don’t.  A story will illustrate. I think of the time I ran into our colleague Rabbi Howie Jaffe in the local supermarket. Two congregants of his passed by and commented on what a terrific guy he was (and he is!), helping out his wife by shopping for her in the middle of the workday.  I remember saying to him, “You know, if you were a  female rabbi, they would have walked past and said to each other, ‘You see? You hire a woman and she’s at the store instead of being at the Temple.’”

This idle comment reflects the deepest layer of gender attitudes and perhaps the one that offers us the greatest challenges.  It reflects the fantasies that exist in the unconscious primitive mind.  In this part of the brain, the Mother Rabbi as the source of unconditional love is enshrined in a way that the Father Rabbi is not.  The Father Rabbi may elicit a desire to feel protected and guided, but when you cry – and sometimes before you cry – it is the Mother you turn to for comfort and sustenance.  The only problem is that no one ever has the perfect mother.  Some are lucky and have a mother who is “good enough” (the idea that the mother only needs to be “good enough” to raise a healthy child is a concept offered by the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott).  Real mothers come too late or too early and offer too much or not enough.  So real children necessarily feel deprived and, by extension, so do adult congregants who unknowingly respond to those emotional triggers.  The Father Rabbi in the supermarket might make you feel safe and cared for, while the Mother Rabbi sparks your old feelings of deprivation by putting her family’s needs ahead of yours.

These responses to rabbinic gender aren’t as neat as I make it appear in this story. People can develop a mother transference to a male rabbi or a father transference to a female rabbi. But for this moment in time, it gives us a way of thinking about how our gender affects our rabbinates, what our gender arouses in the people we serve, and what gender inspires in us.  Because these attitudes about gender are unconscious, they aren’t available to us and people aren’t aware they are acting on fantasy. To them, in that moment, it feels real.

Knowing that gender triggers these deep fantasies can help us grasp the practical implications and guide us in our responses. One implication has to do with rabbinic comings and goings. People who are sensitive to deprivation often react strongly to rabbinic absence, whether a long absence when the rabbi goes on vacation or a shorter absence when the rabbi goes to her child’s soccer game instead of going to the bar mitzvah luncheon.  While it is important for rabbis to spend time with our families and to have time to ourselves, we need to think carefully about how we present those needs to our congregations and constituents. It would be nice to think that they want us to lead whole balanced lives and that they are thrilled when we spend time recharging, but even members who have the general appreciation that rabbis have personal needs are likely to feel specifically deprived if their personal event is sacrificed for rabbinic personal happiness.  If you say, “I can’t officiate at your baby naming on that day because my son has a soccer game,” you are more likely to trigger deprivation and anger than if you say, “I wish I could officiate on that day but I am not available.  How about the following Sunday?”

Another implication – this for more discussion another time – has to do with contract negotiation.  Negotiating with a congregant who (unconsciously) yearns for your unconditional love will be highly charged.  Contracts are by definition conditional.  For some members, negotiating with you is like having to pay mother for her love.  And there are also the feelings (often also unconscious) that we bring to these interactions.  Are we wishing for unconditional love ourselves when we negotiate?  Or are we so afraid of wounding our congregants that we hesitate about getting our own needs met, leaving us the ones feeling deprived?

“Gender: Difficult Issues” was an apt title for our two-day conversation.  It was only the beginning of an ongoing conversation we need to have with ourselves, each other, and our leadership.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

 

 

Categories
General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Unexpected Detours: The Rabbinic Career Path

One morning a few weeks ago, orange detour signs appeared on both ends of my street, making it a challenge to get to  my office.  Road closed – detour, they say, local traffic only.  This is going to be a pain, I thought, when I first saw the signs. I didn’t realize how fascinating it would become. I didn’t realize how much I would learn from the response of patients coming to my office A few people reported inching around the detour sign in hopes that they could get through to my office. One person gave up in advance and parked on a side street.  Another person called in a panic, announcing that she would not be returning for future appointments until the detour cleared.  A few people called in advance to find out whether it would be possible to get through.

Everyone reacted in character, I realized.  It was such a graphic example of how we respond to unanticipated obstacles.  Do we forge ahead? Do we skirt around? Do we avoid?  Do we become paralyzed?  I was reminded of the Midrashic rendition of the groups of fleeing Israelites when they arrived at the Red Sea.  Who wanted to return to Egypt? Who wanted to turn around and fight the Egyptians?  Who wanted to run off to a certain death in the desert? Who wanted to dive in? Like the Jewish people, we have all learned different ways, some healthy and some not, of negotiating the detours that have blocked our paths.

76154_456196075821_3347695_nVery few rabbis have a career with no detours.  I learned a long time ago that no matter the kind of rabbinate you think you are going to have, that is rarely the one you end up having.  Sometimes that is because external circumstances don’t correspond to your needs in that moment.  You want a solo position in the New York metropolitan area but so do 100 other rabbis.  You want to lead a JCRC but the position has fallen victim to Federation budget cuts.  You were hired to be an educator but now the congregation wants to expand the position to include youth group advisor.

Sometimes your personal needs become obstacles in your rabbinate.  You always thought you wanted to be a congregational rabbi but you need more personal time.  Your spouse or partner wants to move and there are no rabbinic positions available in the new location.  You love your small remote congregation but you are single and there is no one to date for hundreds of miles.  You have children now and the perfect job has taken a back seat to the requirement to earn a living.

Or maybe you yourself have changed.  You once loved the challenge of crafting a sermon every week but now you have come to dread it.  You never thought you would enjoy pastoral counseling, but sessions with your constituents have become the highlight of your day.  You love walking through the door of the hospital room but you can’t bear the thought of one more Tu Bishvat Seder.  You jump when the phone rings, praying that it isn’t another funeral. Or you realize that funerals are the most satisfying part of your work.    You have enjoyed working with college students but now you want to forge relationships with people who don’t leave every four years.

I remember joining a professional supervision group because I felt like something was missing in my rabbinate.  I wasn’t sure why, but I wasn’t having the rabbinic experience I had hoped to have.  It was a great relief to join a supervision group and get help with how to be with my congregants. I never intended to finish the program and become a psychoanalyst, but the more I got into the training, the more compelling it became.  The training not onlyenhanced my rabbinate and made me a happier rabbi,  it also made me realize I wanted something different. The training had changed me – or maybe I had already begun to change and the training encouraged it to happen.  I realized I could no longer stay doing what I had been doing. The obstacle in my path had become too great.  I was lucky that I didn’t have IMG_2756to do a complete career about face. I was able to move to a part-time pulpit as I finished training and began my practice.

We know now that few people will have only one career over a lifetime.  People who enter the rabbinate are no different.  When I had my HUC interview in Jerusalem in 1974, Dean Spicehandler looked at my college transcript and commented, “I see you changed your mind about your studies a number of times. What is to say that you won’t change your mind about the rabbinate, too?” In my naivite, I gave him an honest answer:  “Nothing, “ I said.  I think I also remember telling him that I would never be a congregational rabbi because I didn’t want to do funerals.

You can understand, then, why no one is more surprised than I that I have spent 33 years  in the pulpit rabbinate.  I don’t know what kind of rabbinate I anticipated having, but I know this wasn’t it.  There have been detours large and small along the way.  Some have challenged me more than others. But somehow, this path has led me where I needed to go.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

Categories
General CCAR Prayer Reform Judaism

In Praise of the Rabbinic Robe

Rabbi Ellen Lewis BlogMy black  pulpit robe has served me well in my rabbinate. It has seen me through two pregnancies and three congregations (actually six congregations if you include student biweeklies). It is older than my children.  It has traveled many miles and was once lost for 6 weeks in the unclaimed luggage room at Newark Airport.  Although it has been restitched countless times, the pocket lining continues to shred,  allowing tissues and lozenges  to make their way through the holes and  become unreachably bunched up inside the bottom seam.   I fear my old friend has become irreparably worn out.

When I took my first pulpit job in 1980,  the new decade heralded the trend of discarding the rabbinic robe.  It was too Protestant, too  archaic and too  removed for our more intimate time. I tentatively shared this information with the chair of the Rabbinic Search Committee in Dallas.   In  his memorable Texas drawl,  he said, “I can handle hiring a female rabbi but I can’t handle hiring a female rabbi who doesn’t wear a robe.”  That was the end of that discussion, and frankly, that was fine with me.

Wearing a robe meant not having to think about what to wear on the pulpit. That fact  alone would have offered salvation to  any woman  living  in Dallas at the time.  During my five years there, I  felt perpetually and inevitably underdressed.  Dallas in the 80’s was the city of the accessory.  My congregants shopped at Neiman Marcus (Stanley Marcus’ mother had been a devoted member of the congregation) before the store  moved outside the borders of Texas. Even the saleswomen were temple members, making shopping that much more of a complicated procedure.

So the robe thankfully removed me from the congregational social competition. But more than that, it allowed the congregation to see me as a rabbi, not as a woman rabbi.  The robe unified the three rabbis (two older men and I) as we stood on the pulpit.  Congregants could imbue us with whatever emotional and spiritual transferences their individual psyches required.  Yes, they could still see my shoes (you could write a book about how people comment on the shoes worn by female rabbis and cantors) but they were too polite in that southern way to comment to me directly.  One time, a distant aunt visited Dallas and came to Shabbat services.  In the receiving line, she gave me a long look and observed, “Your cousin wears a robe, too, but his is white with gold trim.” That was how I found out that  my cousin had moved to the Himalayas and become a serious Buddhist.

The robe issue might seem insignificant given the challenges we face in our profession, but it is symbolic  of other  gender-related issues in the rabbinate. Those of us who were ordained in the early days of women in the rabbinate had high hopes that our charting the way would relieve our younger female colleagues from having to fight the same battles.  We have become increasingly aware that, when it comes to the rabbinate, issues of gender run deeper than we had first thought. Eliminating the rabbinic robe might have resolved some very real theological issues but has also created new ones.

During these last few years of patching my black pulpit robe, I vowed that I would not buy a new one.  If I got to that point, I knew I would have to revisit the choice of whether to wear a robe at all.  And so my robe will retire from the pulpit along with me this June 30. It will be just a pulpit retirement for me, not a full retirement. But for my robe, it will mean the end of a long and satisfying career.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

 

 

Categories
General CCAR Rabbis Reform Judaism

Rabbinic Gratitude: This is Not Really About the Weather

I am going to start with a story about snow but the weather is just a pretext for where I want to go. So bear with me while I begin.

We cancelled services the last Friday night in January.  The forecast predicted snow and ice right at the time my congregants and I would be driving to and from services.  The president called and told me he just didn’t feel comfortable having services.  The driving would be too hazardous.  And so we agreed to cancel, no small decision in a small rural congregation whose services are only biweekly to begin with.

26997_329528405821_2088627_nFrom the time I was hired almost 20 years ago, the congregational leadership was direct about how they handled weather challenges.  Most of our members drive fair distances to the temple, they said; we don’t want them to feel obligated to come to services  if it means endangering their lives. So if the weather is bad, we cancel services. And you, rabbi, you live further than we do.  If the weather is okay out by us but bad by you, don’t come.  They were true to their word. We once had a bar mitzvah scheduled for early December when the forecast predicted a snowstorm. As we got closer to that Shabbat, the family called. Can we move the bar mitzvah to March, they asked? And so we did.

That was only one of the many reasons  I took the position but it was a major one.  In my last congregation, they claimed never to have canceled services. The previous rabbi had lived within walking distance of the temple, so he could walk up and open the building regardless of the weather.  If no one showed up, he just locked up and went home. All this was apocryphal, of course. I later learned that he had canceled services many times over the years. But the congregational non-cancellation myth lived on.

Since I lived about 15 minutes from that temple, however, inclement weather presented me with a greater challenge.  I wasn’t the only staff member with a conflict. The cantor commuted out from New York City. The organist had a 30-minute drive from his home in New Jersey. So I raised the issue with my leadership.  How do we decide whether to cancel services, I asked.  But there was no conversation to be had. We never cancel, they said. Even when the rabbi, cantor and organist have to drive to the temple, I asked. Yes, they said.

One day in March when I was still working in that previous congregation, there was a freak snowstorm. We knew it was coming.   The warning had come days in 227224_8511245821_1509_nadvance. And so I asked again: what do we do if we have a blizzard on Shabbat. And I received the same answer: we never cancel services.  As I drove to the temple Shabbat morning, the first flakes had begun to fall. The bat mitzvah family had already received word that their florist, caterer and photographer were canceling.  Family members and invited guests were stranded at airports around the country.  The cantor, the organist and I all made it. I recall that the worship that morning felt almost defiantly intimate in the way that communities sometimes band together when they face a common threat.

By the time Shabbat morning services were over, a foot of snow had fallen.  When I walked out the front door of the temple, the president  himself (somewhat guiltily) was shoveling snow off of my car.  I held my breath as I drove home over icy roads.  The moment my car skidded down one particularly steep hill was the moment of my epiphany.  It’s one thing if they don’t care about my life, I realized; but it is another thing if I don’t care about my life.  I knew right then that this was the wrong congregation for me.

It wasn’t about the snow, of course. It was about feeling that I wasn’t valued the way I needed to be valued. It was about feeling like the hired help, not the rabbi. It was about not being able to have the conversation.  It was about not having a venue for discussing and resolving conflict.  It was about being unable to create the covenantal partnership of which I dreamed.  And it was about not being willing to sacrifice my life for someone else’s fantasy of what the rabbi should be.

My present congregation and I have a different kind of partnership.  When we canceled that Friday night at the end of January, I had already done the preparation. The cantor and I had met to plan the service.  I had learned the Torah and had prepared something to say. The president and I were both disappointed that we had to cancel, but we were also in agreement that the value of a life – mine and theirs – superseded Shabbat.

We made the same decision this past Shabbat, on a snowy February weekend. Canceling feels a bit more poignant to me since I am aware that my shabbatot in this congregation will end come July.  But it also heightens my sense of gratitude for being in a place where we can have the conversation.

 Rabbi Ellen Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

 

Categories
CCAR Convention CCAR on the Road

CCAR Conventions, Then and Now

CCAR Convention, 2012
CCAR Convention, 2012

I wonder how many CCAR conventions I have been to over the years.  I remember the first.  It was in Pittsburgh and I had just been ordained. As I walked up to the L-Z registration line, I was scared and excited until a lovely volunteer pulled me aside.  “The registration line for the wives is over there,” she said kindly while pointing across the room.   This memory surfaced recently when I  told a friend I was going to the CCAR conference and she asked if I enjoy it.  I do now, I said.

Those early conventions are pretty much lost in the haze of the years, but I remember moments like that.  Since there weren’t many female rabbis, we all ended up being cycled and recycled through the various committees.  In those years, there would only ever be one woman on any given committee. I remember once being on the Nominating Committee and suggesting two female names.  We already have a woman, I was told.

All that seems like ancient history now although it was a mere 30+ years ago.  For all that we wonder at times whether anything has changed, it turns out that much has changed, at least when it comes to the CCAR. We now come together with intention, defined by what we do as rabbis, not by our gender or sexual orientation.   We take for granted that two of the five rabbinic members of our senior CCAR  staff are women.  Our immediate past president is a woman.  Women have chaired our convention planning.  The WRN is an ex-officio member of the CCAR board. The brochure for this next conference calls the CCAR  “the organization for every Reform rabbi, retired, community-based, congregational, part-time, portfolio and full-time.”

The year I was directed to the wives’ registration line at that Pittsburgh Conference, the overwhelming membership of the Conference held congregational positions.  My friends in Hillel simply didn’t bother coming since there was nothing there for them in the program (as well as a feeling of being invisible in contrast to the pulpit rabbis).  The part-time rabbinate existed only for retired rabbis who still wanted to keep a hand in pulpit life.  The rabbinate was a much narrower place.

And, in a not-so-well-kept secret,  it turns out that not all male colleagues enjoyed CCAR conventions.  Many of my friends joked about the “how big is yours” syndrome.  They complained that the very convention that should allow us to relax and be ourselves often turned out to be a bastion of judgment and competition.  They also wanted to talk about their personal doubts, their professional conflicts, and the challenges of balancing the rabbinate with family.  They, too, yearned for a different, more truly collegial experience.

For many years after I left the full-time congregational rabbinate, I stopped coming to CCAR conventions.  All kinds of considerations came into play. I served a part-time congregation without the financial resources to send me to conferences.  I would have had to cancel patients in my private practice, which had both economic and psychological consequences.  Since I was self-employed and funded my own vacations, I needed to be selective about how much time I spent away.  If the choice came down to going to the CCAR convention versus going to visit my children, my children won.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis at 2012 CCAR Convention with Rabbis Michael Weinberg, Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, and Rabbi Steve Fox.
Rabbi Ellen Lewis at 2012 CCAR Convention with Rabbis Michael Weinberg, Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, and Rabbi Steve Fox.

While all of the above reasons seemed valid at the time, I also confess that I wasn’t as drawn to going to the convention as I am now.  For many years, the CCAR didn’t feel like the organization for every Reform rabbi, or at least not the organization for this Reform rabbi. The happy confluence of women’s entering the rabbinate and society’s undergoing parallel shifts has sparked many positive changes in the rabbinate and in our conference. We all know that there are changes yet to come, as acknowledged by the title of this conference (Rabbis Leading the Shift: Jewish Possibility in a Rapidly Changing World).   I am happy about returning to these conferences.  I am excited about seeing old and new friends.  And yes, I plan to enjoy it.

 

Rabbi Ellen Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.

Categories
General CCAR Prayer

Love and Loss: Leaving the Pulpit

When I walkJewishCenterNWJerseyed to the end of my driveway the day after Sandy, my neighbor across the street was already standing at the foot of hers.  Together we surveyed the huge pile of detritus that lay in the street between us. The winds had uprooted the old maple on my front lawn and caused it to fall on the telephone wires between my house and my neightbor’s.  Two telephone poles had snapped like twigs, pitching the transformers into the street and causing a brief fire to flare in the middle of the road.  We had been lucky, my neighbor and I agreed.  The damage could have been much worse.  The tree could have fallen the other way and landed on my house.

“Someone was watching over you,” said my neighbor.  Another neighbor came by, picking his way over the fallen wires. He stood looking with us for a moment before observing, “Someone was watching over you.”   What terrible theology, I thought to myself. Does this mean Someone wasn’t watching over the people whose houses burned to the ground in Breezy Point? Or the people down the Jersey shore who had lost everything to the storm surge? The thing about being in the rabbinate all these years is that you see sermons in everything, including morning-after storm damage.  I didn’t feel a need to share my theological disagreement with my neighbors because I knew I had a place to express my ideas.  Assuming the upcoming bat mitzvah would go on as scheduled, I could easily make a linkage between my neighbors’ theological conclusions and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you really see the hand of God in these so-called Acts of God? How do you understand the damage done to the innocent?  This would all dovetail nicely with the d’var Torah the bat mitzvah had already prepared.

And this reaction would have come and gone routinely were I not leaving my congregation this coming June.  Instead, a new and painful feeling intruded itself: “What will I do when I no longer have the pulpit as a forum?”  Most of the time, the idea of retiring from my congregation after 19 years (33 total years since ordination) seems more theoretical than real.  As I look at next September’s calendar, I note with gratitude that I won’t have to spend yet another August writing sermons for an obscenely early high holy day season.  As I read the newspaper, I automatically reach to cut out an article that seems like a good idea for a high holy day sermon, then remember  that I won’t be writing those sermons next year.  I usually allow myself an awareness of the prospective gain but not the loss.  But as I stood looking at my tree in the road, a moment of anticipatory grief had leaked through.

Rabbi Ellen Lewis BlogAs much as I have complained over the years about not having the time to write sermons, not having any ideas, feeling uninspired, having other things that felt more pressing, I confess that I have come to enjoy preparing sermons for this particular congregation. I have worked in congregations where people came to services like critics to a Broadway show, but not this congregation.   They come not as critics but as students, open to what I have to say and interested in taking something away with them.  Sermons are just another piece of our relationship.  And it is that relationship I will miss.  When a 9th grader says to me accusingly, “How can you not confirm me? You named me, you bat mitzvahed me,” the loss – both hers and mine – lives for a moment between us.  When a congregant says, “Next year, you can still lead our Sisterhood retreat because you will be our Rabbi Eminence [my very favorite corruption of Emerita],” I silently react defensively.  Does she really think I am leaving the temple so I can come back and lead a retreat, I ask myself?  But in the next moment, I let my armor slip and share in her conflict,  accepting that this is just her way of holding on when she doesn’t want to let go.

When the Board emailed the congregation about my leaving, they used the word “retirement.” I balked for a moment. This isn’t really retirement for me.  It is just leaving the synagogue so I can devote more time to my private practice and experience weekends without work. The word “retirement” just makes my leaving them more palatable. But on second thought, I realized that  they are correct that this is my retirement. I am not interested in another pulpit.   If I wanted to continue in the congregational rabbinate, I would stay where I am. But I know the time has come for me to go.

When I told one of my sons about that pang of loss at not writing sermons, he replied unsympathetically, “So you’ll start a blog.”  Thank you, CCAR, for this invitation.

Rabbi ElleBlog-RabbiEllenLewisn Lewis (www.rabbiellenlewis.com) has a particular interest in the integration of religious and psychoanalytical concepts and has worked at developing models of clinical supervision for rabbis, cantors, and other religious professionals.  In her private practice, she works with rabbis and cantors in therapy and supervision.  After her ordination at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1980, she served congregations in Dallas, Texas, and Summit, New Jersey, where she was named Rabbi Honorata.  Since 1994, she has been the Rabbi of the Jewish Center of Northwest Jersey in Washington, NJ (www.jcnwj.org).  

Rabbi Lewis is also a certified and licensed modern psychoanalyst in private practice in Bernardsville, New Jersey and in New York City. She received her analytical training in New York at the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies (www.cmps.edu) and at present serves on the faculty of the Academy of Clinical and Applied Psychoanalysis (www.acapnj.org).  She is a Fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (www.aapc.org). She can be reached via email at rabbiellenlewis@rabbiellenlewis.com or in her NJ office 908 766 7586.