What Even Is A Rabbi Anymore?
Questions of Jewish Authority
Make for yourself a Rav – Pirkei Avot 1:6
At first I thought about going to rabbinical school. Many of my colleagues were rabbis and it seemed to just make sense. But as I steeped myself in communal Jewish life (mostly in the Reform movement or non-denominational vibe-y movements) I started to sour to the idea. I started having more and more questions about what a rabbi even was today. And by the time my teacher, Rachel Brodie z”l, told me she would mentor me on one condition—that I never ask for a letter of recommendation for rabbi school, I was fully resolved to never go to rabbinical school.
I’m not wholesale anti-rabbi, just overwhelmingly curious about the title itself – what it does, how it is bestowed, to whom, why, and all the questions in between. I live my life and do my work within these questions of Jewish authority and instead of becoming an ordained rabbi, I want my work and practice to push the boundaries of what people assume non-ordained Jewish leaders can do and know. In fact, I like being mistaken for a rabbi because after I let those who have called me a rabbi know that I’m not, they have a chance to consider, huh, I guess you don’t have to be a rabbi to take the reins of Jewish life.
Some of the biggest questions I’ve been wondering recently are, “Does rabbinical school make someone a rabbi?” and “What is the future of Jewish communal leadership?” You shouldn’t be surprised to know that this essay is more about questions than answers. In this essay, I’ll give a few historical data points, but not much. I’ll try to make some coherent arguments, but also, not really. Mostly, I want to introduce you to the questions with which I dance. If at the end you feel unresolved, me too. My goal is to let you peek behind the curtain to the conversations I have with myself (a 31-year-old, queer teacher of Torah living in the San Francisco Bay Area) and my colleagues so that you might consider these questions for yourself.
Let’s start from a time before there even were rabbis. In his essay on the history of rabbinic ordination, Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin writes as follows:
It was not until the second century that “rabbi,” which literally means “my master” or “my teacher,” became an official title. Until that time even the greatest Jewish sages and prophets were not given an honorific…Keeping in mind that before these titles were used, even the greatest leaders and prophets were not called “rabbi,” it emerges that while the title “rabbi” is greater than ”rab,” “rabban” is greater than ”rabbi,” and the simple name without any title is greater than them all (provided of course that the person was deserving of an honorific).1
It serves us to remember that “rabbi” was an invention of the Jewish people – an invention that was for sure sped up out of necessity (after the destruction of the Second Temple). And how was this role different from other sorts of leadership? For that, we turn to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg:
The Rabbis were a more secular leadership than priests or prophets. Priests were born to holiness and were bound to ritually circumscribed lives. The Rabbis won their status through learning; unlike the priests, they were not bound to sacramental requirements different from the average Jew. Prophets spoke the unmediated word of God: ‘Thus saith the Lord…’ In contrast, the Rabbi exercised the best human judgements, guided by knowledge of the past record of God’s instructions – biblical models and legal precedents – to interpret what does God want from the people now. The Rabbis came to see that in calling humans to use their judgements, God was allowing them significant autonomy. When two Rabbis disagreed, ‘both views were the words of the Living God.’ (For the purpose of decision making, one followed the rabbinic majority vote in such contested cases.) The sum of the Rabbi’s educational and halachic efforts was that participation in religious life was democratized.2
A rabbi, “won their status through learning” and had no more additional religious or social requirements than “average Jews.” That is, a rabbi was simply a deeply dedicated and excellent learner who offered judgements that weren’t even always accepted. A collaborative voice.
Rabbi means “my master” or “my teacher” in a way that is different from a regular title. It is not like being called “Dr. or “Professor.” Embedded within the word is a relationship. Embedded in the word is not just a qualification but a sense of greatness.
And what was left for prophets?
Prophecy, however, was dead… But after 70 [CE] there was no temple, no ultimate authority which only a community could match. The individual, although not a prophet, could now emerge, since he did not have to measure himself against the unapproachable precincts of the temple.3
The Rabbis were the new iteration of Jewish authority. They were an answer to a new need. With the fall of the Temple came the fall of a centralized Jewish authority and now, individuals could declare themselves within a learning community. We know both specific names of The Rabbis and yet refer to them as this collective. And this all means that it wasn’t hereditary and it wasn’t someone hearing the voice of God. It was you, meaning, theoretically, it was anyone (certain men). And baked into their new model of authority was this ideal of multiple truths. Cohen continues:
Rabbinic Judaism is dominated by pluralism, the ideology which allows the existence of conflicting truths. The truth is many, not one.4
Authority was held by the collective body of “The Rabbis.” Authority never rested in one person, but in the idea of this office. And while that is a really nice image to have, The Rabbis as a cooperative team, when a feminist lens descends upon it, it is hard not to see them at once as these radically brilliant leaders and also as men writing pages and pages and pages of commentary justifying control of women’s sexuality, intellectual pursuit, voice, etc. While this essay’s goal is not a sturdy feminist critique of the rabbinate, I have to ask the classic question: Is it enough to just let women or non-cismen in, or is the entire office a reflection and perpetuation of patriarchal control? It behooves us to remember that it was not until 1972 that Sally Priesand became the first American female rabbi ordained by a Jewish institution.5 Alas, another essay for another day: What does a truly feminist Jewish leadership look like?
For feminist scholar Judith Plaskow, The Rabbis were (among other things) recreating leadership for their own needs. Plaskow writes:
When the rabbis said that rabbinic modes of interpretation were given at Sinai, they were claiming authority for their own community – just as other groups had before them, just as feminists do today.6
After Temple times, there was a sort of leadership vacuum and The Rabbis (who had been slowly developing) stepped into it. This is a more emergent model of leadership. Organic. But enough about OG rabbis. What about today in the United States? To understand today’s American Jewish community one must remember that starting in the 1820s and going until about the 1880s, the German Reformers were the first significant wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.7 And, prior to 1840 there were no ordained rabbis in North America. And then 35 years later, everything changed. For a very brief overview of the establishment of non-Orthodox Jewish seminaries in the United States, we turn to my friend and colleague, Rabbi Eliana Kayelle:
The first seminary in the United States was Hebrew Union College of the Reform Movement in 1875 founded by Isaac Mayer Wise. Wise set out to create a center of Jewish learning that combined religion and modernity comparable to the Christian seminaries of the time. Wise established the college and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (later the Union of Reform Judaism) with intention to expand this new wave of Judaism brought to the United States in ways that influenced how an American Rabbinate would look. Jewish Theological Seminary was founded in 1887 in response to the radical nature of the Reform Movement. JTS emphasized Jewish scholarship and a more traditional approach to halacha. Daniel J. Elazar and Rela Mintz Geffen write in The Conservative Movement and Judaism, “Hence, as rigorous as they were in their scholarship, they were ambivalent about the role that the JTS should play as a source of religious teaching and guidance. Ambivalence led them to avoid taking any deliberate steps to be religious guides.” Both HUC and JTS had specific intent for their establishment. What seems to be missing is the connection to people and/or God. Maybe some rabbis knew how to be in community (not just lead) —but that aspect of rabbi was put on the back burner. While there has been a shift in these seminaries in recent decades to amend this we can still feel the impact of institutions and individuals that lack the interconnection rabbis are often assumed to have.
What Rabbi Kayelle seems to be getting at is that through the establishment of these rabbinical schools, the rabbinate became institutionalized but in different ways and to achieve different ends. Irony upon ironies, according to Rabbi David Ellenson, PhD.. past president of Hebrew Union College--Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), It is absolutely unclear as to whether [Isaac Mayer Wise] actually received smicha.8 In other words, the man most responsible for institutionalizing American rabbinical ordination, himself, grew his leadership out of unknown beginnings. Further, Rabbi Kayelle makes clear that HUC and JTS were founded on different visions of what a rabbi should be – what Jewish life in America should look like.
Let’s pick up with Shurpin. He writes:
Some are of the opinion that rabbinic ordination nowadays is a remembrance of the ancient classical semicha. Therefore they believe that when granting rabbinic ordination we should try to fulfill as many requirements of the original semicha as possible, such as the requirement that only one qualified to rule in all areas of Jewish law should be ordained…Most, however, believe that ordination nowadays has no connection to the original semicha. According to this opinion, there is no need to be qualified in all other areas of the law in order to receive a limited ordination.9
Jews today don’t have the same standards for who should receive smicha—what texts they have to know, what experiences they have to have had, and what their commitment to law or ritual needs to be varies depending on whom you ask. Many of these are tied to movements/denominations, like Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Renewal, etc. But new pluralistic rabbinical schools are emerging, especially online or hybrid schools. Each one has a slightly different mission and, indeed, each Jewish community is deciding for itself what it needs in a Jewish leader. If I’m going to throw my hat in the ring for rabbinic education, I’m all for this new approach to because of how it makes robust Jewish education accessible for folks who are not able to pack up their lives for five years (as our brick and mortar programs are now designed). And yet, I wonder if today the task is not to reformulate the rabbinate, as many new rabbinical schools are doing, but to evolve our entire model and assumptions of leadership beyond the title and role.
It should also be noted that along with new seminaries re-envisioning rabbinic education, recently HUC-JIR consolidated its rabbinic programs from three down to two, closing the doors on the Cincinnati campus. There is simply not enough interest. According to Yehuda Kutzer, host of Identity/Crisis, a podcast of the Shalom Hartman Institute, there has been a precipitous decline in enrollment in non-Orthodox rabbinic seminaries in the United States over 30-40 years (and it isn’t for lack of job opportunities, says Kutzer, especially considering high resignation rates during the COVID-19 pandemic).1011 Admittedly, I’m not sure if he’s taking into account all of the new rabbinical schools and their enrollment. Regardless, this is a transformational time for Jewish seminaries in the United States. These questions are in the air. I just can’t help but feel like when we talk about becoming a rabbi, we are talking about two different things.
Rabbi means “my master” or “my teacher” in a way that is different from a regular title. It is not like being called “Dr. or “Professor.” Embedded within the word is a relationship. Embedded in the word is not just a qualification but a sense of greatness. Embedded in the word is not just what the person does but that they excel at it. That is another way of translating rabbi: “my great one.” In other words, it is not the person who is the rabbi – it is the student’s orientation towards this person. It is the student who defines the teacher.
I want to repeat, I have no disrespect for smicha. And I think rabbinical school is a fabulous place to dig into Jewish learning. But as asked at the beginning, can a rabbinical school make someone a rabbi? In one sense, yes. You have an ordination ceremony and receive a diploma that says you are one. And in one sense, no. It is the community within which you serve – the work you actually do. Another way to think about it is someone who is referred to as a healer. They may be called one, but what if, one day you go to them with an ailment and they can’t heal you? Are they still a “healer” to you? Maybe you respect how they have healed others, but what about to you? Remember, rabbi means “my teacher.”
We let titles speak for people, in both helpful and harmful ways. On the one hand, in times of great grief, the title can be a comfort to a family looking for someone to just know what to do. Generally speaking, rabbis have received training to know how to lead memorial services and comfort the bereaved. The title can instill confidence in someone who needs to know their leader is prepared to support them. On the other hand, the title can suggest an exclusionary sense of expertise – as if rabbis are experts at being Jewish and the rest of us, even other Jewish professionals, aren’t. Of course this isn’t true, but it is one of the feelings the word “rabbi” can evoke. This feeling is incredibly disempowering. And then sometimes, the title just tries to hold too much – it holds such incredibly high expectations from those who wear it. We mythologize “the rabbi” to the point where we forget rabbis are people – people who are flawed and regular and just trying the best they can. In fact, many of the rabbis I’ve worked with recently seem to need help more than anything else. I’m reminded of the following Talmudic story (Berakhot 28a) as retold by Rabbi Jill Jacobs,
When Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah replaced Rabban Gamliel as head of the beit midrash (study house), he suspended Rabban Gamliel’s rules restricting access to the beit midrash to only the most elite students. As his first act of leadership, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah removed the doorkeeper who would keep out students who did not meet Rabban Gamliel’s scholarly standards. Between 400 and 700 benches were added to the beit midrash to accommodate the waves of new students who seized the opportunity to study. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah’s unexpected decision paid off: On the day that the beit midrash was opened to the masses, the Talmud says, the most difficult legal problems were solved.12
Let us conceive of the rabbi as one of many leaders that can work together on a non-hierarchical team. Let us open our hearts to the way that Rabbi Elazer ben Azariah opened those doors, and trust the great Jewish leaders of today who did not go to rabbinical school. How can we, as “average Jews,” not hand over all authority of our Jewish lives to people we have never met but work with them? And do not be mistaken, many of us do indeed hand it over. But it is our tradition. Let’s not pay people to own it for us.
We turn now to the wisdom and vision of Rabbi Benay Lappe. In the final essay of Torah Queeries, she writes the following:
The Rabbis of the Talmud were explicit, though, that exercising one’s svara to upgrade the Tradition – to play the game, as it were – did not require rabbinic ordination. It did not for them, nor should it for us. But it did require learning…Like the small band of queer Tradition-changers and inventors two thousand years ago, most of the new Tradition-changers and inventors of this next era of Judaism may not be ordained. They will, though, like their predecessors, have to possess learning and svara. The queer Jews who take up the challenge will be Judaism’s new Rabbis.13
She hits the nail on the head here. Learning. And learning for the sake of engaged participation in their tradition, not to professionalize themselves. It is not a coincidence that Rabbi Lappe founded one of the best examples of high level adult learning today, SVARA. It is a place where you can be serious about study without working towards a degree — where the literacy one works towards is for the sake of immediate implementation in one’s life and community.
And yet, there is this sense among Jewish professionals and the laity alike that if you are a very engaged Jew you probably should be a professional Jew – as if that is some higher way of engaging. To be hired. And if you are a professional Jewish educator, rabbi is the next logical step or the highest iteration of your career. We have also created an economy of Jewish leadership in which becoming an ordained rabbi is the only financially smart option for a Jewish educator. Indeed, we fund our values. When I was thinking about going to rabbinical school, it was for the learning and economic opportunity (but instead opted for divinity school and a ton of self-motivated chevruta spaces. Turns out my wife thought divinity school was rabbinical school so there you go). I wanted a place to immerse and reclaim control over my own Jewish life, but I didn’t want to become a rabbi.
We have also created an economy of Jewish leadership in which becoming an ordained rabbi is the only financially smart option for a Jewish educator. Indeed, we fund our values.
There are two thoughts emerging here. The first is that we need to keep creating robust learning opportunities for Jewish adults that don’t necessarily end in smicha or becoming Jewish professionals (like SVARA, Hadar, or Jewish Studio Project, etc…). The second is that we need to start thinking about how we value wisdom and labor outside of what degrees people hold. In other words, we need to appropriately include and pay Jewish professionals based on experience, quality of leadership, and what they can offer – not what traditional authority positions they hold.
You might be thinking, well, wait a minute, what’s so wrong with smicha? Why wouldn’t someone want to pursue ordination? For me, it’s a question of thoughtfulness and motivation. What does it mean to be someone’s “Great One?” Why do you want this title? What is the title for?
I’m interested in a Jewish life in which we don’t make assumptions about what we can learn from someone. I’m interested in a Jewish life in which maybe smicha comes at the end of a career dedicated to the Jewish people, not the beginning, and is given by the community, not an institution. I’m interested in a Jewish life in which more “average Jews” feel ownership over their own tradition and can reclaim some of the authority the rabbi now holds. And, as I write to you as a professional Jewish person, I look forward to a future where “average Jews” don’t look to Jewish professionals and clergy as gatekeepers (and where professionals and clergy don’t act as such). We are not Priests talking to God on your behalf. We are not guarding the gates to your Jewish life. What even are the gates? You were standing at Sinai, too.
Our last source will be a sweet little passage from Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger’s book, Jews and Words:
Some of the greatest rabbis themselves were humble craftsmen and laborers. Shammai was a builder, Hillel a lumberjack, Rabbi Yohanan a cobbler, Rabbi Isaac and Rabbi Joshua were blacksmiths, Rabbi Jose a tanner, Resh Lakish guarded orchards, and Rabbi Nehemiah was a potter.14
Am I saying I wish we could go back to the good old days when our wise leaders were also just our local lumberjacks? Maybe – of course with completely equal opportunities for all Jews to act as such. What might our Jewish communities look like if our sages were embedded in our community, not set apart from it in any professional way? As we move into this next era of Jewish life, and we are moving fast if not already in it, we ought to thoughtfully consider where we place authority and what truly sacred leadership means.
And how exciting, that I am sitting here writing this to you all. How exciting that Jewish life has transformed many times before and it will innovate again! Alas, even the Hasidim were once heterodox!15
But finally, we will conclude where we began. What is my part in this work? Well, my entire career has thus far been based on this idea of non-hierarchical Jewish leadership – of empowering average Jews to make informed decisions for their families regarding their own ritual practice and connection. I delight in introducing Jews to their tradition and history not as observers of it, but as autonomous actors. Of course, I am following in the footsteps of so many brilliant scholars and guides here in the Bay Area who likewise walk the path of the unordained leader. To them, I am beyond grateful. And like them, my work embodies these essential questions of authority, tradition, evolution, and maybe even revolution.
Want to consider more? Here is a short list of conversations/essays about the changing tide of Jewish leadership:
This essay from Shira Telushkin in The Atlantic: The New American Judaism
Rabbis are in short supply, and congregations are struggling. But Jewish life is still thriving.
This essay from Benjamin Spratt and Joshua Stanton in Tablet Magazine: The New Jewish Awakening: Our obsession with the narrative of our community’s decline overlooks threads of optimism and opportunity
Identity/Crisis Episode 147: The Jewish Leadership Pipeline Problem from the Shalom Hartman Institute. Not entirely about the rabbinate but does mention it as part of a larger problem.
Judaism Unbound Episode 100: The Third Era - Yitz Greenberg in which Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg shares that he thinks we are moving into/already in a “Lay Era” Jewish life that can be called somewhat post-Rabbinic.
Judaism Unbound Episode 101: Not Your Rabbis' Judaism - Barbara Thiede in which they all talk about the role of the rabbi, part of the history of Rabbinic Judaism, and credentialism – among other things.
Thank you to Joel Abramovitz, Julie Batz, Rabbi Eliana Kayelle, Rabbi Benay Lappe, Rabbi Dorothy Richman, and Rabbi CB Souther for your midwifery support as I birthed this essay.
Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin. What Is a Rabbi? A Brief History of Rabbinic Ordination (Semicha). Chabad.org. Accessed July 14, 2022.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg. The Jewish Way: Living The Holidays (Touchstone Publishing, New York: 1993), 288.
Shaye Cohen, J.D. The Significance of Yavneh: Pharisees, Rabbis, and the End of Jewish Sectarianism. Hebrew Union College Annual Vol. 55 (Hebrew Union College Press: 1984). http://cojs.org/, accessed July 14, 2022.
Ibid.
Deena Prichep. “It was only 50 years ago this month that the first female rabbi was ordained” as heard on All Things Considered. June 3, 2022. NPR.org. accessed August 1, 2022.
Judith Plaskow. Standing Again At Sinai: Judaism From A Feminist Perspective (HarperCollins, New York; 1991), 21.
Hasia R. Diner. "German Immigrant Period in the United States." Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. 31 December 1999. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on August 15, 2022) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/german-immigrant-period-in-united-states
Rabbi David Ellenson, Ph.D. “Two Types of 19th Century American Reform Judaism: Isaac Mayer Wise, David Einhorn And Their Significance for Reform Judaism Today.” Lecture delivered at Congregation Elmanu-El in NYC, October 30, 2013.
Rabbi Yehuda Shurpin, cont’d.
Yehuda Kutzer, narrator. “The Great American Rabbi Shortage.” Identify/Crisis, episode 96. Shalom Hartman Institute. April 19, 2022. accessed August 2, 2022.
Asaf Shalev, “Great Resignation fuels rabbinic hiring crisis, may leave US synagogues leaderless.” The Times Of Israel. February 6, 2022. https://www.timesofisrael.com/great-resignation-fuels-rabbinic-hiring-crisis-may-leave-us-synagogues-leaderless/. accessed August 15, 2022.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs. “On Charisma And Jewish Leadership.” Contact: Journal Of The Steinhardt Foundation For Jewish Life, vol. 11, no. 1, Tishrei 5769. https://steinhardtfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/contact_autumn_2008.pdf. accessed August 1, 2022.
Rabbi Benay Lappe. The New Rabbis in Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (New York University Press, New York; 2009), 312.
Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger. Jews and Words (Yale University Press, New Haven; 2012),14.
Rabbi Raymond Scheindlin, Ph.D. A Short History of the Jewish People: From Legendary Times to Modern Statehood. (Oxford University Press: New York, 2000), 180.
Great article Meg! xo