Your Rabbi Is In Pain

That was the headline in a recent Blog post on the Times of Israel. It was written by Betsy Stone who is a retired psychologist who consults with camps, synagogues, clergy and Jewish institutions.

Her sub headline was, “The talk in the clergy support groups I facilitate is bleak — Jewish community leaders feel judged, unsupported and hopeless”

Many are expressing feelings of despair that she defines as the absence of hope. “It is the sense that nothing is going to get better, that my impact is so limited as to be negligible. It feels like speaking into a void. It hurts, it is exhausting. It makes us wonder why we try so hard. It feels like endless grief, shiva without an ending.

She relates that, “our rabbis, cantors and educators are struggling to find joy in their work. They struggle to find purpose. ‘I don’t want to be a congregational rabbi anymore.’”

The clergy in her groups tell her that the work has lost its reward, and they feel like they are the only ones suffering. October 7 and its aftermath have forced many of our best people to rethink their relationships with Judaism, with Israel. How can they lead when they can barely manage themselves?

In response a colleague of mine wrote,

Interesting article. Imagine if they were rabbis after the Holocaust! They would have totally collapsed psychologically!

In response I wrote the following that I want to share with you.

We should not dismiss the pain that many are feeling. It is real, even if we may have been complicit in part for getting us here.

I was thinking about Rabbis who had congregations after the holocaust. I am sure they lived with great pain as did their congregants, but they had something that changed the dynamic. From the ashes of the Jewish people they saw a “baby” born that they could rally around and somehow find comfort from the horrors of the past .They put all their energy into the baby that was born in 1948. It could easily have been born stillborn as most of the world predicted, but instead came out of childbirth alive and able to grow. It may have had a rough childhood but as it grew into adolescence, we began to see that it might have viability. It had to fight with the neighborhood bullies, but it continued to grow and develop. By the time it was 19, it had what could have been a fatal crisis, but it survived and flourished. Through this whole 20–25 years we in the Conservative movement grew and our congregations grew, and our people grew, but it was more than Torah that got us through. We all were able to overcome the holocaust crisis because the baby was growing up and prospering. We felt our confidence grow in our future because the baby redeemed us and raised us from the pain and anguish. It also helped that we thought we were secure in this country and that our baby was doing really well, so the existential pain receded.

I am not comparing our situation to the pulpit Rabbis of 1945 to 1948 in terms of degree of pain, but to today’s clergy and Jewish leaders pain is pain and it’s real.

The baby is now a senior, and we are not sure how well the children and the grandchildren are going to do. In the meantime, the place we are living does not feel safe anymore. The twin pillars of post holocaust American Jewry were Israel and a safe and prosperous home here in the United States. For the first time both pillars are feeling less secure and more shaky; so of course we have this pain of uncertainty, how could we not?

I won’t even go into how we feel about God. It’s easy to believe and feel close when all is going well, but when it isn’t, even we clergy have questions and yet we are expected to have answers for everyone else’s pain.

So to everyone but especially my younger colleagues, (and today everyone is my younger colleagues) I feel your pain, but we need you.

If I may offer one more suggestion, when it gets really bad, take 2 chapters of Psalms, ruminate over them, and go to bed early, you will feel better in the morning.

Please share with family and friends and if you would like to receive my blog please send me an email at ravpp1@gmail.com with your full name and email address.

Starting in September and going through February at least, I have many speaking engagements in North America in support of my book, Wisdom Grows in My Garden, and I will share dates and locations later.