You Should Be a Rabbi Continued

This past December I wrote a post I called You Should Be a Rabbi. Read it, you’ll like it. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and then you’ll wonder why you wasted the five minutes it took to get through it.

I have a habit of picking on various bloggers and riffing off of things that they have said. For those of you who have been the subject take it as a compliment you managed to catch my eye. Doesn’t that sound like one of those self important proclamations or some kind of back handed compliment. Have I really that much chutzpah that I think I can make these kind of remarks. Oy.

Anyway here is what caught my eye this week:

“Most of my best friend are rabbis. Recently one of these friends surprised me by sharing that he didn’t want to be considered a rabbi anymore. I’m not sure you can do that. And either is he.

Another friend of mine’s father is a rabbi, and has disowned the title. His son always introduces his father as Rabbi X, but his father always protests.

I have gotten used to the title. I fought it a lot at first. I didn’t want to finish my requirements. But now it’s like part of my name. Of course it’s more than that. Perhaps I’ll write more about this at a later time. Perhaps.”

If you are wondering where I found this it was over at NY’s Funniest Rabbi. It caught my eye for many different reasons. Now it so happens that conservatively speaking I probably know 50 rabbis. If I wasn’t so tired I’d try and turn that into a joke about how many Orthodox and Reform rabbis I know too, or maybe something about how many rabbis it takes to change a lightbulb, but for now I’ll spare you. 😉

Anyway this caught my eye for a variety of reasons.

1) I am someone who is perpetually filled with angst about my jobs. It doesn’t matter what they are I am always concerned with something. Maybe I am that high maintenance guy that I really do not want to be, or maybe not. But it is always interesting to me to see people in the clergy express their own concerns. Although I should add that the advantage of knowing so many members of the “G-d squad” I have seen the moments of doubt and that is something that I like in them. As I mentioned in my Harry Potter post I like to see the humanity in people and I worry about clergy who never show any doubt or concern.

2) There is a part of me that is interested in going down that path and exploring rabbinics. I find much of it to be compelling but have my concerns and questions. If you are really interested you can find some insight with these posts:

Davening for Dollars

Prayer- A Converstion With G-d

What Does G-d Look Like?

Jerusalem

A Moment In Time- Perspective For The Coming Shabbos

Uh oh, I was just detained for a moment of monster bashing. Apparently the monster in my son’s closet was trying to eat him and as the resident monster killer I was called upon. In case you are wondering it was a mighty battle. He and I struggled but only because I didn’t want to make him look bad in front of his boss, there are few things more pathetic than kicking the crap out of a scary monster.

And if you are really interested my 4.5 year-old terror joined me. Once he knew that I was winning he punched the monster in the nose and kicked his tuchus really, really hard. In fact it was so hard the monster ran to his mommy and cried. Got to love kids. 🙂

So I am stalling for a moment because I lost my train of thought, I have been derailed and cannot remember exactly where I was going with this. I must be getting old, a senior moment already. Ouch.

Whatever, I’ll just start sharing more thoughts and we will see where it goes. I think that part of the attraction lies in the desire to really dig into learning and finding out more about who I am inside. The more introspection I do the more I learn about me. I am so very different from who I used to be and so very much the same.

Ok, going back to the start I found Rav Fleischmann’s comments about the title rabbi to be interesting. When you work hard to achieve something in theory it seems like you should feel very comfortable wearing the title you earned, but on the other hand I can see how there would be reasons why you might not.

Anyway, I still can’t quite get back to where I was so I’ll just end this particular journey here.