A rabbi to call my own

Never Done: wrote a recommendation for the Rabbinate

My friend A wants to be a rabbi, and asked me to write him a recommendation. I have written recommendations before, but usually for playwrights or filmmakers. This was the first time I felt like I needed someone to write me a recommendation in order for me to write a recommendation. I was honored, truly, to be asked, and a little fearful that I wouldn't have the Right Stuff to write the rabbi rec.

Until I started, and it pretty much wrote itself. Because A will make a wonderful rabbi, and all I had to do is tell them why.

I've never had a rabbi to call my own (it sounds like I am asking for a puppy) -- but I have worked closely with many in my political work, and also have attended plenty of synagogues -- some even as a repeat visitor -- but never found a congregational home. For me the dichotomy has always been politics vs spirituality vs music vs social compatibility. The times I've found my social and social justice peers, I've usually found the music to be far, far removed from what I would call deep, traditional, or beautiful. Simple folk guitars and modern Hebraicized songs that don't move me the way a traditional liturgy does. And the time I did find a traditional liturgy sung by a wonderful cantor it was in an orthodox shul with extreme right wing Zionist politics.

Also, as I have written more than once here, I don't believe in God, and I have not found a good substitution for all the god words we hear in synagogue. So, whatever. I'm like most of the Jews I know -- I haven't found the absolutely perfect place for all my picky little needs. But you know what? It doesn't really matter, because what I've come to understand is that I belong in all these places, even if they're not perfect. Because you know what else? I'm not perfect either. But I have absorbed a lot from being in all those Jewish spaces I've occupied -- political, spiritual, social -- and as it turns out, I have opinions about what makes a wonderful rabbi, and I trust and respect my opinions. So I wrote A a great recommendation. er zol vern a groyser rov. (He should become a great rabbi.)