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God as an Idea (Part Four)


A Teacher and a Rabbi in Conversation

(Link to Part One)
(Link to Part Two)
(Link to Part Three)

Ilan Stavans: I became a teacher by default, Justin. I wanted to be next to books. What better way to spend one’s life is there? Almost three decades after that decision, I believe it was teaching that chose me and not the other way around. I can’t think of myself being—e.g., doing—anything better. What made you become a rabbi?

Rabbi Justin David: For the exact same reason. I’m being facetious, but not entirely. I grew up in a house lined with books, and I always felt a sense that it was my responsibility to read and learn what I can. Judaism, of course, is a tradition based on books. At a critical time in college, I was searching for a sense of rootedness that was not only personal or spiritual, but intellectual, but in a way that would bring everything together. I found that the stuff that was in Jewish books, whatever that may be, did that for me. But it wasn’t enough for me to read about Judaism, I wanted to draw as close as I can, to the original sources in Hebrew, and the only way to do that and not be in the Orthodox world is to study in rabbinical school.

But there were other reasons as well, both explicit and unspoken. As I envisioned my life toward the end of college, I began to take stock of the ways in which I wanted to be in the world. I envisioned a life of wrestling with ideas, but also a life in service to others and being involved in work that brought a bit of justice into people’s lives. I grew up with a wonderful rabbi who embodied these characteristics, and so I had the thought that this is the life I could aspire to for myself.

Underneath the surface was something else, though. I grew up with certain fractures within my family that I had never really resolved. I always had an intuition that Judaism would provide the sense of wholeness and grandeur I was looking for, and when I was older, that expectation got folded into being a rabbi. When I applied to rabbinical school, I said nothing about this—I could barely understand it myself. I presented myself as earnest, with strong desires to learn and serve, which was certainly true.

But over time, I have realized that these subterranean motivations have driven me and my work much more, and as I have come to understand and share them, I find that it’s the things I’m initially reticent to share that speak to people the most. Of course, I have learned to do this with boundaries, and I am always striving to share with both emotional sincerity and intellectual honesty and rigor.

Ilan Stavans: The challenges of being a teacher are enormous. Although I’m privileged to teach at a superb Liberal Arts school, I’m perfectly aware of the limitations nationwide: poor training among teachers, apathy from students, budget cuts, misguided pedagogical objectives, obstructing bureaucracies, nearsightedness among politicians…What are the challenges of a rabbi’s life?

Justin David:: I don’t think that the challenges of a rabbi’s life are any greater than those of other people. People imagine that “living one’s life in a fishbowl” is difficult, but I’ve never experienced it that way. Instead, I would say that the greatest challenge is to be engaged in all the ways that Judaism demands and that are fulfilling to me personally: to perform acts of kindness, to study, to cultivate an inner life, to attend to the needs of my family, to care for my body, to advocate for issues of conscience and justice.

Under any circumstances this is hard to balance and achieve all at once, and add to that the expectations of being an institutional and organizational leader in an age when people are skeptical of institutions and authority. I’m not complaining – I chose this life, and I basically choose it anew every day. Most importantly, I try to be self-reflective and self-aware without being over critical of how I’m going about my work, which is hard because if I’m really engaged in one thing, it means I’m neglecting something else. There is always work left undone, and then I remind myself of the saying of the great Rabbi Tarfon from the third century: “You are not obliged to complete the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Ilan Stavans: I live my life by Rabbi Tarfon’s dictum: all that we do is partial, limited, incomplete, yet we cannot give up. In a cumbersome way, the maxim reminds me of one of Franz Kafka’s parable: “The crows assert that a single crow could destroy the heavens. This is certainly true, but it proves nothing against the heavens, because heaven means precisely: the impossibility of crows.” Honestly, I don’t know if redemption is possible, Justin, yet I push for it for without it the universe would make no sense. 

(Link to Part One)
(Link to Part Two)
(Link to Part Three)

Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. Rabbi Justin David is the spiritual leader of Congregration B'nai Israel in Northampton, Massachusetts. 


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