Eric Rosin
Temple Beth-El, Richmond, Virginia
June 13, 2003

I'm still new at this, but I've got to say that there are a lot of great things about being a rabbi. What other job comes complete with a family of almost 2000 people? The support and the affection and the (mostly) helpful advice that I've received since my arrival in Richmond has been gratifying . . . if not a little overwhelming at times. Also, I'm still amazed that I get to spend my days learning and teaching Torah and trying to figure out ways to make Torah real and immediate in people's lives.

At the beginning of the shacharit service there is bracha for learning Torah, Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlom, asher kidishanu b'mitzvotav v'tzivanu L'Asok b'divrei Torah, Blessed are You, Lord, Ruler of the Universe who sanctifies us by commanding us to occupy ourselves with words of Torah. The words "L'Asok b'divrei Torah" don't literally mean "to study, Torah." They mean to be completely occupied, taken up, consumed with Torah, and since I've started this job, I've been able to say this prayer in the morning with sincerity and excitement, knowing that I would get to spend the coming day learning with of all of the rabbis in Jewish history as I pour through books to put together teachings, drashot, blessings or services.

Sure there's a fair amount of pressure, but the pressure is to form relationships with people, to get to know all of the individuals who make up this community, to be present during wonderful and difficult times, and to show through my teaching, through the example I set and through the way that I can add to the life of this synagogue that Torah and the Jewish tradition are relevant to all of us and can bring all of us into the conscious presence of the holiness that saturates this world in which we live.

In addition to all of that, being a rabbi is an incredible privilege because we get to stand up here, on the bima facing you. During services, it's nice to be up here, largely because congregants can be very entertaining. Don't think that we don't notice when people show up, or who stays awake for our sermons, or which brothers and sisters are poking each other when their parents aren't watching. But there are also moments of real intimacy when we can see the sincerity of your davening and when we can look into your faces and see the joy and pride that you feel in celebrating a simcha, and when it's clear from your expressions that our words have reached your hearts and your minds and that our honesty on the bima is letting you know that our tradition welcomes your honesty and your soulfulness in return.

We get the best seat in the house during services, and even that pales in comparison with the privilege of our position during weddings. You can't image the energy under the chupah during a wedding. The love between the hatan and kalah, the bride and groom, is almost tangible and the rabbi is the only one in the room who gets to look them both in the face and address them during that time. It is our zchut, our privilege, to engage that kedusha, that holiness, and to shape it according to our holy Jewish tradition. In fact, the person who officiates at a wedding is called the misader kiddushin, the person who brings order to that holy moment.

I simply can't image why some people stay lawyers.

You may wonder what spurred all of these thoughts, well, this week I got to play rabbi outside of the synagogue and stepping out of this context to which I have become accustomed was a little disorienting but it was a great way to reflect upon my role here and how privileged I am to play it.

This week, I was asked to deliver the invocations at the baccalaureate services for Freeman High School and for the Governor's School. Both services were held in churches, but in some ways, it was kind of similar to being here. Well, it was similar and at the same time it was different. Along with the other clergy, I was honored to sit at the front of the church, facing the graduates, their friends and their families who had assembled there. Just like being here, it was great to be able to watch their faces and see the pride and gratitude and relief and excitement which were so clearly projected forward. But of course it was different too. I wasn't looking into faces I knew. I couldn't look straight ahead to see the Ipsons or the Browns. The Governor's School baccalaureate was held in a Catholic church, so while I'm used speaking on Shabbat mornings with the supportive presence of Milton Rubin behind me and to my left. I knew that if I turned around there, instead of seeing Milton, I would see a large representation of the crucifixion. That was a one of the big differences. But of course, the main difference was that I was being asked to represent the wisdom and the honesty and the holiness of the Jewish tradition to an assembly of people who were not Jewish and I was being asked to do it in three minutes or less.

I wasn't so familiar with baccalaureate services before I moved to Richmond, and the idea of a religious service to mark the graduation from a public high school gave me pause, but what an honor to address the students at that auspicious moment, the evening before their graduation from high school. Any doubts about the propriety of these optional services which might have entered the churches with me dissipated as the evenings unfolded. The baccalaureate services truly were ecumenical gatherings dedicated to defining the spiritual dimension of the transitions taking place. Perhaps not to the degree that it is true at a wedding, but the different groups who entered the churches, the parents, the classmates, the teachers and administrators each brought their own profound thoughts and emotions with them. The gatherings were inherently replete with meaning before the first chord was played on the organ, and before the first speakers stepped up to the microphone. We were there, the priests, the ministers and the rabbi, to help everyone assembled look to their religious traditions in order to shape and define that meaning.

Just like most of you, I remember those exciting and precarious days in my own life. Of course, the way I remember it, I was much older when I was that age, but watching the graduates telegraph their excitement, their nervousness, their desire to jump into the next stage of life balanced against their hesitance to leave the comfort and love of their families and the camaraderie of their friends was incredible. Of course, when I was going through that I didn't appreciate how protected I had been and I had no idea what the coming years would bring. Not only were thoughts of law school and rabbinic school years away, but when I graduated from high school in suburban Detroit, I had no idea even what college would be like. I chose my college based on one-page descriptions in the different college guides and a single afternoon visit. And after college? I can't even imagine what my response would have been if someone had told me that 18 years later I would find myself serving as Conservative rabbi in the Capital of the Confederacy.

Something that I don't remember as well from my own life is the experience that my parents must have gone through, but sitting there at the baccalaureates, with the sea of parental faces just behind all of the robed seniors, the conflicts that my parents must have felt were communicated equally clearly. The faces looking towards me projected a struggle in which the happiness and the pride at watching a child finish high school and prepare for college contended with the anxiety of separation, the impending loss of a constant presence in the home, and the inevitable diminution in their ability offer their children the protection and guidance that had become second nature after eighteen years of parenthood.

So, there I was, on two different evenings at two different ceremonies. The student speeches at Freeman were articulate in their execution and striking in their optimism and sincerity. No students spoke at the Governor's School, but student vocal ensemble was absolutely energizing. The sentiments from the speakers and the parents in both settings was touching. And I would never have been there to witness and participate in this outpouring of hope and love had I not been a rabbi.

Nevertheless, being a rabbi in front of a community of non-Jews is an interesting experience. There is a theme throughout practically all of Jewish history of the "Jew as the Outsider." I might not have understood that before Tuesday night, but as I sat at the front of the church for the Freeman baccalaureate, along with an Episcopal priest and a Lutheran Minister, both of whom had grown up in Richmond, one of whom had even graduated from Freeman, and both of whom could look out into the pews and pick out their own parishioners, this Midwestern Yankee rabbi, who comes to Virginia via the West Coast and who couldn't discern a single familiar face out of the hundreds that had gathered, felt very much the outsider.

But the job of a rabbi is to translate the wisdom and truth of our tradition to those who seek it, whether or not those who seek it are naturally endowed with a proper appreciation for a kosher pastrami, cole slaw and Russian dressing sandwich between two slices of real delicatessen rye bread, whether or not they feel an affinity to the borsht belt humor of Mel Brooks and, most importantly, whether or not they are party to the covenant between God and the Jewish people. So, with my task clearly in mind, I set out to select the Jewish texts that could be presented in three minutes and which would best capture the holy element of these very charged moments for these very diverse assemblies.

I looked through this week's parsha, and as always, there was a lot of good material in there. This week we're reading from Parshat Naso in the book of B'Midbar or Numbers. In the first part of the Torah portion, God demands a census of the priests and the different families within the tribe are assigned to different roles in the care and the transportation of the mishkan (the portable tabernacle that the people of Israel took with them during their wanderings in the desert.) I found one rabbi who talked about the way that an individual's identity was defined by his or her devotion to difficult and sacred work. I liked the sentiment of encouraging hard work for a worthwhile purpose, but it seemed too severe to deliver to a collection of eighteen year olds who were about to start their last summer vacation before college.

There is also a passage in this week's Torah portion that discusses the guilt offerings that may be brought to reconcile misdeeds that are performed by one person towards another. These transgressions are treated differently than transgressions that a person might perform against God. Ideally, when one person harms another, the wrongdoer is told to make restitution plus twenty per cent to the person who has been injured. If it is not possible do so because the offended party is no longer alive and has no heirs, the Jew is instructed to pay the same restitution to the priests. But then there is a strange sentence that says after the offering has been made to the priest, each person shall retain his sacred offering. The rabbis explain this strange sentence by explaining that the person retains the sacrifice by the very act of offering it and that we never truly own anything until we have given it to charity. Before that time it can always be taken away. Afterwards, the mitzvah of having given tzedakah can never be diminished.

I thought about using this teaching to urge the young men and women before me to measure their value according to what they had given to others, and to pursue lives of service, but I didn't think that I could do justice to that message in three minutes.

Finally, this parsha contains the three fold priestly blessing, May the Lord Bless you and protect you. May God deal kindly and graciously with you. And May the Lord bestow his favor on you and grant you peace. I liked that one. But it seemed somehow inappropriate to use for the beginning of a service. There's something so final about it. It turns out that it's a good thing that I didn't use that one because both the Lutheran minister and the Episcopal priest arrived at the church with those verses in their own addresses.

There are also other great moments and great teachings in this parsha as there are every parsha, but when I finally decided to address the moment of a baccalaureate service, and not worry about sticking to this week's Torah reading, my path became clear. These students were standing on the near side of a boundary and gazing across into the future, unable to ascertain what would be on the other side. As a Jewish people we have been there. For the graduates of the Governor's School, I told them that the book of Deuteronomy tells us about the moment when Moshe stood at the bank of the Jordan and implored God to allow him to cross into the land of Israel and to see it. The rabbis ask why Moshe wants to both enter the land and also to see it. The Kotsker Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotsk, answers that when one is personally involved in an experience, it often requires a special prayer for the ability to see the inherent goodness and truth of the situation. I therefore offered a prayer that as they entered into their new, post high-school surroundings that they would retain the vision to see the truth and holiness around them and, playing on the comparison to Moshe, I prayed that they would lead the rest of us into a better land.

For the graduating class at Freeman, I invoked another teaching of the Kotsker Rebbe.. My invocation at Freeman went slightly better than the one at the Governor's School, but both times I was honored to have been included, I was gratified to be able to offer a Jewish voice in that very special moment I once again renewed my decision not to take the Virginia Bar Exam.

Shabbat Shalom.