When Being a Rabbi Is the Family Business

I am part of a horizontal rabbinic dynasty.

Some trace their rabbinic yichus back for generations; I trace mine across the previous generation, and across my own. We have a perfect score. There are five adults in my parents’ generation who live in America (an aunt and uncle—also educators—made aliyah in the 1970s), and of them, my father is a rabbi; my two uncles are rabbis; my mother is a Bible teacher; and my aunt is a Jewish-studies professor who taught rabbis-in-training for decades.

I have a brother and two first cousins in America. One is a rabbi, and two teach in Jewish day schools. I married a Jewish educator (whose only sibling is a rabbi).

Let’s just say we have never celebrated High Holidays together as an extended family.

Some of us tried to escape this path. My brother worked at MTV for 10 years before the tractor beam pulled him in. My cousin was in publishing before teaching Hebrew in Philadelphia. I was a journalist, banker, and investigator. When I spent two years at Morgan Stanley, I wasn’t met with disapproval from my family so much as bewilderment: Why would anyone follow a career that could lead to riches or secular success?

When I was younger, I was more freaked out about our “family business.” But now, being a member of it for a decade, I have come to appreciate it. Need a quick citation or idea for a sermon? Just email the family list! Doing your first funeral? Get help on speed-dial! Home for the holidays? It is not considered nerdy to learn Torah during dessert! It took me years to realize that other Passover seders don’t feature pre-printed cards with discussion questions under the plates.

But what I most appreciate about my family is that they are down to earth around the role and title. There isn’t a lot of bragging or ego, especially when everyone else is in the same profession; we know the grind too well. We are a group of rabbinic entrepreneurs: my parents started a day school; my uncle started a synagogue and a conversion center; my other uncle started innovative programming for high-schoolers at various synagogues. My brother is a YouTube Jewish prayer star. But when we get together, we just try to be normal, even though there is a lot under the surface for all of us.

I once got a ride to the train station in Providence from a congregant of my dad’s. He told me that although we had never met, he was honored to drive me, simply because of the impact my dad had on him. Apparently, when his father was dying, my dad visited him regularly, and held the family through the crisis of loss. This had happened more than a decade earlier, but he had unending gratitude. Of course, my dad had never mentioned this to me (not even when he knew who was giving me a ride). You think you know your parents, but it was then I realized I will never fully know the true impact of a rabbinic life, even from a rabbi I am closely related to.

See previous installments in this series here, here, here, and here.