“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Oliver’s probing question, in a poem gifted to me by a supervisor one year on my birthday, pushed me to apply to rabbinical school. What Oliver doesn’t ask is “why?” This question can animate our values and sense of purpose, helping us determine how to live our wild and precious life, in the best moments and the discouraging ones.
Sitting with my first B’nai Mitzvah student at our initial meeting, I thought long and hard about how I wanted to begin our session. “Anna, so, when you’re really honest with yourself, why are you doing this? What’s motivating you to become a Bat Mitzvah? No judgment.”
She responded with a quizzical look and a question, “What are you, a psychologist?!” We had a good laugh and eventually did delve into what was motivating her. A party, love for her grandparents, wanting to feel proud of herself for accomplishing something challenging. Her personal story and closely held values were nestled in there- family, joy and integrity. Over the course of those 6 months, I held up her purpose statement and her values whenever she got frustrated or overwhelmed, helping her reconnect with herself and reflect on her goals. Even with this mission at center we were flexible and discovered new personal values along the way. We got meaningfully distracted by the nuances of the story in her Torah portion, as her passion for literature shone through and we literally danced our way through learning the Torah trope. Her sense of purpose, readily revisited and yet constantly evolving, brought her to the bima. This is Jewish adulthood to me, a joyous journey of growth and reflection, questioning and depth, with a set of evolving values at the center.
I saw this lived fully during my 4 year tenure at Avodah: The Jewish Service Corp. Our audacious goal was ending poverty. Our means to this end was cultivating community amongst young Jewish activists who sought sustainable, intentional, joyous lives amidst their work. They witnessed humanity at both its best (in the resilience of clients and colleagues) and its worst (in broken social service systems with children many times caught in the middle). They navigated this roller coaster Jewishly, through texts, rituals and the caring community they fostered at their home, a Bayit. On its best days, it reminded me of the consensus-driven, intentional Havurah in which I was raised. Both were communities trying to figure out how to live their wild and precious lives in tandem with the world’s beauty and in response to its brokenness.
Through these experiences, I clarified what I bring to my work and the questions I hope to hold up as a rabbi - what is our purpose and are we living it? How does our vision for ourselves match up with reality? What can we do to close the gap between those two things, all the while living with the inevitable difference between vision and reality that is inherent in our human finitude?
We join with souls - past, present and future - who are committed to elusive, eternal values, who defy, but do not deny a world that is more in pieces than at peace. We create moments of celebration, and reflection, where we can be fully aware of the gaps in our reality and inspired all the same.
I was once a student rabbi in a small Jewish community in Appalachia where the numbers shrink year after year. In the chill of winter, a Jewish doctor randomly in town for his fellowship at a small local hospital, had his first child. Somehow, we were put in touch. He’d been disconnected from Jewish life for a while, but I asked if he’d like to celebrate this moment and have a baby naming at the Temple. As a rabbi, I seek to be with families in these holiest moments of their lives - the highs and the lows. I regard this witnessing as the greatest privilege rabbis are gifted, and it is our duty to honor the complexity of each and every one.
We picked a Hebrew name for his daughter and talked about what defined his values as a parent, what mattered most to him. His beautiful blended family, including step-children and his Brazilian wife who grew up Catholic, all gathered on the bima under a tallit, to reaffirm and speak aloud the commitments they’d made long ago to one another, to live lives of love, purpose and meaning. They then extended those commitments to a new generation, as Jews have done for hundreds of years.
In this moment, the congregation celebrated its first baby naming on the bima in decades, embraced the first interfaith couple to do so, and, likely marked the last Jewish covenant ritual there for a long long time. None of them knew this man. Yet in that moment, they were in intimate connection wholly unlike what we can usually attain in our current social context. An entire community re-clarified and recommitted to live its values, felt less alone and revealed the light that exists even in the dark of winter. To me, this is what Judaism offers humanity. I believe in a Judaism that is simultaneously countercultural and situated in its contemporary context - all the while responding to unmet needs in society.
I experienced my own mix of light and darkness in 2011. I was pregnant with my first child and at the same time my curious, loving, life-of-the-party mother was dying of breast cancer. I grappled with my own purpose and my own possibilities. Mary Oliver’s poem was framed on my desk, staring me down. Judaism taught me to mark moments as transformative rather than just letting them pass by. So pregnant with possibility and a child, I took the GREs. And with a super helpful one-month-old baby on my lap, I completed my application for rabbinical school.
Whether I am naming a baby, teaching adults how to question their assumptions about Torah, facilitating mindfulness workshops at a homeless shelter, or, creating new family worship experiences, I have learned that it is in these varied contexts that I can be my most natural and organic self. I love to welcome, question, teach, comfort and curate Torah, whether it is the Torah of our Jewish canon, or the Torah of our hearts.
Humans will perennially struggle in their own way with the meaning, wonder and purpose of life, perhaps even asking at times, “why are we doing this?,” as I asked my student that first day as a tutor. This is still the same question I ask myself on the eve of becoming a Rabbi. Why am I here and what is the purpose of my life? Judaism offers compelling responses, if not complete answers, to these difficult questions at the core of living. Judaism insists that we wrestle with both the questions and the answers.
Amidst the wrestling, we seek the awe and joy of a transformative moment. I wish to curate both the awe and the wrestling. This is what I will do with my one wild and precious life.
In every HUC class, my first order of business was finding a chevruta, a learning partner and truly, a teacher. In this process, I seek the same. A learning partner, or team from whom to learn and with which to grow. Even though rabbinical school is nearly over I still seek chevruta even now - lay leaders, mentors and colleagues who will collaborate with me in the awe and the wrestling.