My Passion in Life as a Rabbi

The celebration was a total surprise to me and my wife Sue.

During Oneg Shabbat (lunch after the morning Sabbath service), Josh, one of our Ruach Israel teens got up, and pretending to be me, asked the entire congregation to please finish eating and to move back into the sanctuary. There was to be a" special program" about which he and others seemed to anticipate. It took a few more minutes for us to catch on.

The program was a celebration, kept under wraps for months, for our 30 years of service to the synagogue. There were special songs written for the occasion, a nice gift, a giant card, a special dance, benign fun-poking at the rabbi and heart-warming expressions of gratitude. Sue and I came away with this overarching sense: "Congregational leadership since 1981 had been challenging in many ways, but overall, fabulously worth the effort. What terrific people! How kind and thoughtful they are!"

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My rabbinic journey technically begins in Budapest, Hungary, the place of my birth. Since my grandfather ran a kosher butcher shop, perhaps it wasn't so surprising-but then again maybe it was-that my mother became Budapest's first licensed woman butcher. My father's family tended towards being Orthodox and later became even more so. There, in Budapest, my parents miraculously survived the Holocaust, with Raoul Wallenberg playing a significant part of that story. Interestingly, for the first several years of its existence the US Holocaust Museum would give out my mother's "story" as one of those it distributed to visitors to the Museum.

After the war, as the Iron Curtain of Soviet Communist rule was descending throughout Europe, including Hungary, my parents (along with my sister and me) made another supernatural escape. This time they landed on the shores of the United States even though we were ticketed for Paraguay. Through another series of small miracles-including an act of Congress-we were eventually allowed to remain here and became US citizens.

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I am often asked what I love most about being a rabbi. The answer is people. As a rabbi, we get to be involved in some of the most intimate and exciting aspects of people's lives - Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, weddings, and other joyous simchas. However, that also means we are there for the most difficult part of people's lives, as well - funerals, sickness, the death of a loved one, unemployment; and the list goes on.

Our tradition emphasizes the role of community. The Talmud states "Kol Yisrael arevim ze ba'ze - All Jews are responsible for one another (b. Shavuot 39a)." This means you cannot be Jewish by yourself. The need for, and care of, one another is built into our tradition. The importance of relationships and how we treat others is even further stressed by our Messiah.

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Recently, I had the privilege of officiating in the same week at a wedding and a Bat Mitzvah.  A few weeks later our junior congregation led our Shabbat services for the first time ever.   As I reflect on these occasions I am vividly reminded of why I love being a rabbi.

Many years ago when I became a believer in Messiah Yeshua, (I was already in my thirties) I never envisioned myself as a rabbi.  Instead I thought it would be nice to have a congregation to belong to and support in whatever ways I could, but the prospect of leading such a congregation never entered my thinking.   What I soon discovered was, that in order to have what we desire and need as a community, often requires those who are willing to do the leading.  Stated another way, if we want to have a vibrant Messianic Jewish community, some must have the calling and training to envision and build it.   So I am grateful, first to HaShem for placing the calling on me, and secondly to the people, rabbis before me, who helped to educate and train me for the task of being a congregational rabbi.

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My passion in life is to serve the Lord.  When the Lord called me into ministry in 1986, the last thing in the world I considered was being a rabbi.  At the time I was not involved in Messianic Judaism, but God had been leading me for some time to explore my Jewish heritage.  (I, like so many others, had effectively relinquished my Jewish identity to become a believer.)  On a business trip to San Francisco, I decided to stop in to visit with Jews for Jesus.  I met with Moshe Rosen and Mitch Glazer about my calling to the ministry. They challenged me to consider some seminary training prior to entering the ministry.  When I returned to the Washington, DC area, I discovered a Messianic Jewish seminary in my backyard.  My enrollment began a process leading to becoming a rabbi and placement in a fledgling congregation in Richmond, Virginia, Tikvat Israel.

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