“The rabbinate will become a healthier profession when…rabbis are able to become full-fledged human beings once again”

It’s time to pull your rabbi down from the pedestal. The rabbinate will become a healthier profession when we smash the pedestals like Terach’s idols and rabbis are able to become full-fledged human beings once again.

People are endlessly curious about rabbis, and as society has become increasingly secular, this one particular profession has maintained its sense of mystery. Compounding the problem is that some of us begin to believe our press clippings and forget the reasons we got into the rabbinate in the first place. While it drives very few of us to a life of crime, it drives many more to lives of isolation and misery. And when we fail, we begin to believe that an admission of fallibility will compromise our ability to lead. We get caught up in a whirlwind of inflated expectation and denial. We need to become human beings once again.

Joshua Hammerman, “The Death of Trust”, The Jewish Week (7 November 2014), 28.