I’d like to be a Rabbi. Whenever I tell someone this, I usually get a “that’s pretty cool!” but no one ever wants to know why. It’s so easy to assume that when someone states they want to become a religious leader, it’s because they’re doing it for a higher power. Well, yeah, that’s true, but what else would drive someone to become a Rabbi, or any other spiritual leader? It takes a whole lot of work and money and time to prepare for such a job, and maybe this is just me, but I have to have more then one reason why I would want to dedicate so much to a profession.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to be when I grow up. I’m in a program called “dual enrollment” which is basically where I’m enrolled in high school and college at the same time. I go to a local community college and I take all of my classes there, which earns me high school and college credit at the same time. I’m hoping to have my A.A. by the time I graduate high school, and that means I kind of need to have a little bit of an idea of what I’d like to do with my life. I started to do a bit of soul searching (but isn’t that what your teens through early 20’s is all about?) and I’ve come to a few conclusions about myself, one of which is that out of the three things that I can see myself doing (psychologist, english professor, or rabbi), a rabbi seems to stick out the most.
I say this because since I’ve started my “Jewish Journey”, my life has become all about my faith and finding myself within it. I’ve read all the books I’ve come across, started a Jewish blog on here and on my own site, I’ve gone to many different shul’s and I’ve met many different awesome Jews. I’ve joined BBYO, I’m starting to help set up programs within my BBYO chapter such as Israeli Advocacy, and I’ve taken to praying every single day. I’m trying to work on doing a new mitzvot every time I get comfortable doing the one before. I’ve talked to many people about there faith and it’s made me start asking myself what brings me so close to mine. I’ve started questioning what makes me a Jew and what I do to define myself as one.
I have this yearning to make Judaism apart of everything I do. Maybe it’s because of my own personal mantra-“Every moment you live is a moment in G-d’s name” that makes me feel this way. And it’s true, Hashem has blessed me with life, the greatest gift of all, and then to make the gift even sweeter, he’s blessed me with so many (good and bad, but the bad only makes the good that much sweeter) opportunities, people, and memories. I want to spend every second living my life in his name, and what better way to do that then to be a rabbi? And I know what you’re thinking, “well, Kristin, you can live your life in his name but still have a different job!” but it’s so much more than that. If I were a rabbi, I would get to spend my life sharing the joy of Hashem with other people. I would get to spend a lot of time in one of my favorite places, shul, reading what I love to read, his word and the prayers that praise Hashem and his Yisrael. I could help people find their Jewish path, like so many people have helped me, and I could spend so much time with others reveling in the Torah and what, exactly, did “this” or “that” scripture mean? It would be about getting to wake up in the morning, thinking about what the message I’d like to bring to shul that week so that others could connect the prayers and weekly torah portion to their daily life. It would be all those impromptu visits and phone calls others would make to me so that I could help them or guide them or simply just listening to their problems. It would be all the lives I would be involved in, all the services I would get to lead (along with the cantor of course), and that undeniable, amazing feeling that comes with being a person of G-d. And of course, it would be a time-consuming decision, one that would be filled with possibly just as much bad as good, but the good and the bad are what makes everything worth doing!
I feel so strongly about it, that this is truly what I was meant to do with my life. I’ve walked through life this long feeling empty and without meaning, but that I was here to fulfill a purpose, then here it is, the reason I feel is for my being, and I’m wondering why I didn’t see it here all along.
But like the saying goes, we make plans and G-d laughs. May Hashem bless me and all of you and guide us on the path that he feels is right. May he bless us with good times to revel in, and bad so that we may learn to appreciate the good. May he give us his guiding hand so as to lead us on the path that will bring us closer to him. And may he reside within our hearts and souls always, so that we need to look no further than the inside of ourselves to find him.
Baruch shem kavod malchuto le’olam va’ed! (Blessed be his glorious Name whose Kingdom is forever and ever)
Ahavah Olam (Eternal Love),
Kristin the Jewbie
PS From Patrick Aleph: the first woman to be ordained in Germany since WWII!