Rabbi for a Decade, Macklemore and Jonah Pesner

Today marks my first decade of being a rabbi. Rather than wax nostalgic about the past ten years of my rabbinate in which I still had my rabbi training wheels on, I'd rather use that significant day in my life to comment on two events in the news this week.

First, Jonah Pesner, a Reform rabbi, traveled to London to be a guest of honor at the Liberal Judaism biennial there. What happened to him at the airport, however, is something that has happened to many non-Orthodox rabbis in the past. The Jewish Chronicle reported yesterday that after Rabbi Pesner told an immigration officer at the airport that he is a rabbi, she looked at Rabbi Pesner and remarked, "You don't look like a rabbi." Perhaps, this comment could just be written off as ignorance, but comments like that are too problematic to just ignore.

Jewish Theological Seminary Rabbinical School/Cantorial School Class of 2004

It would be highly offensive if I looked at a female police officer (or a female airport immigration officer for that matter) and said, "You don't look like a police officer" because she's not a man. The comment made to Rabbi Pesner was made because he is clean-shaven and doesn't wear a black hat. What's interesting is that there are thousands of clean-shaven, non-black-hat-wearing rabbis in this world. In fact, the majority of rabbis represented in movies and on television are non-Orthodox rabbis. Look above at the photo of my classmates at the Jewish Theological Seminary. These are rabbis and cantors who graduated on May 20, 2004. While these men and women don't look like the stereotypical rabbi, we are the leaders of the Jewish community today.

Before making her offensive comment to Rabbi Pesner, the female immigration officer at London's Heathrow Airport should have considered that she doesn't have the traditional look of a law enforcement officer. Rather than make a snide remark to Rabbi Pesner, she could have engaged him in a conversation by explaining that the image of a rabbi that she has in her mind is a different representation than how he looks.

And that brings me to Macklemore. I'm a fan of Ben Haggerty's rap music. Better known by his stage name "Macklemore," the 30-year-old has gained fame in the past couple of years for his chart topping songs. In the past, I've praised Macklemore for his gutsy song "Same Love" that advocates for gays and lesbians, and is the first prominent rap song to condemn homophobia in hip-hop and in pop culture in general. This past January I was a guest at a private concert in Las Vegas featuring Macklemore and Ryan Lewis where I was very impressed with Macklemore's performance, humor and stage presence (after his first song of the show, Macklemore looked out at all the cellphone cameras pointed at him and commented that he hadn't seen that many cellphone cameras at a concert since the bat mitzvah he performed at the week before).

Macklemore wearing an anti-Semitic Jewish costume at concert in Seattle

Role of the 21st Century Rabbi

A recent editorial in The Forward demonstrates how much the American rabbinate has changed in the 21st century. The economy has made it difficult for many rabbis to find good jobs; and for them to keep good jobs when the synagogue or organization falls on tough financial times. A reduction in the number of congregations due to closures and mergers has also caused a dearth of desirable positions for rabbis in the U.S. and Canada. But there are other factors involved as well. New rabbinical schools (Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Ziegler at the American Jewish University, Hebrew College, and the Academy for Jewish Religion) have cropped up in the past fifteen years increasing the number of new rabbis looking for work. The Internet has also made it much easier for the laity to learn synagogue skills -- life-cycle officiation, prayer leading, and teaching -- that may ultimately reduce the need for a rabbi, although I don't believe that to be the case.

As the Forward editorial makes clear, "the role of rabbi is being challenged as never before." Some sociologists like Prof. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University predicted precisely such a change in the American rabbinate based on shifting demographics and the needs of the community. However, I don't see this as a crisis in American Jewry. Rather, I find this to be an interesting opportunity for rabbis to become more entrepreneurial -- both as a way to be necessary and to make a significant contribution to our people. Rabbis who see this as a chance to reinvent their rabbinate will ultimately be the most successful in the new era of Jewish life. And that holds true not only for American rabbis, but for rabbis throughout the Jewish world who have the entrepreneurial spirit.

Yom Kippur at Occupy Wall Street

Yesterday, hundreds of young Jews were on a 25-hour hunger strike at Occupy Wall Street. Okay, so it was actually a Yom Kippur fast.

Kol Nidre on Wall Street (photo: Damon Dahlen / AOL)

What was so meaningful about Friday night's "Occupy Wall Street" Kol Nidrei services in front of Brown Brothers Harriman on Broadway at Liberty Plaza was how it stood in stark contrast to an earlier episode at Occupy Wall Street. Daniel Sieradski explained on his blog that two individuals (he didn't use "individuals") "were caught on video at Occupy Wall Street saying profoundly awful, stupid things about Jews, one of whom was consistently heckled and challenged by those around him." Contrast that act of anti-Semitism to Friday night's Kol Nidrei service across from Zuccotti Park attended by approximately 1,000 people. It was in the same place where the anti-Semitic comments were made days earlier.

The Rabbinical Assembly, of which I'm a member, donated machzorim (High Holiday prayerbooks) for the prayer service. It was led by Avi Fox Rosen (Storahtelling), Sarah Wolf (JTS), and Getzel Davis (Hebrew College), who are being assisted in preparations by Yosef Goldman (JTS) and Rabbi Ezra Weinberg (RRC).

Sieradski correctly complains that more media attention is being paid to the anti-Semitic comments than to the beautiful Yom Kippur prayer experience that took place in the same area. The young Jewish people who attended Kol Nidrei at Occupy Wall Street have been describing it as the most meaningful Jewish experience of their lives.

Here's video footage from the Kol Nidrei service at Occupy Wall Street:

In his announcement of the Kol Nidrei service, Daniel Sieradski posted the following:

“Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.”
--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

This Friday night begins Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. On this day, Jews around the world refrain from all physical pleasures (eating, bathing and screwing, to name a few), and devote themselves to prayer and supplication, begging the Lord forgiveness of their sins so that they may be written into the Book of Life.

But is fasting and beating our chests really the best we can do to redeem ourselves?

As lower Manhattan erupts with thousands of protesters taking a stand against economic injustice, the words of the prophet Isaiah resonate more truthfully and appropriately than ever:

Is such the fast that I have chosen? the day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the fetters of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy healing shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee, the glory of the LORD shall be thy reward.

Thus rather than spending the holiday safe and warm in our cozy synagogues thinking abstractly about human suffering, perhaps we should truly afflict ourselves and undertake the fast of Isaiah, by joining the demonstrators in Zuccotti Park, and holding our Yom Kippur services there amongst the oppressed, hungry, poor and naked.

Not to be cliché, but as Rabbi Hillel the Elder said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?”

Kol Hakavod to all those who organized this so that the Occupy Wall Street participants would still be able to observe Yom Kippur. 

Warren Buffett's Rabbi Myer Kripke

Giving tours of the Jewish Theological Seminary campus in New York City to visiting groups was certainly one of the highlights of my six years of rabbinical school. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving during my first year at JTS I attended a training session led by the director of donor relations Rebecca Jacobs. Rebecca shared the story of how the Seminary's library tower caught fire on April 18, 1966 damaging thousands of books and how thirty years later a JTS-ordained pulpit rabbi named Myer Kripke from Omaha donated the funds to renovate that same tower.

Rabbi Myer Kripke

I gave over 200 tours of the Seminary, but I never grew tired of telling the story of how a humble rabbi from the south amassed a fortune big enough to make a $7 million cash donation to name the new Seminary tower. The story is that this rabbi's wife, Dorothy Kripke, wrote a series of children's books entitled "Let's Talk About..." and another Omaha woman loved to read these books to her children. When she found out that the author lived close by she decided she had to meet her. Well, as fate would have it, this woman and her husband became dear friends of Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke. This woman's husband even offered to invest the small inheritance left to Mrs. Kripke. That investment paid off big because it was invested by Warren Buffett, the second wealthiest American according to Forbes magazine.

I'll never forget the time I asked a group of school children if they knew how Rabbi Kripke became a millionaire. One of the little girls offered, "Maybe he gave really good sermons?"

Here's a JTA article about Warren Buffett who recently invested $4 billion in an Israeli company:

Long before Israeli deal, Buffett made his mark on Jewish community
By Chanan Tigay

Warren Buffett is not a Jew, and in fact describes himself as an agnostic. Still, the billionaire investment guru, who earlier this month made big news when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in Israeli metalworks conglomerate Iscar for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish community back home — though sometimes in a roundabout way.
“Proportionally, if you look at the number of Jews in this country and in the world, I’m associated with a hugely disproportionate number,” Buffett, the second richest man in the world, told JTA in a telephone interview Monday.
Among the first companies Buffett acquired after launching Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based investment and insurance giant, was The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, then owned by Stan Lipsey, one-time chairman of The Jewish Press, Omaha’s Jewish newspaper.
“At the time, the Omaha Club did not take Jewish members, and the Highland Country Club, a golf club, didn’t have any gentile members,” Lipsey recalls. “Warren volunteered to join the Highland” — rather than the gentile club — “to set an example of non-discrimination.”
Buffett happily recalls the fallout from his application.
“It created this big rhubarb,” he says. “All of the rabbis appeared on my behalf, the ADL guy appeared on my behalf. Finally they voted to let me in.”
But that wasn’t the end of the story, Buffett tells JTA. The Highland had a rule requiring members to donate a certain amount of money to their synagogues. Buffett, of course, wasn’t a synagogue member, so the club changed its policy: Members now would be expected to give to their synagogues, temples or churches.
But that still didn’t quite work, Buffett recalls with a laugh, because of his agnosticism.
In the end, the rule was amended to ask simply that members make some sort of charitable donation, and the path to Buffet’s membership was clear.
“He’s an incredible guy,” says Lipsey, today the publisher of the Buffalo News. In 1973, The Sun won a Pulitzer prize in Local Investigative Specialized Reporting for an expose on financial impropriety at Boys Town, Nebraska.
“Warren came up with the key source for us knowing what was going on out there,” Lipsey says.
Buffett himself researched Boys Town’s stocks to bolster the story, Lipsey adds.
In the 1960s, Omaha Rabbi Myer Kripke decided to invest in his friend Buffett’s new business venture. Their wives had become friendly, he says, and the foursome enjoyed playing the occasional game of bridge together.
“My wife had no card sense and I was certainly no competition to Warren, who is a very good bridge player and a lover of the game,” Kripke, rabbi emeritus of Omaha’s Conservative Beth El Synagogue, told JTA. “He’s very bright and very personable and very decent. He is a rich man who is as clean as can be.”
Kripke, father of the noted philosopher Saul Kripke, bought a few shares in Berkshire Hathaway and quickly sold them, doubling his money, he says.
Recognizing a good thing when he saw it, he bought a bunch more shares in his friend’s company, shares that by the 1990s had made Kripke — who says he never earned more than $30,000 a year as a rabbi — a millionaire.
Kripke met his late wife, the children’s book author Dorothy Kripke, at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, the flagship institution of the Conservative movement, where Kripke was ordained as a rabbi in 1937.
In 1996, flush from their prescient investment with Buffet’s company, the couple decided to make a major gift to JTS — $7 million in cash to restore the building’s damaged tower, and a deferred gift of some $8 million, which the seminary will receive after Kripke passes away.
“Rabbi Kripke had the heart to make a donation to JTS, he had the will to make a donation, he had the desire to make a donation — but if he had not had the means to make a donation, the recreation of our tower would never have happened,” says Rabbi Carol Davidson, the seminary’s vice chancellor for institutional advancement. “It was really only possible because of their prior investment many years ago with Warren Buffett.”
Kripke — who says he’s still got a picture of Buffett’s late wife, Susan, on his bulletin board — concurs. Asked if he credits Buffett with his financial success, he doesn’t hesitate.
“Entirely, yes,” he says. “I never had much of an income.”
The Israeli government stands to reap about $1 billion in taxes on Buffett’s purchase of Iscar. Shortly after announcing the deal, Buffett says he was surprised to learn that a Berkshire subsidiary, CTB International, was purchasing a controlling interest in another Israeli company, AgroLogic.
In Israel — which Buffett plans to visit in the fall — the hope is that the deals will have longer legs: Buffett himself has not ruled out future purchases there and, considering his status as a leading investor, observers say others also may take a look at Israeli companies now that Buffett has done so.
“You won’t find in the world a better-run operation than Iscar,” Buffett says. “I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s run by Israelis.”
The Sun newspaper group was not Buffett’s only early purchase of a Jewish-owned company. In 1983, sealing the deal with a handshake, Buffett bought 90 percent of the Nebraska Furniture Mart from Rose Blumkin, a Russian-born Jew who moved to the United States in 1917.
In 1989, he purchased a majority of the stock in Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a phenomenally successful jewelry store, from the Friedman family.
“He has many friends in the Jewish community,” says Forrest Krutter, secretary of Berkshire Hathaway and a former president of the Jewish Federation of Omaha.
Buffett’s former son-in-law, Allen Greenberg, is a Jew, and now runs the Buffett Foundation, much of whose work has dealt with reproductive rights and family-planning issues. Buffett’s personal assistant is Ian Jacobs, who goes by his Hebrew name, Shami.
Buffett himself counts the late Nebraska businessman Nick Newman and philanthropist Jack Skirball as among his “very closest friends.”
“He is very much honored in the Jewish community,” Kripke says.