{"id":32969,"date":"2025-04-16T08:01:21","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32969"},"modified":"2025-05-21T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T14:11:13","slug":"i-used-to-be-a-rabbi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/16\/i-used-to-be-a-rabbi\/","title":{"rendered":"I USED TO BE A RABBI"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI wasn\u2019t always this religious. I used to be more <\/em>religious. I first started going to shul regularly right after college. I was a paralegal at the time. I thought I was going to go to law school. I worked at this firm called O\u2019Connor, Joseph and Welch. I got my birthday off (St. Patrick\u2019s Day) because of O\u2019Connor, and Mr. Joseph didn\u2019t mind I wanted two days off for Passover. One night, in the office after-hours, I decided to answer an incoming call, trying to be helpful. I said, \u201cO\u2019Connor, Joseph.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phone caller said, \u201cDo you know who I am? I\u2019m Welch and I hate it when people answer the phone \u2018O\u2019Connor, Joseph’!\u201d<\/p>\n

I said, \u201cDo you know who I am?”<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Good.” I hung up and quit. Screw lawyers and their big egos. I enrolled in a non-denominational rabbinical school in Boston. I learned Hebrew; I studied Talmud; I spent a year in Israel; and all that time I was playing clarinet and saxophone. People started calling me “the jazz rabbi.” Fact: there\u2019s an actual “jazz rabbi,” Greg Wall, who lives in Connecticut and is 10-times better than me on horns. Make that 100-times.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I eventually got a job at a Jewish nursing-home complex in Cleveland. I led services, played some jazz standards and “Hava Nagila,” and did some grief counseling. But the job wasn’t that satisfying. I wanted to engage in deeper \u201cshrink”-style counseling. I wanted to meet up with Jews-on-the-go behind closed doors and hear all their secrets. I wanted to discuss high-stress moments: birth, life, marriage, divorce, death, tennis. (I play tennis with a rabbi. The guy kicks my ass.)<\/p>\n

I never did become a pulpit rabbi. I applied for six synagogue jobs and got one half-baked offer — not a real pulpit. The Hillel in Norman, Oklahoma. I didn\u2019t want to hang out with kids.<\/p>\n

I got no decent job offers because I had too much hate in me, and that, no doubt, came across in my job interviews. For one thing, I was obsessed with Nazis at the time and wanted to stomp them. (I was about 35 years too late.) My hero was Abba Kovner, the Vilna ghetto fighter. I even attended — almost daily — the Demjanjuk trial in Cleveland, and that guy wasn’t even a Nazi, just an adjunct.<\/p>\n

I went into real estate. That, as it turned out, was a perfect fit.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

fiction<\/em><\/p>\n

The “O’Connor, Joseph” anecdote comes from an actual rabbi, Joshua Skoff.<\/p>\n

[illustration by Ralph Solonitz]<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I wasn\u2019t always this religious. I used to be more religious. I first started going to shul regularly right after college. I was a paralegal at the time. I thought I was going to go to law school. I worked at this firm called O\u2019Connor, Joseph and Welch. I got my birthday off (St. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake-profiles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32969"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33001,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32969\/revisions\/33001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}