The Competitive Rabbinate

Why spiritual leadership sometimes turns into a race up the ramp

Reader’s Note

This week I’m with colleagues at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association gathering. Tomorrow morning I have the privilege of delivering the primary d’var Torah at our service.

Speaking to a room full of rabbis is its own spiritual practice. It is an honor and it is daunting. Rabbis are, after all, professional listeners, professional interpreters, and occasionally professional skeptics.

This will be the third time I’ve had the chance to address this body. Preparing for it sent me rummaging through older work, and I rediscovered a d’var Torah I originally gave to the RRA back in 2015. Reading it now, eleven years later, I can see how much has changed. The rabbinate has shifted. The world has shifted. And if I’m honest, I’ve shifted too.

Still, something in that earlier teaching felt worth revisiting. I gave it a light touch-up and decided to share it here.

Sometimes the past version of ourselves leaves us a note. Sometimes it still holds up.

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Thank you for being here.

Each year we arrive at Vayikra and try, with varying degrees of sincerity, to sound enthusiastic about sacrificial procedures.

We do our best. We say things like, “Actually, the priestly system contains profound spiritual wisdom.”

And to be fair, it does.

But it also contains some very revealing stories about religious leadership.

One of the traditional names for Vayikra is Torat Kohanim, the teaching of the priests. To the extent that the spiritual leadership of the rabbinate inherits something from that ancient priesthood, it may be worth asking not only what we should imitate, but also what we might learn to avoid.

One of the most beloved teachings in this parashah concerns the aleph zeira, the tiny aleph in the opening word, Vayikra.

The Baal HaTurim offers a familiar explanation. Moses wished the word to read Vayiker, meaning that God merely “happened upon him,” the same word used for Balaam. Moses resisted implying that God called him in some uniquely elevated way. God insisted on Vayikra, “God called.”

So Moses wrote the aleph.

But he made it small.

A small letter carrying a large lesson about humility.

Over the past few years I have been studying mussar more seriously, and anavah, humility, is one of the middot I return to again and again. Yet humility has often confused me, particularly in the rabbinate.

When should we contract and make space?

When should we expand and claim it?

The rabbinate asks us to embody humility while simultaneously placing us in positions of leadership, authority, and visibility. We are asked to step forward and step back at the same time, which can occasionally feel like trying to walk a tightrope while giving a sermon.

Or, more realistically, trying to walk a tightrope while the congregation emails you about the kiddush menu.

It is a strange job description.

Please be humble.

Also, everyone turn toward you.

This tension between humility and leadership becomes clearer in a remarkable story about the priests themselves.

In Yoma 22a, the Mishnah describes how the ashes from the altar were removed each morning. Originally, whoever wished to perform the task could do so. But when several priests desired the privilege, they would race up the ramp of the altar. Whoever reached the top first won the opportunity to sweep the ashes.

Yes.

The Temple instituted a footrace.

To sweep ashes.

Eventually two priests reached the ramp at the same time. One pushed the other. The second priest fell and broke his leg.

The court responded by creating a new system. The priests would draw lots for the task.

If we pause and inhabit the text, something fascinating appears.

Cleaning ashes was not glamorous work. According to the commentators, the task was originally left open precisely because it was considered undesirable. Yet somehow even sweeping ashes became an object of competition.

Human beings have a remarkable ability to turn even the most humble act of service into a spiritual Olympic event.

What is unsettling about this story is that the priests are not acting with bad intentions. On the contrary, their intentions are sacred. They want to serve God.

And yet sacred intentions can still miss the mark.

In hoping to serve the Holy One, we can lose sight of the holiness of the one standing right next to us.

What is equally striking is what the story does not say.

No one intervenes.

No one rebukes the priest who pushed.

No one appears to care for the priest who was injured.

The system simply changes, as though leadership has concluded that competitive ego is an inevitable feature of religious life.

Which, if we are honest, is not an entirely unreasonable assumption.

But the silence in the text raises an uncomfortable question.

Were there silent bystanders watching the race?

Because in my nearly sixteen years in the rabbinate, I have discovered that when competition enters spiritual leadership we usually occupy one of three positions.

We are either the one pushed off the ramp.

The one doing the pushing.

Or the one standing quietly nearby pretending not to notice.

Over the years I have been all three.

When I arrived in Atlanta to serve my first pulpit, I was not yet thirty. For the first two years I received death threats. Some Conservative and Orthodox colleagues refused even to acknowledge my presence. Others publicly accused me of corrupting Judaism.

Our synagogue was listed in the Federation’s Shalom Atlanta guide under the category “Other.”

Not Reconstructionist.

Other.

Which is less a denomination than a polite way of saying something unusual is happening here and we are not entirely sure what to do with it.

So humility was not exactly my problem.

Humility was the air I breathed.

What I needed instead was expansion.

I showed up wherever I was invited. Lunch-and-learns. Services in nursing homes. Programs for teens with disabilities. I did the equivalent of sweeping the ashes.

Slowly our community grew. We became more visible. I began receiving invitations to panels and conferences where Reconstructionist rabbis had not always been expected.

And something subtle began happening inside me.

I began noticing the look on some colleagues’ faces when my name appeared in places they did not expect.

And I will confess something that embarrasses me now.

Part of me enjoyed it.

When someone who had demeaned me stumbled publicly, I felt satisfaction.

Not compassion.

Satisfaction.

That was the moment I realized I was becoming the very model of the rabbi I had once rejected.

Because competition in the rabbinate rarely looks like a literal race up the ramp of the altar.

More often it disguises itself as righteousness.

Those of us deeply committed to justice are not immune to this trap. Our commitment to a cause can become so consuming that the humanity of the people around us fades from view.

It becomes easier to diminish those who disagree with us.

Easier to treat colleagues as rivals.

Easier to forget that every person standing across from us carries a soul.

Over time I began to see how corrosive this instinct can be to the neshamah.

Which is why I return often to a teaching from Alan Morinis.

He defines humility with a simple phrase:

No more than my place.
No less than my space.

Rambam describes humility in similar terms as the balance between arrogance and self-erasure.

Humility is not shrinking.

It is standing fully in the space that is ours to occupy. Nothing more. Nothing less.

There is a story often told about the Mirrer Yeshiva during the Second World War. A passenger traveling on a train carrying Mir students toward Vladivostok later described what he witnessed.

While their books were open, the students appeared furious with one another. Voices rose. Hands gestured sharply. The arguments looked almost hostile.

But the moment the books closed, the tension disappeared. They laughed together. They spoke warmly. They treated one another as dear friends.

The observer could not understand what he was seeing.

But the students were practicing a classic Talmudic discipline: argue fiercely for truth, but never confuse the argument with the person.

When the books close, the ego closes with them.

If we return to the tiny aleph of Vayikra, perhaps this is its deeper teaching.

Humility is not about disappearing.

It is about creating space where holiness can emerge.

Sometimes that means contracting.

Sometimes it means expanding.

But it never requires pushing someone else off the ramp.

The rabbinate asks us to hold a difficult tension. We are called to lead with confidence while carrying a tradition that keeps whispering humility.

Torah captures that tension with a single letter.

A tiny aleph.

Small enough to remind us that spiritual authority is never about winning the race to the altar.

Because when leadership becomes a race, someone eventually gets pushed off the ramp.

And if we are not careful, we may discover that the person we pushed was standing closer to the Holy One than we were.