The Yeshivat Chovevei Torah dinner March 23 in New York marked the first time Rav Avi Weiss has ever allowed himself to be publically honored.
I was one of the rabbis lucky enough to learn the rabbinate from him, having served as Rav Avi’s assistant rabbi for six years. Even today, 18 years after I left his professional side, there is not a single day that unaffected by what he taught me. So I’ll try to sneak this in now, alongside the many tributes to him.
What did I learn from Rav Avi (and still don’t do as well as he does)? Here are just a few things:
(1) No matter what else is going on in the world, in the moment that someone is sharing his or her personal struggles with you, there is nothing else going on in the world. For each person is a world unto himself.
(2) Try your utmost to love everyone. If you can’t, the rabbinate’s probably not for you.
(3) Don’t be afraid to be different. Especially when you are being different in the name of including and embracing those who would otherwise be left out.
(4) A shul is family. And like any family, it has older people, and younger people. Healthy people and sick people. People who are more typically “abled” and people who are in some way disabled (and we are all in some way disabled). People whose Judaic knowledge is strong and people who are just now learning. When you look around shul on a Shabbat morning, it’s got to look like a family.
(5) Not everyone who is ritually observant is religious, and not everyone who is religious is ritually observant. Rabbis need to deeply understand this.
(6) Don’t sit on the bima. That’s not where the Jews are.
(7) It’s (almost) never a bad time for a niggun [Jewish melody].
(8) Lifecycle ceremonies are teaching times. They are precious moments when people’s hearts are open in an unusual and wondrous way. Don’t let these moments become mechanical rituals.
(9) It makes no difference whether you’re teaching a class of three, or giving a sermon in a room of many hundreds. You always give it your all.
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(10) Your wife is the most important person in the shul.
Thank you Rav Avi. As I recently affirmed to the blessed members of Bnai David –Judea, my congregation in Los Angeles, “what is mine and what is ours, is yours.”
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky is the spiritual leader of Cong. Bnai David-Judea in Los Angeles.
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