Different Slants

(copyright May 1, 2011)

This new poem was inspired by, and written expressly for Rabbi Debra Nesselson.

Watching her blossom over the last year from being a relatively quiet figure heard from the bimah only occasionally, to becoming the voice and face of B’nai Torah Congregation to the world, has fascinated me.  She is her own fairy-tale.

Today, Friday June 10, 2011 Debra Nesselson becomes a Rabbi for the rest of her life.

Her choosing to leave behind a career as a lawyer after spending seven years to become that, to spending another eight years transforming herself into a Rabbi so she could understand the law in a far more fundamental way, means Debra has spent fifteen years to get to where she is today.

More than a quarter of her entire life.

How many people would ever consider doing such a thing?  Very few.
Maybe we didn’t know what we had in our new Rabbi before today, but we certainly do now.

Here’s my poem to celebrate her new role in this important Jewish institution.
If anyone deserves a poem to contemplate their lives, it’s Debra Nesselson. 

(First Unexpected Note: Rabbi Nesselson left our temple two months later. Not all things make sense, but what I wrote about Rabbis remains what I believe. I still respect and care very much about Debra Nesselson.

(2nd Unexpected Note) After a tumultuous period of temple politics over philosophy, and a merry-go-round of different rabbis, my sixty-year-old temple with its 750 families closed almost exactly three years after I first posted this poem, on June 30, 2014. A tragedy.  This note was amended on September 24th, 2014, just before the beginning of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.  I remain friends with and infinitely respect Rabbi Nesselson who is an unaffiliated rabbi who celebrates marriages, births, deaths and any other circumstances where people want a real rabbi.)

A Rabbi

Doesn’t have all the answers

But

With a thousand other

Contentious Rabbis’

Arguments

Ricocheting thru the Centuries

and

Ringing in her Ears

She probably has more

Good Choices

To pick from

Than you do

(Read on …)