Allow me to (re) introduce myself - and Substack - to my (new) (old) readers
Transitioning from a pulpit rabbi to a Substack rabbi at breakneck speed - and what I've learned from it.
As we enter December, my Substack, “In This Moment: A Rabbi’s Notebook” has just passed a milestone of 2,000 subscribers and an additional 1,000 followers! (For those not yet into Substack lingo, “subscribers” get all postings delivered right into your inbox, while “followers,” typically fellow Substack aficionados, see my notes and click for the articles.) So we’ve got 3,000 engaged readers, and a growth rate that is bordering on exponential, more than doubling in the last two months. Back in June, when this transition began, there were 600 subscribers, larger than many, but not sustainable for a rabbi and writer used to speaking to nearly 2,000 on the High Holidays and writing for the largest Jewish newspaper in America, the N.Y. Jewish Week, which, back in the day, had a print circulation of 100,000.
But enough about the numbers and personal back-slapping. As Hodel tells Perchik in Fiddler on the Roof, “A Rabbi who must praise himself has a congregation of one."
Since many of you have climbed aboard only recently, this would be a good time to take a step back and reintroduce myself to you, my subscribers, followers and casual readers. Even those who have known me for many years could use a reintroduction. And this is a perfect time to begin to explain where I’m at as I approach this six month milestone in transitioning from a pulpit rabbi to a Substack rabbi / journalist.
2024 has been perhaps the most change-filled year of my life, at least since puberty set in (14 was awkward…16 amazing). At this moment, although change is continuing to occur at a breathless pace, I can finally sit back in my new home and look at my new life in my radically changing country with a Jewish people and faith that are also transforming dramatically before our eyes. And I can look around and ask, “What the **** just happened???” (You can insert your epithet of choice. “Hell” works just fine.)
Growing a Substack is a real adventure, with lots of ups and downs - much like being a rabbi. In some ways, you are seen as a rock in people’s lives, while in others, you’re only as good as your last sermon.
My new congregation, and my old one
Precisely at the midpoint of the year, on July 1, I ceased to be a full-time congregational pastor and at that point I decided to take on an entirely new congregation: You. To be sure, there is much overlap between the old brick and morter congregation and the new online one, and I discovered that early on.
As my presence on Substack has grown, I’ve come to appreciate the genuineness of the human contact that takes place. It’s nothing like the trolling culture of other social media outlets like X, and because my subscription list is somewhat self selecting (people read me because they like what I write), the comments are much more constructive, precisely what I once envisioned online communication could be. Make no mistake: there are trolls out there, and Substack needs to do a better job of policing its darker neighborhoods. But I have control over who gets to participate in this neighborhood, and while I welcome the constructive airing of views that differ from mine, I have a zero-tolerance policy for hate and vitriol. I can keep it out of this space with far greater efficiency than I can I could keep it away from a brick and morter synagogue. No armed guards need be stationed on my home page. And hey, I’ve been heckled even on my pulpit, so this virtual setting feels like a very space place.
In addition, many of my new congregants are not Jewish but “Jewish-curious,” and because your backgrounds are so varied, I’ve learned so much more from you than you learn from me. This is a completely non judgmental space. My brick and morter congregation was too, or it tried to be, but you had to be at least Jewish-adjacent to be a member there. In looking at the background of my subscribers here, the ones who identify themselves, I’d bet that hundreds of you don’t even live within two tanks of gas of a “member of the tribe” - and that’s just fine.
I trace In This Moment’s rapid growth to two causes.
One is the election. I took it upon myself to play a very active role at this fateful time, and as I had promised, I held nothing back in my role as rabbinic-truth-teller. Some of my pieces were widely shared.
Most of my audience was not happy when the sun rose on November 6. Everyone is most welcome to be part of this community, but face it, an overwhelming sense of disappointment was to be expected among my readers, considering the deep concerns I had voiced about a potential Trump presidency - and the overwhelming support Kamala Harris got from Jews.
Both before and after the election, people were in need of spiritual guidance and support. When I received this comment to my posting on the morning after, it reminded me of what I used to hear from my brick and morter congregants back in 2016, or after 9/11 or October 7, or during Covid. I realized that my role hasn’t changed all that much, even as my congregation has expanded:
Thank you for your words.
My heart is so broken today.
I will need time to mourn and forgive.
We will need one another for love and care.
May we find our way through this.
The second reason for my Substack’s growth is that I worked hard to cultivate partnerships, something that is essential for online publications to find their audience. I joined up with the Jewish Dems’ Spiritual Leaders Network, which promoted my work, just as I promoted theirs. I recommended some Substacks whose authors I’ve long followed and respected, and they also recommended mine. A special shoutout here to the Meidas Touch Network, whose remarkable growth (it’s beating out Fox on some platforms) is an indicator of how dramatically the news landscape has changed.
The past few months have taught me that people are looking for alternative information outlets, and Substack is where you can find a wide spectrum of news and opinion that people can customize to their needs. I’ve selected a healthy variety of outlets for news related to Jewish concerns and a wide spectrum of perspectives on Israel. You can find my recommended reads on my home page in the Substack app. With that lineup, I really don’t have much time for cable news.
There is a Wild West aspect to all of this, with limited regulation and untrustworthy gatekeepers. But the notion of a truly free and independent, objective press has been losing found for decades. Even before Facebook, the was Fox, and before Twitter there were tabloids. The responsibility has always been on the individual to seek trustworthy news sources and to ask probing questions wherever we get our news. You don’t need to have gone to journalism school, as I did, to whether an allegation is backed by proper sourcing.
I find that my Substack reading list prepares me to do daily battle with the Russian bots and Trump lies, while at the same time seeing the complexities of every issue. I believe in this medium (and, speaking of which, in Medium too) and am proud I can be a meaningful part of this new constellation of information. It makes me (slightly) optimistic.
Now. About me.
Since many hundreds of you have never met me and many of you have barely read me, it’s time for me to catch you up who I am, where I’ve been and what I stand for. of course you can read my bio for the earlier stuff. But here’s where things pick up in the latter half of this year.
As I came off the final months of my 37-year tenure at Temple Beth El in Stamford, CT, I must admit I was completely drained. The Covid years had been an exhausting time, punctuated by increasing job-related frustrations, a sense of personal stagnation and some health issues, all topped off by an insane string of bad luck for one of my three dogs. I know that for some people that seems like comic relief, but in 2024 alone, Casey had surgery for two torn ACLs, which sidelined him for the first half of the year, and the very week that we moved, we discovered that he had an incurable lymphoma. At great cost - in dollars and emotional stress - we chose to treat it with a full battery of weekly chemo treatments.
Thankfully he is still with us and doing well as he is about to finish the treatments. He is in that state of limbo that vets call remission, even though there is a certainty that the cancer will eventually come back. So we wait for the guillotine to drop, but at the same time, Casey and his sibs Cassidy and Cobie are enjoying every single day.
I’ve stayed in touch with a number of people from my old congregation, where I am rabbi emeritus. It’s always nice to hear what’s going on, and at times to continue to help them to navigate life’s most climactic moments, as I have for so long. I often look back at the tribute book that was compiled at the time of my retirement. It’s an overwhelming document, filled with reminiscences from the most important moments of people’s lives, and I often feel like the person they are thanking is someone else, from another time, another place.
I included in that tribute book a few passages from the final high holidays sermons that I delivered in Stamford. I want to share them here as a means of giving my new congregants, my subscribers and followers, an idea of just who it is you’ve entrusted with your precious time and attention. It’s also a good way of reminding my “forever” congregants and friends from Stamford just what it is they bought into for nearly four decades, as they embark on their new spiritual journeys.
The first excerpt extols the indestructibility of the Jewish people and the “Jewish idea” and explains why our actions, our prayers, our lives - matter.
How could our people not persist through the millennia? We’ve just survived genocide. If we can survive that, we can survive anything. If we can survive the Romans, Inquisition, Cossacks, Czars and Nazis, we can survive synagogue shootings, or secularization, or the Protocols of Zion, or BDS or the judicial coup. From a God’s eye view, the Jewish people will be here in thousands of years because we’ve already proven that we can last thousands of years.
For a hundred generations, our ancestors prayed to return to Jerusalem three times daily. A hundred generations! If just one generation had stopped facing Jerusalem, we wouldn’t be here. Each person mattered. Each prayer recited by each person – it mattered. I wouldn’t bet against the Jewish people, despite the great challenges we face now, here and in Israel. I wouldn’t bet against us, and not because of God (which I can say from this God’s eye view) but because of each of you. Each of you matters. And I know you’ll come through. Why? Because you are here today! Something mysterious has drawn you back here today.
And that’s why our little speck of time along this journey, this journey that we’ve taken together – matters. These 37 years we’ve been together – they’ve mattered. And that’s why your life matters, and my life, they’ve all had a purpose, and all those who are buried next door at Beth El Cemetery, their lives did too.
Teach us to count our days. To look at time from God’s perspective and see the big picture. The huge picture. For that’s the key, not just to our relevance, but to our immortality, which rests on the indestructibility of the Jewish people and the Jewish idea.
The second explains my human-centric philosophy of religion. To be Jewish means to aspire to be a radically authentic, fully realized human being.
This message contrasts the artificial (with a focus on A.I) with the human, the virtual with the real. I am fully invested in that which is real and human, but I also see the potential for real humanity to thrive and flourish in virtual environments - such as this Substack community.
I have always looked at religion from the prism of the humanities, not as doctrine but as lived experience, not as something supernatural, but something very down to earth.
Lo Bashamayim hee – it says in Deuteronomy. “It’s not in the heavens.” “This thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart.”
Religion is right here – in your heart. That’s what’s real – and our sacred wisdom reminds us of precisely that.
We are not in the business of keeping a dying religion on life support just because it’s been around for a few thousand years and some people feel guilty about eating a ham sandwich. It’s been around so long because it helped human beings who happen to be Jewish to become better human beings. It has helped us to make the world a better place, for all people.
To be Jewish, in other words, is to be fully human. To be fully human is to be fully engaged with the universe and with the epic saga of unfolding Creation.
To be Jewish is to be radically authentic, trusting and being trustworthy, being fully present and true to our commitments, trusting sources of inherited and inner wisdom. Jews are covenantal beings. We are tethered to something greater than ourselves. That is what keeps it - and us - real.
Perhaps we’ve grown to intuit this difference between the virtual and the real. Perhaps that is why people keep on coming back to their houses of worship, to find guidance as we engage in God’s sacred labor. If we can be the locus of the real, that point of light where “I” meets “Thou,” we will be fulfilling a sacred mission that we are uniquely qualified to do.
And (speaking of Oct. 7, Gaza and a year of unending internal and external conflagration) if through all the fighting and infighting, the real suffering and the propaganda, the feverish emotions and those few moments of measured reflection, if we can just cling to the ideal of our common humanity, that we are all created in God's image, maybe we can win this war - and any war- on our terms.
If we do not allow ourselves to fall victim to dehumanizing the other, turning the other into an object, a facsimile of the human - even when the other acts in barbaric, inhuman ways - we will have taken the first step toward a real victory and toward the eventual possibility of real peace.
And a true victory for humanity.
While I’ve been writing this, I’ve added 20 more subscribers. But I must confess that I began this posting on Saturday night and am completing it at kickoff time on Sunday. So a little humility for this modern day Perchik.
And if that doesn’t make me more humble, I’m sure God will find other ways. Meanwhile, as we plod ahead into the final month of the year, it’s a pleasure to make your (re)acquaintances.
Happy December from my new home.
Thank you all for your comments. The religious landscape right now is fascinating - so many blends. No one is “pure” anything. This opens up enormous opportunities for dialogue. What Pew surveys call “Nones” (no religion) is more accurately described as “Alls.” Everyone is searching. Fewer have landed on a single faith, or single denomination of that faith. This online environment, with fewer physical boundaries than a brick-and-mortar house of worship, is the perfect place for us all to meet.
Well Rabbi, thanks to Meidas Touch I recently started reading your Substack. I attended Catholic School through High School. I claim no specific religion now. My neighborhood was in the poor end of town. I didn't know that at the time. lol Within a 12 block radius anything we needed was available. There were 3 Jewish businesses, a pharmacy, a pawn shop and an appliance store. There was the Chinese fresh chicken store and vege store. There were two Italian grocery stores, one of which had a fresh meat counter, i.e., no packages of frozen meat. There was a dry cleaners and Chinese laundry. A YMCA where boxing was promoted and sometimes men could stay there. My mother had a used clothing store and across the street there was another one. My friends were the children of the Mrs. and one son was with her Jewish husband. Although religion was never a topic they were the kindest people that I knew. I almost forgot, there was also a theater. It changed ownership many times, one time it was only Mexican movies, then it was porno movies and finally a strip show. Called homeless now there were many "bums". who begged quarters so they could buy a bottle of cheap wine. Then there was the "crazy" lady who stood on one corner most of the day talking -- mostly to herself.
I'm not really sure why I posted all of this. I grew up in such a mixed neighborhood and obviously people would have different religions, cultures, etc., but, none of that mattered. We were all people working to make a living and getting along.
I look forward to reading more of what you have to say and like your clarification of different sayings and words. After 37 years you have probably seen it all and am glad that you have decided to keep giving. :-).