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To get things started, I’ll post some excerpts from a sermon I gave in October, 2004 at Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year, and it is common for rabbis to give their most significant talk of the year to their congregants on that day. In this particular sermon, I was doing some personal sharing about how I have explored and wrestled with Judaism over the years. Here are the excerpts:

I became a rabbi because I couldn’t stop wrestling with Judaism. Not because I found uninterrupted joy in Judaism, not because it always felt like home, and not because I was drawn like a moth to its spiritual flame. For me, it was the path of Jacob - of Ya’akov - our biblical ancestor who wrestled with God. For those of you who don’t remember the story, one night while Jacob was alone by the Ya-bok River, a mysterious man appeared, and they wrestled throughout the night. Jacob won the contest, and later discovered that he had been wrestling with a Divine being, possibly God, Godself. For many Jews, Jacob is the ancestor who symbolizes the experience of struggling with God - and also of struggling with Judaism. Or, to mix religious metaphors, Jacob is the patron saint of those who see the path of wrestling with one’s tradition as a holy path.

That’s been me for my whole adult life.

… I’ll tell you how I came to identify my story with our ancestor, Jacob the God-wrestler. First, you’re going to have to picture me 17 years ago as a freshman in college. For those of you who’ve seen me when I’m not wearing my kippah, that means you’re going to have to picture me with hair. Lots of brown, curly hair.

My first two years of college, I was the kind of Jewish student who would go to Friday night services once or twice a month. I was looking for something in Judaism – there was something calling me to walk through the door – but I couldn’t name it. Sometimes the beauty of the tradition would fill me with joy and a sense of God’s presence… But those moments of spiritual embrace would always give way to painful moments of disappointment and alienation. Mixed in with sweet and uplifting Shabbat songs were prayers that felt chauvinistic, that seemed to boast of the people Israel as God’s favorite children in the human family – something I didn’t believe in then and still do not now.

My junior year, I joined a Havurah [an informal Jewish community on campus]. I was still seeking something from Judaism, and still unable to name it. The same pattern unfolded. One moment I’d be inspired by the Torah’s compassion for the stranger, the next moment horrified by its stories justifying conquest and slaughter. And so, on it went. I’d draw near the fire and get warmed, and then somehow get burned. So then I’d walk away from the fire, and, after a little while, I’d feel cold. Then, you guessed it, I’d draw near the fire again, and the cycle would continue.

I talked to the campus rabbi about this, and she said that the wrestling had an integrity of its own. She would often say that the struggle with the tradition is Judaism, and she encouraged me to embrace it. Hearing that was significant for me, but I didn’t entirely buy it.

I didn’t want to spend my whole life being a wrestler. There was something I wanted from Judaism, and in the years that followed, I began to be able to name it. In fact, there were two things I wanted from Judaism: number one, that Judaism comfort and reassure me, and number two, that it inspire me and challenge me to be the best person I can possibly be. Put differently, first, I wanted Judaism to give me a God I could turn to in my deepest vulnerability, a God I could snuggle with. And second, I wanted Judaism to be a religion more focused on serving others than on protecting itself.

Now that I could name what I wanted, I wanted Judaism to deliver. Something deep inside me was telling me not to ignore this impulse, not to let Judaism off the hook and resign myself to a revolving door relationship with my religion. I took my inspiration from Abraham, who had the audacity to argue with God. “Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do what is just?” he asked. I decided that Judaism was strong enough, old enough, and tough enough to lend an ear to my demands, too.

So I shouted my demands to Judaism – “These are the two things I want from you!” and I named them. And Judaism replied. “But I already do both of those things for you, some of the time.”

It was at that moment that I realized that I wanted … a third thing.

“And I also want you to be consistent!” I shouted, and waited for an answer.

To that demand, I got no reply. It reminds me of dear old Jacob. After the wrestling was over, Jacob asked the mysterious stranger to please tell him his name. The stranger refused. “Why do you ask my name?” was all he would say.

Gradually, I began to realize that the question for me was becoming one of whether I could embrace an inconsistent Judaism, a Judaism that would sometimes bring me God’s truth and other times bring me human misreading of the Divine will. I tried to work through this question by taking jobs with Jewish organizations that were trying to give expression to the aspects of Judaism that I found the most inspiring. In the course of that work, I met some remarkable rabbis – women rabbis, who, perhaps by their very presence as women in the rabbinate, had also had to wrestle profoundly with Judaism. Despite negative judgment from much of the traditional Jewish world, these women saw something in Judaism that they loved so much they decided to spend their careers working to build and nurture that potential. They were wrestlers of the first order.

Inspired by these rabbis, I finally gave in and went to rabbinical school.

I had one condition for going to rabbinical school. It had to be a place that would embrace the beauty and depth of Judaism, and yet it had to also be a place where it was completely okay to question anything and everything. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was just that place. More than anywhere else I think I could have gone for my rabbinic training, RRC welcomed me as I was – a lifelong wrestler with Judaism.

At RRC, I learned three ideas that had a huge impact on me.

The first is that Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. It sounds simplistic, but it’s actually a powerful statement. Judaism has been and will be what we make of it. In every era it has adapted and changed, and grown like a living organism. And who is the Jewish people today? Who will inherit our tradition’s wisdom and make choices about what Judaism brings to the world? Us. This first lesson taught me that Judaism is in our hands, and it will be what we make of it.

The second idea is that Judaism – like every other religion – is not perfect. I already had felt that way, but at RRC I realized that if I was going to hold out for Judaism – or for that matter, any religion – to come along and be perfect, I was going to chase my tail for a long, long time. I came to see my cycle of inspiration and alienation in a new light at RRC. Religions are our way of seeking for God, and when they connect with the Divine – pow – Justice rolls down like waters, and Righteousness like a mighty stream. But when religions miss the mark – when they misread the Divine – look out. They can be agents of hatred, division, and violence. The impact of the second lesson – that religions are imperfect - was to remind me that, once again, what we do with our tradition is up to us. Walking away from the debates within the Jewish community would be like giving up my right to vote. I just couldn’t do that.

The third lesson I learned was that Judaism – like other religions – has such amazing potential. The potential for Judaism to continue evolving, to continue its 5,000-year wrestling and seeking after God, to keep offering its ancient wisdom as a corrective to secular society’s failures, and to keep up its tradition of relentless hope, of dissent and even of self-criticism – this potential is something to be very excited about.

At RRC I realized that the reason my wrestling with Judaism resulted in my going to rabbinical school – and not in my relegating Judaism to a minor role in my life – was that I never stopped feeling excited about the potential of Judaism. And RRC made me realize that each of us has a voice to contribute to the shaping of Judaism today. Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” I realized that what was driving me to become a rabbi was a call to be the kind of Jew I wanted to see in the world, and to help build a Jewish community in which collectively we can be the kind of Judaism we want to see in the world.

What is the kind of Judaism I would like to help manifest in the world?

I’ll just say this much. The Judaism I want to see in the world is what I call a Judaism of service and humility. A Judaism whose heart is focused on service to others, and a Judaism that draws on the story of our liberation as an instrument of identifying with the Other, including our enemies. It’s a Judaism that shares with the world our tradition of debate, of seeing ethical questions from many different angles. It’s a Judaism that recognizes that the Unifying Mystery we call God goes by many names and by no name at all. And finally, it’s a Judaism that understands that all religions contain fragments of the ultimate truth, and that no religion holds a monopoly on the truth. All these values already exist in Judaism – indeed, much of what kept drawing me back to Judaism over and over again were these Jewish teachings. But in our Jewish world, often these values take a back seat to other agendas that, to me, seem either misguided, or at times, chauvinistic, and even dangerous.

I guess I realized that if I wanted to help create the Judaism whose potential I’m in love with, I needed to claim my citizenship, take my seat at the table, and vote with my heart.

…The Judaism we build will be what we make of it. And on Yom Kippur, when we are individually and collectively doing cheshbon ha-nefesh – an examination of the soul – it’s fitting to be talking about what we want to make of our Judaism. If we make of it a tool for community joy, for peace-building, for service to others, it will be that. If we make of it a tool for worry, for fear of the outsider, for defensiveness and even of aggression, it will be that. It’s yours – it’s ours – we’re not just inheritors, we’re shapers and participants. The first step is to get involved.