A Special Message before Reb David’s Ordination

A Special Message to Our Shul by the Sea

It takes a village to raise a rabbi.  While in a literal sense my ordination comes from ALEPH, the seminary of Jewish Renewal, in the truest sense my ordination comes through Temple Beth-El of City Island – through you.

This community is where I learned to lead a service, shed pretense, rejoice and mourn.  Here I led my first community Passover seder, named my first baby, honored my first bar mitzvah, solemnized my first marriage, wrote my first prayerbook, led my first spiritual direction group, taught, laughed, loved and lost.  My seminary taught me rabbinics, but you helped teach me how to be a rabbi.

Tradition teaches that how we live here on earth shapes the supernal realms: “as below, so above.”  I feel that way about my smicha (ordination): it comes from above because it first comes from you.

I will be grateful forever to this Shul by the Sea, the village that raised a rabbi.

With love and blessings,

– David