{"id":4320,"date":"2008-08-30T21:39:42","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T05:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=4320"},"modified":"2008-08-30T21:39:42","modified_gmt":"2008-08-31T05:39:42","slug":"holiness-does-not-require-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=4320","title":{"rendered":"Holiness Does Not Require Perfection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Dan Fink writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

B<\/strong>ecause I was the rabbi’s son, I learned that holy vessels are made from the same mud and clay as everything else.<\/p>\n

Clergy kids rarely share the attitude of reverence that most people of faith bring to religious life; that sort of sanctity is sustained by a strong measure of hushed, respectful distance – and distance is the one thing that clergy kids don’t have.<\/p>\n

As a child, I often felt like Dorothy Gale, peaking behind the curtain and discovering that the great and powerful Wizard of Oz is, in fact, an ordinary guy.<\/p>\n

Throughout my boyhood, our family dinner conversations often turned to Dad’s day at the office. His work-day recollections taught me a great deal about human foibles and the fallibility of the synagogue community.<\/p>\n

A highly respected cantor was having an affair. Wealthy donors complained about Dad’s anti-war activism and threatened to withhold their pledges if he continued to speak out about Vietnam. A much-beloved rabbi at the nearby Conservative synagogue was an alcoholic. The families of my Hebrew school classmates – and teachers – suffered their fair share of dysfunction.<\/p>\n

Our own rabbinic household posed challenges, too. It’s hard to think of the rabbi as a symbol of holiness when you are 15 and he is your father.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t just people. I knew the jewels on the Torah covers were cheap plastic imitations, and I’d seen the janitor turn off the Eternal Light when closing up the synagogue building.<\/p>\n

Even our congregational prayer book was revealed to me as flawed: in its opening pages, where it acknowledged the rabbis who had contributed to it, I found Dad’s name – spelled with the wrong middle initial.<\/p>\n

Thus I lost my innocence early. For the rabbi’s kids, synagogues are like hot dogs: It doesn’t help to know too much about what goes into them. I knew too much, and my knowledge left me jaded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Dan Fink writes: Because I was the rabbi’s son, I learned that holy vessels are made from the same mud and clay as everything else. Clergy kids rarely share the attitude of reverence that most people of faith bring … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[11957,11962,11961,11958,11959,11960],"class_list":["post-4320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judaism","tag-beloved-rabbi","tag-conservative-synagogue","tag-human-foibles","tag-plastic-imitations","tag-school-classmates","tag-synagogue-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4321,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4320\/revisions\/4321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}