It was the end of a unique evening, celebrating my friend’s fiftieth birthday by attempting Queer Line Dancing at the Guggenheim. Some of her former college buddies offered me a ride to Brooklyn, and we got to talking about what we do. What I found more interesting was when we talked about what we don’t do.
One of the people who offered me the ride recently chose a sabbatical after the startup he was a part of was acquired. He talked about the joys of life that included more time with his children and enough wiggle room in his schedule that he could say yes to things without a cascade of to-do items falling through the cracks. He talked about rediscovering the things and people he loved and rediscovering himself.
He brought this up after I mentioned that despite being in my last year of rabbinical school and despite also having served as a leader in congregations for a decade and a half, I had decided to take a “delayed maternity leave”—not taking a High Holiday clergy role this year in order to spend the High Holidays with my son during his high school years. I love listening to my son’s strong and beautiful voice in prayer, and I love sharing and living the traditions I teach other families about with my child. In my gorgeously lay-led Altshul community, I love being a non-working professional, a “Jew in the pew.”
I am not a person who generally lives a Shabbat kind of life, meaning I am not a person who naturally knows how to rest. When I had a job that kept me busy 6 days a week, each day I was off, I would post “Fridays are for” and list 10 to 20 things I did on my “slow” day. Now, when people ask me, as someone hoping to be ordained in just a few months, “What kind of rabbi do you want to be?” I have a few concrete answers. Recently I developed an additional answer: I want to be a rabbi who can celebrate Shabbat in a way that inspires others to make time for themselves and their loved ones.
Though I am not generally someone who takes “time off,” this “delayed maternity leave” for the High Holidays is not my first intentional break. I have taken what I call a shmita before. The notion of shmita, a Biblically defined extended Shabbat for the land, recognizes that all living things need rest, including the land, for a full year every seven years.
Twelve years ago, I took my first extended Shabbat, my shmita from full-time work for six months. I left a job that challenged me and allowed me tremendous creativity, but as friends and family pointed out, it was so toxic that my choice was to leave with one month’s notice or leave some time via stretcher. I had the time to discover and begin immersing myself in the world of interfaith advocacy and to collaborate on interfaith spiritual education projects. This work has forever changed me, inspired me, and led me towards my calling to work at the intersection of spirituality and trauma. During my second shmita, when I left full-time work and began pursuing my dream by entering rabbinical school, I launched a new non-profit, Wonder and Repair, and focused on one of three projects related to the intersection of spirituality and trauma through our project, “Survivor’s Shiva.”
This past High Holiday’s shmita leave has given me more than threefold nourishment. I was able to write and share a prayer in an interfaith peace prayer experience, bringing me some sense of repair as a “post-October 7 Jew.” I also wrote and shared a prayer at an interfaith experience, during which I then witnessed a friend and colleague who herself had experienced discrimination standing up to the organizers to protect others, including myself.
In this same High Holiday shmita season, I had the honor of spending the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with many heroes and survivors and families whose loved ones never came home. Thanks to my shmita and my incredible supervisor, I was able to focus on participants’ immediate care and needs. I have never had similar experiences of knowing I needed to be in one place, doing one thing, and being able to do so.
Finally, and perhaps equally profound as all these experiences were, hours before my Abba’s (father’s) third yahrzeit (death anniversary on the Jewish calendar), on Yom Kippur I was able to have my son under my tallit for Birkat Kohanim (the priestly blessing), just like my father used to bless me under his tallit. And on that same day, at Yizkor (a communal memorial prayer recited only four times a year), I was able to crack open my heart enough to cry and cry and let go of other losses I had never made the space for. I was able to do that because I was not leading a community; I was in my community being supported by a friend who knew my Abba.
Despite having always been a Shabbat-observant Jew, my work with trauma and love for my son are what led me to appreciate the need for more Shabbat in my life. I cannot fathom what my life would be without Shabbat and my different shmita experiences. I am finding my calling in these times of rest. My calling leads to more work, but it’s the most nourishing work of my life.
“What do you do for a living?” has never been a question I’ve wanted to ask people. I’ve found workaround questions like “What do you do during the day?” or “What thing do you do each day or week that you most enjoy?” which is closer to what I want to know but clumsier to ask. Since that ride in the car, I will now be asking, “What don’t you do for a living?” This year my answer would be: I am studying to be a rabbi. I am taking time away from leading in some of my usual places in order to be invited to learn, grow, and lead in a most sacred place, next to my son.