When nearly one million people attend a teacher’s funeral, as happened this week in Jerusalem, one can’t help but pay attention. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, was a cultural, spiritual, intellectual and even political phenomenon. ?A former chief rabbi of Israel, the?spiritual leader of the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox Shas party, and a teacher revered across many ethnic and religious borders, he?was?buried this week?in the largest funeral in Israel’s history. ?His enormous popularity can teach us so much about what it means to be a great teacher and how we can find the great teachers we seek for ourselves — Jewish or not, religious or secular.
We all need guides and sources of inspiration, even as we may be guiding and inspiring others. Finding them is often as much about knowing what to look for as it is about anything else.
As Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was laid to rest this week, I thought not only about what I learned from him, but about all the great teachers I have had, and what it is that defined their greatness. Rabbi Ovadia, as he was known, was a model of what to look for, and not because he was a rabbi or because he was Jewish.
Although he remained passionately and proudly ultra-orthodox, he took many daringly progressive positions in matters?of Jewish law and culture. ?While most rabbinic authorities dragged their feet in accepting the Jewishness of new immigrants from Ethiopia, who both looked different and practiced differently from almost all Israeli Jews including him, Rabbi Ovadia championed their full authenticity of their Jewishness. ?While other rabbis argued about the propriety if ceding land to the Palestinians in order to make peace, Rabbi Ovadia insisted on it being the right thing to do. ?And while he was very much a scholar, he was as comfortable chatting with peddlers in the street as he was lecturing before fellow scholars.
Great teachers are passionate about people — typically even more than they are about what they teach. They love what they teach, but they love those they teach even more, and make sure that their students know it.
Great teachers are sources of surprise at least as much as they are of information. They stretch us as much as they comfort us, and liberate us to see ourselves as more worthy and able than we probably ever imagined we were.
Show me a teacher who does these things, and I will show you a teacher worth following.
Have you had great teachers? What defined them? Why do you consider them great? What makes them truly memorable?
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”