The Almost Rabbi

Surprise! An encore & secret writing

Hey friend,

My university French professor, Monsieur Marjollet messaged me after my post last week with a reminder, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water,” he said. “The project has allowed you to grow and move on.”

He’s right. I struggle to find a non-cliché way to say this but it showed me that anything is possible if you work for it and I would never abandon 52 Friends.

I spent December 2022 typing thousands of words a day with the intention of writing a book centered around the year I had just experienced. Little did I know, a better story awaited me or rather that the best part of the plot was on its way. This is a piece I wrote during that time. I’d like to share it, along with one next week. Then I promise, I will take a break.

A chapter I titled, “The Almost Rabbi.”

I began going to the synagogue regularly in Miami. I explained to a couple who I saw often that I wasn’t religious but that I liked religion. The Torah taught practical lessons, the Kabbalah, spirituality.

The first time I attended a class, I walked in to find a young Rabbi sitting at the entrance of the building. He introduced himself as Mendy and shared that he wasn’t a Rabbi yet but that he would be by the end of the year. An almost Rabbi. We exchanged a few words and then I went upstairs.

As the Almost Rabbbi taught the class, I was impressed. Eventually, I sent him an email asking if he would be one of my 52 friends but he said that modesty laws prohibit it. Regardless, he was kind and I sat in on as many classes as I could with one standing out to me in particular. A lesson from the book of Genesis.

In the Almost Rabbi’s own words, “The stories in the Torah are not just history lessons, nor bedtime stories or retellings of something that happened hundreds of years ago. Each told story in the Torah has an everlasting message and lesson for us in our day-to-day lives.”

He recounted the story of Joseph who is sent by his father to check on his brothers who were taking the sheep out to pasture in the city of Shechem. Joseph is disliked by his brothers for a variety of reasons and now that he is alone with them and the sheep, they see the opportunity to rid themselves of his nuisance and agree to kill him.

One of Joseph’s brothers, Reuven does not settle with the rest of the men and says, “Let’s not take his life, do not lay a hand on the boy rather throw him in this pit here in the desert.” It was Reuven’s intention to return and save Joseph after the brothers had left and bring him to safety to their father.

As the story continues, the brothers agree to Reuven’s proposal and throw Joseph into a waterless well. The brothers go to eat and during their meal, a caravan that is traveling to Egypt passes by.

The brothers quickly decide to sell Joseph to the caravan who is then brought to Egypt and sold as a slave. Reuven who had the goal of saving his brother was not present at the sale. So the question is, where was Reuven?

This odd inconsistency can be explained by the fact that for the past nine years, Reuven had been repenting for a sin that he had committed. He was uniquely spiritual and emotionally sensitive and he wasn’t present when his brother was sold because he was fasting. 

Reuven’s saintly behavior was an indirect cause of Joseph’s sale into Egyptian slavery which would ultimately lead to the tragic Jewish exile in Egypt that lasted 400 years. Reuven was focusing on bettering himself but he wasn’t there to protect his brother. 

The Almost Rabbi explained that exile does not necessarily originate in corrupt, destructive, and evil behavior. Sometimes it is the path of holiness and saintliness that drives a nation into exile. Today many people find themselves physically or psychologically at the edge of the abyss. Abuse, depression, anger, hopelessness, and cynicism have taken over the lives of many people and plunged them into a bottomless pit en route to an enslaved life. Yet some of us are too occupied perfecting ourselves to reach out and help these people come out of these trenches. 

“You may be the holiest person with the best of intentions, dressed in sackcloth, fasting, constantly striving to better yourself and reach higher levels, you may be praying and meditating, completely removed from materialism and greed. But if you are engaged in these noble acts while a child lies trapped in a pit, yearning for his freedom, your spiritual experiences may be nothing more than the cause of an exile, a form of holy narcissism,” he said. 

“People are responsible for each other because without you I am nothing. My accomplishments mean nothing. I am not complete without my brothers and sisters beside me and what I accomplish, imagine how much more I could have accomplished if you were there with me—helping me, pushing me, driving me forward,” the Almost Rabbi exclaimed passionately. 

He ended the class by saying “L’chaim” the Hebrew word for “To Life.”