Remarks at Retirement Gala
Remarks at Retirement Gala
Santa Barbara Zoo
May 4, 2025 (abridged)
I keep getting asked how and when I decided to become a rabbi. Here’s the story. It was forty-eight years ago. I was twenty years old and I was struggling to choose a career path. Over Thanksgiving vacation that year, I went out to lunch with Ron Shapiro, the young rabbi at our Temple in Rochester New York. He was probably about thirty years old and I felt comfortable with him.
I asked Ron what Judaism said was our purpose on earth…because I was trying to decide what to do with my life. I don’t remember what he said, but we began talking about his work as a rabbi. He said that as a rabbi he got to be intimately involved with people at pivotal moments in their lives. Birth, coming of age, marriage and death. That is what I remember. There were many other things about being a rabbi that sounded good, but what drew me was the opportunity for intimacy.
I had no idea, at age 20, what I was getting myself into. The opportunities for intimacy have been the most terrifying, the most difficult, and the most meaningful moments of my career.
I had no idea that even after 40 years as a rabbi, it would still take courage to step into the hospital room, to visit a friend preparing to die. When I was imagining those moments of intimacy, I could not have foreseen how I would one day be challenged by my friend Dan, who was dying of brain cancer at age 43. I was in the hospital room with Dan and his sister and Dan turned to me saying “Steve, my sister says that she and I will see each other again. What do you think?”
When I was attracted to this work by my desire for intimacy, I had no concept what it would be like to be with parents who had just lost their child. Or the riskiness of asking a wedding couple to tell me what they love about each other. I loved the idea of getting close to people in these sacred moments, but I did not understand that those moments would involve fear and dread.
Years ago, I came upon a book called The Personhood of God, by Yochanan Muffs. In that book Muffs writes: Any meeting of personalities requires great bravery. One who attempts to communicate with another endangers his own life, for to do this he must reveal what is in his heart… Any real communication, is a dangerous leap. But if one never screws up the courage to jump, he will wither away in silent isolation. Yochanan Muffs’ teaching about communication and courage has been a touchstone for me.
It took a long time for me to realize just how much of this job of rabbi is about the human challenge of intimacy and communication and the need for courage. The requirement to stay in a difficult conversation with my partners on the Temple staff even when I felt like leaving the room. Our magnificent Executive Directors over the past twenty years—my dear friends Richard Silver, Deborah Naish and Elizabeth Gaynes--all of whom are brilliant and powerful leaders, with whom I have not always agreed. And my equally powerful and gifted partner on the bimah for the past twenty-one years, Cantor Mark Childs, with whom I have shared countless moments of profound beauty and holiness, and with whom I have not always agreed.
I did not understand when I chose this career that many of the most tender, most vulnerable, most profound experiences in these forty years would be breakdowns and breakthroughs in communication. Hurt, apology and forgiveness. I am so grateful to all of our Temple presidents over the past twenty-one years, but especially right now to Nancy Sheldon and Marcy Wimbish. We have spent so many hours together. Thinking, talking, arguing, clarifying, supporting and loving each other during these challenging and wonderful past three years.
It certainly never dawned on me that raising money was, at the end of the day, just sitting down face to face with another human being and risking a moment of intimacy. Of honest communication. It continues to require great bravery, as Yochanan Muffs says, because there is always the possibility, even the likelihood, of being rejected. I have experienced abundant rejection over the years. But I could never have guessed that fundraising was an opportunity to come close to another human being.
Even telling a story to a group of children, which gives me such joy, requires immense courage, because I know that if I am boring, they will not pay attention for even 2 seconds. And I know that if I lose my connection with them for even a moment, it will be impossible to get it back. Telling the stories of our ancestors, of Noah and the dove, or Joseph and his brothers, or Moses at the burning bush, is the most sacred work a rabbi can do, and it is all about intimacy and communication.
This understanding that storytelling is actually a form of love, I learned from my parents. From my father, who loved to tell a funny story. And from my mother, who loved us by reading to us. For the past 39 years, I have learned from Marian every day, that real communication is always possible, and that it is always worth having the courage to leap. I cannot fully express how lucky I am to be married to this woman who somehow is not afraid to open her heart…to me, to our kids, to her friends, to the farmers at the Sunday farmers market, to everyone she meets.
On a different note, I had no idea when I was twenty that intimacy could occur in a large group. About fifteen years ago, we held a joint breakfast and speaker program with the Santa Barbara Islamic Society. We did not know how many would show up, or how it would go. In the end, our CBB social hall was full with almost a hundred Muslims and over a hundred Jews, eating together, talking and laughing together. The warmth in the room was palpable. Right now, that morning feels long ago and far away, but we Jews and Muslims of Santa Barbara share that memory; it lives within us as a moment of vulnerability, of communication and intimacy. I pray that the memory of that day is a seed that will one day grow again, into a living, flourishing tree.
After the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, our community felt vulnerable in a way we never had before. Rabbi Daniel Brenner had just begun working at our Temple at that time. Immediately after hearing the news of the Tree of Life shooting, Daniel organized a vigil, inviting the clergy and members from other faith communities to join us. Daniel, by the way, is going to be an outstanding senior rabbi for our congregation! We really did not know what to expect, but that night our building was packed with over one thousand human beings from every faith and walk of life. I had no idea, when I decided to become a rabbi, that an evening with one thousand people could be a moment of love and intimacy.
We have a word for the Divine Presence that can come to dwell in a roomful of human beings. Shechina. The Divine Presence that dwells in the most intimate spaces. In a hospital room. Over the head of a sick person. Under the wedding canopy. Between two friends who are studying a text together. And the Shechina was in our sanctuary when Rabbi Daniel invited the entire community to stand in solidarity with us.
The Shechina was present again in our sanctuary on the Friday night after the Montecito Debris Flow. In that packed room, we were desperately in need of each other after our city’s fragility had been so terribly exposed. At the end of the service we stood up and put our arms around each other and sang Debbie Friedman’s song “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” I couldn’t sing, because I was crying.
Every year, at the end of Yom Kippur, standing before the Ark, hungry and broken from the long day of prayer and fasting, I stand there crying, trying to sing with the choir and the cantor “Kadosh kadosh, kadosh….halleluyah.” There are hundreds and hundreds of people in the room, but it is a moment of sacred intimacy. When I was twenty years old I did not know that was possible.
Many months ago, as we began planning this event, I knew that it was going to be a big group of people…something like the High Holy Days…and I hoped that in addition to raising some money, it would also be a moment of intimacy. So I reached out to a few people whom I really trusted, and who I knew would remain calm in the face of chaos, and in the end create a moment of beauty and joy. A moment of intimacy. For making that wish come true beyond my wildest dreams, I want to thank Crystal Wyatt, Robin Himovitz, Lisa Raphael, Jessica Truitt, and Judi Weisbart. To that group I want to add three extraordinary members of the CBB staff—our Director of Development Julia George who has been working on, thinking about and managing this entire event while at the same time managing the complex final stage of our Building Dreams Capital Campaign, our endlessly energetic and passionate Director of Membership Laura Habecker and our brilliant, infinitely patient and deeply wise Executive Director Elizabeth Gaynes.
In thinking about creating a big gathering that would still be intimate, I kept coming back to the dancing. Like all attempts at intimacy, I knew it would be risky. First because I am not a trained dancer. I don’t know the moves. So it could be embarrassing. Furthermore, I didn’t want to be the only one out there dancing. So I asked the leadership team that I just described, and their partners to help plan the playlist. To my amazement, they all agreed! Robin hosted, as only Robin Himovitz can, and we all sat around the table with secret ballots and first listened to about fifteen songs I had chosen. Then we went around the table and everyone suggested more songs. We had a great time that night, and that is how tonight’s playlist was born.
I have to warn you that Jeff Young told me that he had looked at the playlist and thought to himself “were these really Rabbi Steve’s choices? I’m a little surprised!” The answer to Jeff’s question is that while some of them are new to me, I did approve every song we will play tonight. It is going to get undignified. Please don’t worry about that; I’m not worried! After 40 years as rabbi in this community years, and 21 years as rabbi of CBB, I feel that I am among friends. It has been the great honor and privilege of my life to do this job. I think I am ready to look a little foolish. I hope that you will join me out there on the dance floor, so that we can all have a great time together. Come on, let’s dance!