I understood Steven's message. And something in my soul resonated with those verses from First Samuel. I didn't know whether my heart surgery had been the cause or simply the catalyst for my quest for spiritual knowledge, but my wish to find answers to the big questions — I came to discern through the help of my Jesuit friend — was, below the surface, actually a desire to connect with God in a direct and personal way.
Was God calling me, or was I calling God?
Within days, I'd ordered course catalogues from the three major non-Orthodox rabbinical schools (I knew I would never fit into the traditionalist Jewish world). I read their lists of courses — Bible, theology, Talmud, liturgy, midrash. I imagined devoting five years of my life to studying sacred texts, and it felt right. I started to think about religion — Judaism, in my case — as the concretization of metaphysical ideas. I saw its rites, rituals, and ceremonies as tactile expressions of spiritual realities. For me, philosophy and literature could only go so far as conduits to the sacred. Religion, by its very nature, was a response to transcendence. And it was more direct, overt, and transformative.
I was accepted to rabbinical school and I chose to enroll in the Reform movement's seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. When I finished my book and my year in Cambridge came to an end, I said goodbye to Steven and Arjun and traveled to Sitka, Alaska to attend a writer's symposium and workshop my novel. A month later, I packed my bags and flew to Jerusalem to begin my studies.
Today, twenty-five years since those experiences, I often wonder whether I still hear the call. There are times when I think I do, such as when I as a visitor hear a mediocre sermon and want to leap out of the pew and deliver a better one from the pulpit myself. And there are times when I most decidedly do not, like when I hear another horror story about a rabbinic colleague whose contract wasn't renewed by his or her board, or who has simply burned out. I am less naïve now about life and about the reality of being a contemporary rabbi. Yet the coal still smolders. And I am no less hungry.
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