The day the rabbi was fired

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California — Every now and then, I think about the morning, some fifteen years ago, when I experienced something all too familiar to many Americans: termination from a long-held position.

Though I had no verifiable notice, I just knew they were coming to fire me.

Sitting apprehensively at my cherry wood desk, surrounded by high mahogany shelves lined with holy books, art sculptures, and bronzed photographs of myself with bishops, baseball greats, Congressional leaders, and local media celebrities, I waited for them.   Nearly fifteen years at the institution, a citadel of religious influence and history, my career was about to evaporate into the mist of my unyielding isolation and insecurity.

The rabbi’s study of “The Temple” in Cleveland was a national seat of power and prestige.  Everyone in town knew me, many sought me out.  Sports franchise owners had confided to me in this office.  The African-American mayor had sat across from me, asking for Jewish support and money as he sought reelection.  I had spoken by telephone more than once from this office with the Commissioner of Baseball.  The Governor of Ohio had called me to offer congratulations on the day I ascended to the position I was now about to lose.

There was a bright-colored, luminous photograph of my two daughters.   It was the picture of captured elation and airiness.  They smiled out to me with bright eyes and confidence.  The older was nineteen and the younger, sixteen.

All my daughters ever wanted to do was to revel in life and learning and love within a modicum of privacy.  They each wanted their adolescent romantic adventures to be free of the burden of being “the rabbi’s daughter.”  They had grown up in the public glare of my repute and had suffered the intrusiveness and social judgment of so many strangers in restaurants, department stores, and movie theaters.

My daughters equally enjoyed and despised their notoriety as a result of my work and my cultivation of community attention.  They would suffer embarrassment and derision now at school, at parties, and their relationship with me would be undoubtedly altered as they struggled with the conspicuous coming fallout.

My visitors that morning were at once solemn and brisk.  While I knew that there was no specific issue with me, such as a financial transgression, or a personal violation of ethics or standards, I nonetheless had sensed what was coming during what had been an excruciatingly long and unsettled weekend of waiting and anticipating.

I was familiar to the community and active in the media as a newspaper columnist and radio and television guest—some in the synagogue would say too active in outside activities, whether they inured to the temple’s benefit or not.

I knew all five of these people very well, four men and a woman.  I had blessed their children or grandchildren at bar mitzvah ceremonies, buried their dead, and consecrated their doorways with mezuzah posts.  One had traveled to Israel with me during a family pilgrimage; he was the current president, a longtime friend to this point, and the local Jewish funeral director.

He read a prepared statement and handed me a Separation Agreement.

No one else said a word during this transaction though they all stared at me with uncommon interest and, I think, a certain morbid curiosity.  I stood up and walked around the desk and towards them as they also rose.  I shook the hands of each one of them and said, “Thank you.”

Only one of them, also a younger gentleman who was being groomed for higher synagogue office, seemed distressed and muttered an almost inaudible “Good luck” to me.

As I walked out the door of my study and through the foyer and then the lobby and then into the brisk air of the parking lot towards my car, I realized that the temple building had been cleared of all other staff and employees.

I entered the vehicle, stared briefly at the parking sign in front of it (RESERVED FOR RABBI) and turned the key in the ignition switch.

My throat was parched and my heart was pounding with hurt leavened with a vague and a peculiar sense of, yes, exhilaration. I pulled out, unable to even look at the architecturally striking temple building and drove off to the most important, painful, and redemptive journey of my life.

I shudder to think how little use I’d be to anyone but for this journey.

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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer.  You may comment to him at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com