I often feel I have the world’s most privileged job – I travel between four different rabbinical schools to work one-on-one in ongoing mentoring relationships with men and women who are preparing to be rabbis and cantors. At each school I create an intimate makeshift space where students can sit with me privately, writing and reflecting on the month’s growth, struggle, insight, challenge. Usually we are slotted for a large institutional classroom, and I scramble to reorganize seminar tables and chairs intended for twenty to make instead a little nook – two chairs and a single table on which I place a small vase of flowers and a favorite mug – my traveling companion through the years I've been doing this.
Last week at 7:50am I hurried into just such an impersonal classroom, a dark cavern with heavy blinds drawn, so heavy they disguised the windows themselves - I had given myself this extra time to create a sacred space. Quickly I dragged tables and chairs to one side in an orderly configuration and separated out a single table, (more…)
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