Elu V'Elu for May 2006

Rabbi Gary A. Glickstein

This May is the 32nd anniversary of my ordination as a Rabbi. When I was called to the bimah at the historic Isaac Mayer Wise Synagogue in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. Alfred Gottschalk, the President of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, whispered one question into my ear: “Are you committed to serve God, the Torah and the Jewish People as a Rabbi in Israel?” I filled with joy and awe as I answered, “Yes, I am.” Dr. Gottschalk embraced me and shook my hand. I received my semicha, my document of ordination, and became Rabbi Gary Glickstein.

The title comes with great privilege. I share in some of the most intimate and touching moments in people’s lives. I am blessed to celebrate the birth of new life, to help guide someone choosing to become a Jew, to lead a Bar or Bat Mitzvah candidate as he or she reads Torah for the first time, to officiate at the sanctification of love through marriage. I am approached to do mitzvot many times each day. I am able to help bring relief and some joy to so many in need of a simple act of kindness. All this because I wear the mantel of Rabbi.

That title comes with great responsibility as well. I am asked to stand with Jews in their most painful and desperate moments. In sickness, in crises, in death, in fear, in pain - I am often called to be there as support. Sometimes I am overwhelmed and depleted by the onslaught of a series of these draining and trying moments.

This Pesach season was such a time in my life. I found myself withdrawing from a number of my regular ongoing activities. I was enervated, saddened and physically weakened.

During this time I hope I did not neglect your needs. I trust I returned your calls and emails and requests. If I did not, please forgive me and try to reach me again.

This is the season of my ordination. It is Spring. The energy, hope and joy of my life and my consecrated work has begun to return and give me renewed strength.

This week alone I celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, wedding, three new births, a conversion and news of a number of recoveries from illness.

Seven years ago, May, 1999, I received a degree of Doctor of Divinity. In that document the Faculty and the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion wrote that I was a “consecrated Rabbi who has been a source of inspiration for the spiritual growth of Temple Beth Sholom of Miami Beach, Florida, who brings to his rabbinate a rich heritage of devotion and whose hallmark of his life embodies the spirit of civic and religious commitment, whose dedication to Israel has been expressed through words and deeds, generosity and philanthropy, and who in his manifold offices has worked tirelessly on behalf of his congregants and colleagues.”