By Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel
Retiring has inspired me to think about what I have been doing at Micah these many years. I don’t mean the obvious things: leading prayer, officiating at lifecycle moments, teaching, sermonizing, meeting (many meetings), writing Vine letters, and everything else that might go into a rabbinical job description. I am thinking instead about what Micah is — the true essence of our congregation — and how we have created it together.
I love the succinct description that one of you uses to describe Micah to friends: “a smart, messy place with a soul.” I view that as a compliment, part aspirational, part reality. We try to be smart. We try to be soulful. Messy? You bet! When you are trying something hard, it is going to be messy.
Things that are hard have few, if any, certainties. And we have done a lot of hard things. I wanted the synagogue to be seen as a place of transcendence, so we worked hard to reshape worship. I wanted Jewish life to be seen as both relevant to the world and personal to the soul, so I worked to forge a conversation among ancient Jewish texts, Enlightenment thinkers and our lives in the twentieth and then twenty-first centuries. I wanted Micah to be a place that offers both a full American Jewish life and a Zionist connection to our ancient homeland, so we strove to create an ambiance that felt culturally inviting while forging partnerships with institutions in Israel and leading almost annual Micah trips to our old-new land.
I tried to avoid the usual assumptions about Jewish education, social justice, personal theology and the challenges of today and consider each on its own terms. We examined each one, broke them down and rebuilt them to fit our needs and our times.
At the May temple board meeting (my last one), I offered parting reflections on what I called Micah culture. I shared a quote from Chuck Tanner, the early 1970s Chicago White Sox manager, who was criticized for having no rules for his team.
“I have 25 players,” Tanner said, “and 25 sets of rules.”
This wisdom has guided my thinking on what a synagogue should be. I have been reluctant to adopt requirements for b’nai mitzvah, religious school attendance, membership and the like. There are as many paths to discover and embrace Jewish life as there are Jews. Synagogues should honor that.
I also offered the board these words from Creating Judaism by Michael Satlow, a professor of Judaic and religious studies at Brown University:
“When read within the sprawling conversation comprised by their literature, the Rabbis offer the possibility of seeing truth in a proposition and its opposite, with everything in between. They offer conceptual maps of creative tensions. This is why rabbis themselves have opposed codifications of belief and even halakhah; the rabbinic tradition leaves one uneasy with single, simple answers.”
Later, he adds, “I want my religion as complex and messy as the rest of my life.”
Our texts provide examples of “truth in a proposition and its opposite.” For instance:
The Jewish experience is vast and varied. It spans more than 3,000 years and includes transformative experiences on nearly every continent. Ours is an exploring, probing and creative culture that eschews easy answers to almost every conceivable question. I sought to build my rabbinate on the notion that the synagogue experience should itself be a manifestation of Judaism’s complexity.
My final text for the board came from John Cottingham’s book, On the Meaning of Life. Cottingham writes that the pursuit of meaning requires “the cultivation of an outlook that is affirming of the power of a goodness, trusting and hopeful, and which is focused on the mystery and wonder of existence.” This, he continues, “has been the traditional role of religious systems and practices of spirituality to try to provide a mode of worship capable of being a vehicle for just that package.”
During my 42 years at Micah, I sought for goodness, trust, and hope to be the guideposts for what we aspired to be and to center these values in our communal life of prayer and learning.
As I ponder what we have accomplished at Micah, I wonder if my vision and my reflections in this letter cohere with the experiences that you, who are reading this, have felt. I hope that in some way they do.
I am retiring during a difficult period for many people in our nation and in our congregation. In December 1776, during a dark time in the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.”
We are now living in such a time.
Our core values as Americans and as Jews are being challenged and shredded. A creeping totalitarianism threatens our democracy. Temple Micah can be our rock against the storm, the ballast that enables us to support each other, engage the world, and maintain a culture based on goodness, trust and hope.
I want to offer a word of thanks to my senior staff colleagues: Rabbis Josh Beraha, Stephanie Crawley, Healy Slakman and Samantha Frank, Executive Director Beth Werlin and Education Director Sharon Tash. You are an extraordinary group. How much fun we have had doing hard things, including rethinking High Holy Day worship, Shabbat prayer, b’nai mitzvah education and Jewish learning in general — all while extending Jewish life beyond the walls of Micah. I will miss each one of you individually and I will miss all of you collectively.
This is my final Vine letter as senior rabbi of our great community. Every day at Micah has been an honor and a privilege. This community helped to shape the life of my family and left a deep impression on my soul. I am retiring with no real regrets. I like to think that I gave Micah my very best. As I said at the gala in May, Louise and I will take our leave from Micah for about a year as we settle into the next phase of our lives and I take the new title of rabbi emeritus. You can look for us sometime in the summer of 2026 as we embark on the next steps of our Micah adventure. This congregation will always be integral to us.
Louise and I thank each of you for the many blessings the Micah community has bestowed upon our lives. Blessed are you, Adonai our God, who has brought me to this moment.
Shalom,
Rabbi Daniel G. Zemel
This article was originally published in the June/July/August 2025 issue of the Vine.