Full Transcript for Rabbi Elyse Wechterman, CEO of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association

pretty good at ignoring it. I thought you were going to say those who allow the emails to pile up or those who zero out their inbox. And I am the first. I have right now, I'm very proud that it's under 1200 that actually, I was in nonstop meetings last week before the holiday, and so it got up to almost 2000. So it was great to get it down. And I know that you aspire to zeroing out, which have no idea what you do it. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: I actually get very anxious if I have more than seven emails in my inbox, which is interesting because I don't necessarily think that I'm a better correspondent than you are. I just think that I discard a lot more quickly and just decide right away that it's not something that I'm going to pay attention to, which is an approach. An approach. And doesn't mean I may miss a lot of things and some opportunities probably. But one of the things that I think we've both learned in our time in our organizations is zeroing in on what we're here to do and not everything that we could do is actually the only way to stay sane in this environment. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, it's so true. I have a couple of, we're sitting in my office, which I'm so lucky to have this lovely office with a lot of windows, but right next to my computer, I have a bunch of stickies right at eye level. And one of them is important over urgent. And I can't remember which coach or consultant told me that very early on in my presidency when I was really feeling ruled by the inbox and said a little bit by emergent things that were rushing toward me, but it had more to do with learning, being new to this position, this level of leadership. And I remember the idiom drinking from a fire hose those first six months. I remember thinking, "Oh, that's real." It's quite literal, that's exactly how I felt. And part of it was learning to discern what is important over urgent. And there even on days when I'm overwhelmed when I just have so much to do and I'll sit down and it's almost a meditation, okay, what is the most important thing for me? I'm not going to get to everything on my to-do list. I was in college. I used to bring a full backpack. My first couple of years of college I would go to the library to study and I would bring a full backpack with all of my homework, and I would... Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: O h, that sounds incredibly unhealthy for your back. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It wasn't such a big schlep, but it was a lot. And by the end of college, I had a much better sense of how much I could get done with the time that I was going to have in the library. And so I do feel like that's part of that learning in the... Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Right. Deciding what's important, what you're going to do, which means sometimes not getting to do the really exciting new, shiny thing that might be really cool, but isn't exactly, it's just a little bit outside your lane or a little bit too far or a little bit too complicated to get there. I do think it means

we miss certain opportunities, but I actually think it means that we're better at maintaining our core. And there was a time early on, I think it was early on in the Trump administration that I felt like we were trying to show up everywhere. I was trying to show up everywhere at every rally, at every protest, at every conversation about what was happening that was wrong in the world. And at a certain point I said, "Okay, I can't do this. I have to just pick two issues. What are the two issues that I know that I, representing an organization of 380 rabbis, care about and want me to be working on?" And so narrowing it down to those were really important. And for your listeners, immigration was clearly one of them, and democracy, the notion of democracy and fair conversation has been the other one that's been consistent. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And we can put in the show notes an incredible Zoom panel that you moderated on the relationship between Judaism and democracy a couple of weeks ago. That was just really such a rich conversation. Yeah, I think that that's a conversation we're having at Reconstructing Judaism as well right now about how to maximize our impact or how to be more impactful and how some of that is, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic where we took on new work because it was what the moment called for. It's because of what our constituents needed. And we also continued to do a lot of the work that we were previously doing just in terms of being pulled in so many different directions called in so many different directions, but really trying to hone in on how can we be most impactful. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: That was the danger of what we started to talk about before that word that became very popular during the pandemic of pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot, pivot to the new thing that needed to be done. But the problem with that word is that you still have to do the things that you've been doing all along. So it didn't mean turn this way and drop the other thing. It meant add on. And I think that's what created a lot of the burnout that we've seen and heard about in the world of rabbi's, in the world of nonprofit leadership, in the world of executive leadership in this country. It's just been a whole new job on top of the existing job, and that continues to be the case. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, absolutely. There are many extraordinary things in the whole new job, I feel- Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Absolutely. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And especially if you're committed to learning. And I do see, but I've said so many times since October 7th, I'm so grateful that I have 10 years of experience, 10 years of relationships, 10 years of learning from my own mistakes, which is not to say I don't keep making them. And because I do have perspective and experience to draw on because it is a whole new job, it became a whole new job. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: So doing less to do what you do better is always good Torah, good learning and doing it more slowly and not rushing to come up with do the next thing, which I know I fall down on a lot. I think I have to have the answer or be out in the front immediately. But the fact is that doing something three days later that's really good is actually better than rushing to do something halfway immediately after an event or something like that. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. So you were reflecting on focusing in on what is most important, and you mentioned the causes that public representation that you discerned were the most important. Do you have reflections on... I'd absolutely want to ask you about what has been most exciting and most rewarding. And in addition to that, I want to ask you to think about what has been the most important. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Redefining the role of rabbi as the person who helps you find the way in to whatever the in is, a richer engagement with Judaism, more meaningful practice, deeper learning, connections with community, whatever that is, but defining the role of the rabbi. And this is true in many religions and many communities across our country and maybe even our world at the moment, but redefining that position of leadership as not the person who has the answer or not the one who's going to show you how to do the thing, but actually is the person who helps you find the way in wherever the in is. And so that's holding a position of welcome and holding a position of openness and not necessarily knowing the destination is actually probably the most important learning. And it's profoundly reconstructionist to say that, to say that we are an evolving civilization and we're going to go where we go because of the needs of the time. But it's also the case that that's true on an individual personal, deeply personal and spiritual level to be able to say, "I see you where you are, and I want to help you take the next step to where you think you want to go," which may or may not actually be where you end up going because everything's changing. That's, I think, a pretty good definition of how I understand the rabbinate and how I understand the Reconstructionist rabbinate. And I don't think I would've thought that had we not had the upheaval of these past nine years for me. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's so beautiful. And I agree with you that it aligns very deeply and emerges out of a Reconstructionist approach. I'm thinking both about the very traditional Jewish understanding that there's a sea of Torah and so that all of us are beginners, all of us are... And I remember when I graduated 25 years ago, knowing how little I knew, and that was part of it, was that it wasn't about mastery, it's just that I knew how to gain access. And this was before Safari, and this was before Google, and so they were old school sources. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: I used to say that graduating rabbinical school meant that you actually knew who to ask. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, who to ask and which sources to go to. But then it maps

on exactly to what we were talking about, about the pace of change that I think it's called Moore's Law, that with the amount of information that is, they used to say it was every two years, and then they pulled it back to every 18 months, it was doubling, and now it's down to 14 months. It's crazy. So it has to be about that because no one can be a master of everything. Even the traditional texts. Safari is making it so much more accessible and available. And that's the stance because the RRC, the Reconstructionist Rabbincal College where we both studied, because it's an educational institution, one of the things that we've really shifted over is that in our instruction is that it's not the professor, the master of information standing at the front of the room imparting their mastery to the student. It is much more about that guide and the presumption that the knowledge is vast, the knowledge is growing, the body of knowledge is collaborative. And so it is a beautiful, it's of a piece of- Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: There's a co-creation, which is really important. But then there's also the access to the deep wisdom because there is deep wisdom. There is deep wisdom. It's not just about what people imagine for themselves today out of whole cloth, right? There is deep wisdom that comes there, but finding ways to access it that are specific to that particular moment in time and space and people, which means that it may not be the next time around. And being open to that requires a lot of discipline. It also requires a great amount of humility, huge amount of humility. And that's the other thing that I think I've learned is that we don't know where we're going. We can never know where we're going. We never did before, but now we are just a lot more aware of that. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Some of us. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Some of us. I feel really aware of that. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Oh boy, every morning, me too. I think also it's about Judaism emerged as a collective and a corporate religion. And the collective is still incredibly important, whether we're talking about dominion and that quorum of 10 that is necessary to perform. I always up hold that up as the example that certain key functions, including the fullest way to mourn our dead, you need other people, or whether it's Klal Yisrael, it's the people Israel, the larger collective. There's that, and that remains absolutely central. And we live in an era that's really, really defined by individuality. And so this is some way of, I think one of the roles of the Rabbi's guide is to remind the individual journeyer that it's not only about the individual journey, and that ideally it's about joining oneself into a larger whole. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: And hopefully connecting up with a much larger narrative that you can put yourself in. Because one of the critiques that I think we share about our contemporary culture is that individualism leads to a sort of self-referential stance where my story is the only story that matters. And we know that that's not a good way to be a human being, let alone a Jew. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's a fiction, it's a false truth. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Nobody got here on their own. And so it doesn't work. And so being able to have the tools to help people see themselves in something larger, in a larger story, finding their way in to the larger story is actually, I think the great opportunity that we can provide people as a counterbalance to that radical individualism. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, I think that's so important. So I asked you about what has been most important. I also want to think there would be through lines, even as other things may emerge because the world will change or because your successor may discern different things. More personally, what's been the most exciting or the most rewarding? Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: When I came into this position, we were still operating in a world where the denominations in Judaism and all the organizations very much had a viewpoint of scarcity and competition. And so my peer organizations, the other rabbinic associations from the other movements, we didn't talk to each other very much. And when we saw one doing something that we thought was really interesting, we would copy it or try to do it the same way, which just created a lot of repetition and replication and not a whole lot of wisdom. And the competition was pretty fierce among rabbinical associations over our proprietary wisdom about how we served our rabbis, and I would say- Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And also that translated into who could be members, who could be dual membership- Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Who could be members, what jobs you can apply for, whether or not you could be a dual member, whether or not you could access a resource in another location. And it was pretty intense for a while. And very quickly, I decided that that was not a really good model. It came about through the work that I've done on rabbinic ethics and accountability, but it's led to so much more than that. And so now we're in a place where we regularly have shared learning opportunities for rabbis across movements. We have resource sharing. I meet regularly with my peers in the other organizations, and we talk about the issues that all of the rabbis are facing because they're all facing the same issues. And that feels like a fairly radical move in the small world of professional associations of rabbis, and I think a larger move in the organizations that are being successful in the Jewish world. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, for what it's worth, because I wear two hats as the seminary head and the movement head. We have it formalized in the seminary world where the seminary leaders, we meet usually bi-monthly and more often as needed via Zoom. And once a year in person, it happens less, it's just less formalized in the movement. We're together in a lot of different places, and we're frequently in communications, but

it's not as structured as what you've just described. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: But with the changes in affiliation, there's changes in affiliation for individuals and families. The same thing is true for congregations. And so there are congregations that are not affiliated. There are rabbis who are not affiliated. There are rabbis and congregations that are affiliated in multiple places. So why wouldn't we want to work together to bring the best of our teaching and the highest level of, I would say, accountability and care in those realms. So that- Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And nurturing of ethical conduct and best practices. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Right. So I'm really proud of that. I'm really proud of the fact that I, this year, my peer, Rabbi Hara Person, who is the chief executive of the CCAR, the Rabbinic Association of the Reform Movement, invited me to attend their convention completely as a guest of hers. It happened to be in Philadelphia, and she invited me to attend as her guest. It happened that it was the week after our convention, and I didn't actually feel that spending two full weeks at rabbinic conventions was the best idea for me personally. But it meant a lot to me that the invitation came across. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. I do see really clearly with my seminary hat on that there are different approaches in how to train rabbis, and there are different visions of what the rabbinate are, and so we'll get these questions sometimes like why are there so many, why are there still distinct seminaries? Why isn't there just one seminary? And how we teach history and the framework of an evolving Judaism as the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people undergirds how we teach everything in the seminary and then how we teach text is different. And I think that, and so there is distinctiveness and in ways that play out in the curriculum, and I think that ways that play out in the rabbinate, and that said, across the board, there are certain things that we really expect and want to be universal. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Absolutely. And some of the work is discerning what needs to be separate and distinct and what doesn't. And that discernment is, I think you're absolutely right. People might say it's the same Torah, but I am absolutely clear from experience that how we teach Torah and how we read Torah is very different than what they do at other seminaries. However, there are plenty of things that we do not need to be distinct. And I'm not going to presume to say about the seminary world, but I'll say in the rabbinic world for example, there is no distinction between a reform conservative or reconstructionist retirement plan. There just isn't. So we have created a cross movement retirement plan that's accessible to all rabbis and all cantors in the Jewish world, which gets them the benefits that are unique to clergy. And it has been another table at which, because we're there for that specific niche thing of retirement plans,

we're still building the relationships across movement that has enabled us to have other conversations and ask each other questions that 10 years ago if I had called up someone in another movement and said, "Can you tell me what your due structure is?" They would've said, "Absolutely not." So now we share that information on a regular basis. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: So you're approaching this really big transition. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Yes. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And the transitions that happen, you're approaching a couple of really big transitions. It happens to be that your younger child's about to graduate from college, so mazel tov, and that's so exciting. But that one you saw coming even as it wasn't inevitable and you could put it onto a calendar. And this one you're driving and you set it into motion. And that has, I think, a different feel and a different... Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: It's scary. It's really scary to say this thing that I'm doing that has challenges and is hard and is rewarding, but is the thing that I know is the thing that I'm going to stop doing and jump off into an unknown. But I feel actually pretty committed to the notion that it's actually healthy to not be doing the same thing for too long. And what too long is could change, is different for lots of different people. But I transitioned out of being a congregational rabbi in order to do this job. And I had been a pulpit rabbi for 13 years, and I left that job with similar trepidation and not very clear what was happening next, and a lot of anxiety about what it would mean if the right thing didn't come along. And then lo and behold, the right thing came along. So I'm leaving with some faith that the right thing will show up or things, it may not be a one thing, will show up, but also with a lot of humility that I'm not such an important part of the story, that it's my story, but it's still not necessarily all about me. And one of the stories that I started to tell earlier is that when I left my congregation, I realized that the congregation had celebrated its 100th birthday while I was their rabbi. And that gave me the absolute obvious truth that I was only one part of their story. I'd been there for 13 years. 13 years is a long time. I made a huge impact on that community. And 13 years is a tiny piece of what is now 111 years. So that's pretty humbling. And the same thing is true here. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association is 50 years old. Sure. Nine years is a bigger portion of 50, but it's still only a small part. And the association will live- Rabbi Deborah Waxman: God willing. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: And the association, God willing, will live long beyond me and do what it needs to do. And I will have been a part of that story, but I'm not the whole story. I think it would be healthy for a lot more people to have that recognition. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: I agree completely. And I'm admiring of your wisdom. For me, it was working on my doctorate, that

became really clear because I was working on a relatively short period of time, mostly the period from the mid 1930s to the early 1960s. And so that included the Red Scare and the House on American Activities Committee in Congress. And there was a rabbi who was really, really involved in all of McCarthy's efforts. And for this brief period of time, he had a tremendous amount of power and he had very, very high stature. And then when that all fell apart, he went into ignominy And it was like, even though I had the historical overview of becoming a rabbi that was over broad swaths of time, and to be looking at a relatively short period of time and see someone rise to meteoric status and then really be forgotten by history and look down upon, and it was like, "Oh, this can happen even without the fall from grace." It is a blip in time. And it's... Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: And I wonder if there's some relationship to the meteoric rise, like those who seek meteoric rise in a certain way. And I think that that's something that we haven't spent a lot of time talking about, but the way women approach leadership, not all women, but the way some women approach leadership is sometimes more collaborative, not necessarily about the meteoric rise of one star, which can then fall flat very quickly. And we know that story. So of course, I like being the center of attention. I'm really good at being up in front of a group of people and comfortable with that. But that should not be the story. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: No, it can't be. For me, it's so much about service and about being a cliquotish a holy vessel. And I remember saying to someone, I want to be a rock star, not because I want to be a rock star, but because it'll be helpful to the organization that I had and the work that I want to do and the impact that I want to have in the world. And it's hard to be the center of attention sometimes it's always a... Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: It is sometimes fun. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. It is sometimes fun- Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Let's be honest, it's really fun. And recognizing that and saying, "Oh, yes, we are human beings that have egos." But recognizing that it also has to be in service of something larger is, again, part of the humility to say, "What am I moving ahead a little bit?" And to also recognize that moving ahead a little bit, moving the needle a tiny bit may be all that we can do. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And it also means that we don't have to do it all ourselves. We already talked about interconnection and the fallacy of individuals, and we're part of something larger, we're part of a movement that has been around for depending on how you count it, a hundred years, but so it will look different when you move on. And whatever comes next will be based on this very strong foundation that you've helped to build and reinforce. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: So, right. And I'm nervous and I'm excited, and I feel like I've made a very big difference for the people that I serve who then serve lots of other people. And I've done my part. I actually believe that the change of leadership is healthy for organizations as well as for the individuals in those positions. Things can get stale. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: For sure. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: So I don't want to get stale. I want to do something different and new. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, it's very exciting. I'm exercising discipline and reflecting on how it was never my intention that most of my rabbinical career was here at the same institution. But one of the reasons that I have been able to stay is because there's been so much growth and it's been in so many different roles. And if it were only in one place, I think it would be incredibly stale. So as we start to wind down, I mean, I think that there's been so much wisdom in what you've offered already. Is there a crystallization? Are there any additional words that you might want to share? You're a rabbinate and your professional work is far from done that at this particular moment. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: What's interesting is how things remain consistent even across time. So one of my favorite verses from our tradition is the line in Pirkei Avot of the Talmud that says, lo alekha hamlakha limor. You are not obligated to finish the task, but neither are you free to desist from it. So there is no expectation that we're going to complete all the things that we set out for ourselves, that we're actually going to get to the place of building a world free, of oppression, of building a world of equity, of building a world of kindness and love and hessed. But we're going to get a little closer because we have no other choice. We have to keep working and moving in that direction. But it's also okay that we aren't going to complete it. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Yeah. Which is maddening. And also it knowing that is what makes us able to both keep going and rest when we need to rest. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: And the other truth that's appeared for me over the course of these nine years is that very early on in the Trump administration, someone said, we need to remember that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon and pace ourselves. But I've actually changed that. I don't think it's a sprint or a marathon. I actually think it's a relay race, and we actually get to pass it and take rest while other people carry on the work. That also feels like an important learning that I've taken from these past nine years. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah, that's great. So what comes next? Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Well, immediately I'm going away for a week with my husband to a yoga retreat in Massachusetts. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yay. How wonderful. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: And then I'm going to be open to discerning what comes next. I feel very strongly that I'm not done, but I want to be, and thank God, I have the privilege to be thoughtful and slow and careful about what that looks like. It will continue to be of service to someone, some things, some group of people, but I don't have to decide. And that actually feels like a really wonderful privilege and opportunity. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Yeah. Well, I didn't do this at the top, but I can do it at the end of the episode. We started school together 31 years ago. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: I know. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: And that's also for me, a big lesson of, boy, how quickly that went. And- Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: Remember how much we didn't know then. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Oh God. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: All we've learned is how much more we don't know. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: It's really so true. It's really so true. And one of the things that I say to students as they wind down their careers here is that you think you're getting, you're fulfilling a vocation, you think you're getting a degree, you're getting training because the rabbinical school is at this intersection of vocational school and a [foreign language 00:36:42] house of study and a graduate school. And what you don't realize is you're into...you're joining this incredible community of rabbis who you will, some who graduated with you or immediately before you, after you, and then others who are far ahead of you or far behind you, but that it's quite extraordinary. So I feel very lucky that our paths have been yoked for more than three decades, and I look forward to seeing what comes next. Rabbi Elyse Wechterman: The most exciting thing is that I continue to be a member of the RRA, so we'll continue to be colleagues and see what evolves. Rabbi Deborah Waxman: Oh, thank you so much, Elyse. And thanks to all of you who joined us today for this conversation with Rabbi Elyse Wechterman. You can check the show notes for more information about today's conversation. I really especially encourage you to listen to the webinar that we mentioned in the show. It's really a fantastic conversation. And you can also find those resources on Hashivenu's website, which is hashivenu.fireside.fm. There are abundant more resources on the website of reconstructingjudaism.org, on ritualwell.org and on evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org. We would be so grateful if you would subscribe, rate and review us in Apple Podcasts or wherever it is that you get your podcasts. I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish Teachings on Resilience.