Secret Max

I have been to graduate school 3 times. Most people only know about the 2nd (MA in Educational Linguistics) and the 3rd (Law). This post is about the 1st – an incomplete MA in Rabbinic Literature.

I was 22, I had just returned from an extended stay in Israel, and I thought I might like to be a rabbi. I was attracted to rabbinical school because of the intellectual course of study. I loved reading the Talmud in classical Aramaic and mediaeval Hebrew and arguing points of Jewish law. I loved my philosophy class and bewildering my classmates with my unorthodox views.

But I had to leave because I could not handle the religion. I had kept kosher for 6 months; as I was semi-vegetarian at the time, all it meant for me was giving up shellfish. It didn’t do anything for me spiritually, so at the end of the 6 months I went out and had a lobster. All of my classmates had already declared their intentions to become rabbis; with the contrast I realised that I simply did not believe enough to go through with any of it.

If I had completed my MA and had not gone on to become a rabbi, all I would have been able to do with my education would have been to teach Hebrew school. I was already doing that, and I already felt like an imposter.

Yet I was not an imposter. I was teaching kids ages 12 to 18 to look at the Bible from a modern perspective and to question and explore how we might understand it in a 20th century context. I was also teaching modern Israeli history and politics and trying to give them a broader view. I discussed philosophy with my 12th graders. All of it fit into the Jewish tradition of education.

But I had to quit. I recognised that I was losing my religion and that pretty soon I would be teaching apostasy. I didn’t think that would be the right thing to do so I left my teaching job and my studies and started to think about what else I might like to do.