Rabbis do not really get defrocked, but some are unsuited. I’m sure you’ve known a few.

I thought I was suited quite well, thank you, but as we Jews say, “Humans plan and God laughs.”

This is my site. My pulpit. The one place on Earth I can say what I want. If you do not like it, one click and you are atta here. So if you stay, it is by your own choice.

Since I was defrocked, I’ve have very few opportunities to express all of the truths that seem so self-evident to me. Rabbis have big egos. We see things that appear self-evident, and we feel God demands we express what we see to others.

Godbless the Internet. Here I am reborn.

Are you really a defrocked rabbi?

I was ordained at a major American rabbinic seminary. (more…)

Back somewhere around 1996 or ‘97 I wrote the story of how I went from being a functional working rabbi to my current “defrocked” state. (more…)

I don’t know what strange karmic vibration has been unleashed in recent weeks, but after not being invited to do the D’var Torah thing for mucho moon, suddenly the requests have been inundating. Here’s my most recent for Parshat Va’eyra:

This is my visual aid. (said while taping 4 pieces of paper to the lecturn, each with one large Hebrew letter spelling out the Tetragramaton: Yod, Hay, Vav, Hay) If this were truly a synagogue of the 21st century, I’d have it projected big time in PowerPoint slides. But since this is a synagogue of the 58th century, we don’t do electronics on Shabbat. We’re still stuck in paper. (more…)

About once every 2 or 3 years, one of my local rabbinic colleagues asks me to be rent-a-rabbi on Shabbat morning when he or she is otherwise engaged. Here’s my most recent:

“This is the saga of Ytzkhak ben Avraham. Avraham sired Yitzhak.” So begins our Torah for this Shabbat.

Now when I was a student at the Hebrew Union College many moons ago, one of the courses we were required to take was something called Homiletics. Do you know voss maint dos Homiletics? (more…)

The English translation of practically every Jewish liturgy ever published renders “Baruch ata Adonai, Eloheynu, melech ha-olam, asher kidshanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzvivanu” as “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who sanctifies us with his commandments and commands us…” Then as feminist conscious and women rabbis and teachers emerged, we emended that a bit, changing King to Ruler or Sovereign and circumlocuting around the masculine pronouns. It seems to me that we ought to continue this thrust toward a full new translation of this translation.

Back when I was in rabbi school (I know, it’s called ‘yeshiva’), a grad-fellow instructor (who’s name I don’t recall) used to insist that “Baruch” should not be translated as “Blessed,” since the act of blessing implies that the bless-or has a higher status than the bless-ee. The most notable example of bestowing a blessing is a king blessing his subject; subjects never bless a king. (more…)

Traditional Jewish prayer — davennen — is done with a few dance steps. This bit of choreography involves certain place in the daily prayer where you bow, where you take a few baby steps forward or backward, where you rise on to your tiptoes. And a rhythmic swaying — shukkling — where the body joins in to the prayer. These dance moves punctuate the prayer and transform the prayer from a wooden recital of words from the book into an act of the whole body. (more…)

Forget about Reform, Conservative or Orthodox. Rabbis really come in two flavors: dog and cat.

Both dogs and cats are wonderful pets. But they differ from one another.

Dogs are loving and loyal. When you return home, your dog does not care if you are Charles Manson or Mahatma Gandi. (more…)

It has been six months since this space has changed. Back then the energy and creativity that might have gone to keep this space fresh and worth returning to was focused onto Internet Haggadah. In case you haven’t yet read the posts below, this was a project I began several years ago: creating a Passover Haggadah that was clear, concise, direct to the point, (more…)

If you’ve been reading this space, you’ve seen the email from my friend r., urging me to “re-frocked just a bit” by creating something rabbinic and literary.

So I have. If you want to see it, just go to www.hagada.com.

But wouldn’t you rather read the backstory first:

Maybe r. is just a little bit psychic.

I’ve been leading Passover Seders (I know, “Sederim” is the correct form) for almost 40 years. With few exceptions, I’ve used the traditional hagada. The traditional hagada is somewhat obtuse. It benefits greatly with a brief but pointed running commentary, (more…)

So, up to this point, I’ve considered this site a work in progress. Now it’s ready for prime time. Such as it is. I mean, people are not sitting on street corners with baited breath, awaiting the latest rants and ramblings from Defrocked Rabbi, now are they?

But, I did send a note to two “not-defrocked” rabbi friends whose replies told me that this is now a real blog.

So here’s a bit of the back story:

I had been thinking of creating Defrocked Rabbi for several years. I have a first draft all laid out in lovely HTML in my “Old My Documents” folder somewhere. Somehow, the last kick to put it online never quite kicked in. I think I thought that once I put it up, what will I add? This was way before the big wave of blog-dom had crashed the proverbial information technology coast.

Then a few weeks ago (more…)