Mmmmmmmmmmm, Pie

First of all - I am unduly proud of the pretty pie chart that I made using the free utility at the "KIDS ZONE" of the website for the NECS - The National Center for Education Statistics. This is why the Internet was invented, my friends.

A lot of people - kids especially - may have wondered how a rabbi spends his or her time. Many are startled to learn that in and around busy, heavily Jewish metropolitan centers, a congregational rabbi can regularly work upwards of 60 hours a week. But when they realize that most rabbis work on Saturdays, Sundays, and many evenings, they see how the hours can add up. My typical day begins at home, catching up with the news and e-mail, and I've taken to coming into the office before 9:00 AM only on Saturdays, Sundays, and when a meeting (say, over breakfast) has been scheduled. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I'm usually at the office between 10 and 11 AM - sometimes a bit earlier, sometimes a bit later. Many of those days I'm at work until after 9:30 PM because of committee meetings, classes, or services - sometimes past 11:00 PM.

Most children, when asked how they think a rabbi spends his/her time, will answer, "leading services," but a quick look at the chart shows that services account for a relatively small slice - somewhere between five and ten percent - of my weekly work, and that includes preparation. (See "Writing" below for a qualification of that figure.) In that figure I'm not including B'nei Mitzvah services, however: they belong in the largest slice, "Bar or Bat Mitzvah," which is close to a third of the pie (28.5 % or thereabouts).

That may be because I serve a congregation with about 100 B'nei Mitzvah each year, give or take five or ten. Each student in our congregation is required to master a passage from Torah and Haftarah, preparation to compose a D'var Torah (speech based on a teaching from their Torah portion), mastery of the prayer service, and eighteen hours of community service. We work closely with each student and his/her parent(s) to prepare for the milestone, and I supervise much of that effort. I meet with every student individually twice, and help prepare their speeches in a workshop format. Much of my Monday and Tuesday mornings are spent reviewing seventh-graders' D'var Torah assignments. Factor in the time spent meeting with parents about the intricacies of the Bar/Bat Mitzvah service, the homily or charge that I write for every student to deliver from the bimah, the rehearsals in the sanctuary, the meetings and retreats to discuss the "deeper issues" of B'nei Mitzvah, and the service itself, and you begin to see why this responsibility occupies so much of the pie.

The next-largest slice is teaching. I teach various sessions and classes to 6th graders, 7th graders, 10th graders, and adults - on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. Teaching in our Religious School often incorporates hands-on social action projects and fieldwork; so there's no separate designation for these.

Much of the day the congregational rabbinate is a desk job. I hate the phone but love e-mail; assorted administrative tasks take up the third-largest slice of the pie. While I have an assistant who helps with correspondence, photocopying, and scheduling appointments, I type all of my own letters, sermons, lesson plans, and so forth; any many appointments take place by phone or conference-call. The Temple just got me a PDA (Treo 700p) so now I'll never be without e-mail. This is a good thing in my case.

Meetings account for several hours a week - excluding counseling appointments, which I categorized separately. Our staff meets every Wednesday afternoon - alternating between a "full staff" meeting with all the Professional staff of the synagogue one week, just Clergy in a private session the next week. I also meet regularly with my Senior Rabbi and Temple President.

Meetings also denote small groups of combinations of clergy, lay leaders, and volunteer committee members. Board-of-Trustees meetings, Education Council Meetings, various "standing committee" meetings, and many "ad-hoc" committee meetings fill the calendar. For instance, if you want to change the policies for providing Ushers for a Bar Mitzvah service (as we recently did), first you (the rabbi) meet with the administrative staff, then with a commitee of lay leaders (including the Temple President), and then you present any relevant proposals to the Board of Trustees, who passes the resolution or tacitly gives its support (following discussion).

I hate meetings.

You can see that services are an important but proportionately smaller part of what I do. I lead services every Friday evening, Sunday morning, Saturday morning (following Torah Study), and for about a half-hour each on Tuesday and Wednesday. All told, with preparation time included, services usually account for about five hours a week.

However, and this is an important qualifier, around Jewish holidays the time spent preparing for and leading services can multiply many-fold. It is the public or visible aspect of leading services that misleads most congregants to conclude that the bulk of a rabbi's time is spent on the bimah.
The longer a rabbi stays in one congregation, the more s/he finds himself providing Pastoral Counseling for congregants. Many congregants need a while to feel comfortable with a new rabbi before seeking to enter a pastoral relationship. Much of this work is done in the hospital or in homes of bereavement. However, occasionally I am asked to counsel members enduring any kind of emotional or spiritual hardship. For me, knowing when I'm "out of my league" is essential and I usually recommend the services of a qualified therapist (Social Worker, Psychologist, or other specialist) after meeting a handful of times.

Writing refers to professional correspondence, letters of recommendation for students, homilies, Divrei Torah, and full-blown sermons (which are preached infrequently in our congregation in favor of interactive Divrei Torah that incorporate elements of preaching and teaching). I also post a weekly "Morsel" of Torah on our synagogue website for each week's portion. I do not count blogging under this header. Of course, as the High Holidays approach, the amount of sermon-writing balloons to fill my schedule - perhaps upwards of twenty hours a week is spent writing in the weeks leading up to Rosh Ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur.

The amount of time each week devoted to "Life Cycle" varies, depending on who dies and who comes into the world! I do about 5 or so weddings a year, maybe more, but most of these are in the Spring and Summer. I meet with every couple three or four times before the wedding day. I probably have one baby naming or bris ceremony each month, on average. The wildcard is the funeral. In our congregation of about 1,200 families, we learn of the death of a member or the close relative of a member (usually a parent or grandparent) at least once every week on average. Some weeks we'll find ourselves arranging two, three, or more funerals. Some weeks are quiet. I'd say that my senior rabbi and I officiate at about 50 funerals a year, combined.

In New York, a funeral can add up to ten or more hours of unscheduled work to a rabbi's calendar. First there's the phone arrangements that must be conducted with the family and the funeral director. Then we visit the family, usually in their home (sometimes at the synagogue) to discuss the service and to learn about the life of their loved one so that we can compose a proper eulogy. Then we write our remarks and plan the service. All of this takes place a day, sometimes two, before the funeral. The day of the funeral requires that we meet with the family before the service, conduct the service (usually 30 minutes to an hour), and ride with the procession to the cemetery. Which is often in Queens, Brooklyn, New Jersey, Long Island, or Putnam County. Only occasionally do funerals take place in nearby Valhalla, about 20 minutes north of Scarsdale. Including travel time, a funeral can easily take five, six, or more hours out of a day. Then we arrange to be with the family during their shiva period, often an evening or several evenings following the burial. So the modest-sized light blue "Life Cycle" wedge above is not always the most accurate indicator - it's an average "guesstimate."

"Rabbi" means "my teacher" and study constitutes a rabbi's lifeblood. Unfortunately most of us don't find, make, or utilize enough time for it. I try to find a few hours a week to learn some new material. Often this happens in tandem with preparing a class to teach - so that I push myself to master new material as frequently as I can. I also try to go to occasional workshops, lectures, seminars, conferences, and the like, for professional development and simply for the learning. Now, does practicing guitar count if I use the guitar primarily in Religious School and Religious Services?

The smallest slice of the pie is "ECC" which stands for our Temple's Early Childhood Center. I'll surely blog about my adventures with the three- and four-year-old students with whom I spend some Friday mornings leading a little pre-Shabbat workshop (songs, stories, Shabbat blessings and rituals). When available I visit the students who have class on weekday mornings, especially around the holidays when I might come in to sing songs with them at their Passover Seder, or dress up like a lunatic for Purim and scare the bejesus out of them. (One kid FREAKED OUT last year when I came into the room in a full-body Elmo costume. We had to rush me out of the room to get him to stop wailing.)

Thursday is my day off. I'm going to have some pie.