An Excerpt from From Leaders to Leaders: Insights from the Past, Present, and Future of Jewish Leadership
It is a tremendous honor for me to have my latest article, “We Shall Do Our Thing”: Halakhic Ingenuity and the Art of Not Overreacting, published in this important new volume from Da’at Press.
This article is especially personal to me. It begins with an experience from my early years in the rabbinate here in San Diego and follows a path of Torah that stretches from Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh of Livorno, through Rabbi Dr. Yosef Faur zt”l, to my beloved teacher, Mori HaRav Yaakov Peretz zt”l. At its heart is a question that I believe sits at the very center of rabbinic leadership: how do we remain completely faithful to Halakha without allowing that fidelity to become a reason to abandon the very Jews we are called to serve?
I am also particularly proud that this volume includes an article by my wife, Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Halevy, “Leadership Written in Deeds: On Service, Descent, and the Making of a Ḥakham.” It is a privilege for our work to appear together in the same volume.
I am honored to have my work appear alongside contributions from so many distinguished colleagues and scholars, including my dear friends: Rabbi Yosef Zarnighian, Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, Professor Zvi Zohar, Sina Kahen, Asaf Fedida, and Ohad Fedida, among others.
The book brings together an extraordinary range of voices examining Jewish and rabbinic leadership across generations, including studies of Rabbi Ben Ṣion Meʾir Ḥai Uziel, Rabbi Ḥaim Palachi, Rabbi Isaac Ben Oualid, Rabbi Moshe Pardo, Rabbi Shemtob Gaguine, Rabbi Ḥaim David HaLevy, Rabbi Dr. Ratzon Halevi Arussi (may he live and be well!), and others.
This volume was published in connection with the Sephardic Rabbinic Conference, which I had the privilege of attending and participating in alongside many of the colleagues represented in these pages. The initiative was led by my dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Joseph Dweck shlit”a, together with my friends Avi Garson, Ohad Fedida, and Ethan Marcus, whose work has helped create an important forum for serious conversation about Sephardic Torah and rabbinic leadership. I wrote more broadly about my experience at the Conference and what I believe it represents for the Jewish future in an earlier reflection, The Jewish Future, From Where We Stand.
I am attaching an excerpt of my article below, and I warmly encourage you to purchase and read the full volume.
May we merit a rabbinate that knows how to stand firmly for Torah without turning Torah into a weapon against the people it was given to guard. As Rabbi Benamozegh wrote, and as Mori HaRav taught me to live:
“We shall do our thing, and they shall do theirs, between themselves and their Creator.”