Reflections of a Rabbi with DDSD*

by Rabbi Sim Glaser

Summer is a time for daydreaming, and has always been the forgiving season for this unrelenting mental voyager who could never keep focused as a child in school because his mind was ever scouting the bigger picture, whether beyond the classroom or outside the box, shifting mercilessly from subject to subject not unlike a long run-on sentence.

During the Minneapolitan steamy months of mosquitoes and road construction, when the clergy schedule is less demanding, a rabbi is blessed with the opportunity to consider the extent to which his own congregational “Spanish castles” are being assembled.

So I sit and reflect upon our 15 mentors over at Jefferson school spending several hours a week making a difference in the lives of our neighbors’ children; how the school principal comes up behind me at a recent conference on faith and education, putting his arm around me and says: “Here is one of my partners.” Pretty cool… I’m not even teaching over there, but I shepp nachas because my flock is!  Then I daydream about getting 100 of us, all ages, over there.

I consider the volunteers raising the roof to build our Habitat house through funding and sweat, and then daydream about an entire row of houses Temple has subsidized and assembled; a beacon of light to the social justice-infused Reform Movement arriving in Minneapolis for its Biennial convention a year from November.

I think about working with my many conversion candidates eager to embrace this phenomenally vibrant religion, and daydream about how excited they will be to be drawn by you into the warm embrace of Temple friendships, learning and celebrations.

My mind leaps to a joyous and successful Religious School year, completed with lots of song and rejoicing, on top of their Hebrew; super 9th grade retreats; a rapidly growing TIPTY, with our kids assuming regional leadership positions. And then I daydream about our kids becoming far more literate and knowledgeable Jews by the time they graduate high school because their secondary Jewish learning takes second seat to nothing. When I am frustrated at not having sufficiently stimulated a congregation of Jewish learners, I daydream about a Lehrhaus Judaica, an uptown campus of sorts, right here, that draws in hundreds of thirsty seekers of Jewish truths.

When I grieve over our Israel in turmoil, and more selfishly about our children being denied a life-altering, Jewish-identity-enhancing summer in Israel, I daydream about shalom.

I fret and kvetch about the need for a liturgy that speaks to the modern religious spirit (yes, Virginia, there is one), and stimulates worshipers to make each erev Shabbat their time to come and spend a blessed hour of inspiring meditation. So I daydream about composing and reproducing our own magnificent Temple Israel Siddur, replete with a multiplicity of creative, varied prayer experiences.

It is so hard to concentrate sometimes! And so I dream on. My third grade teacher was the one adult in my life who understood that if the current reality isn’t necessarily grabbing you, don’t assume it’s your fault. And just because you dream doesn’t mean you’re slow. Act on dreams and create new realities the way you see fit, she would say.

My greatest wish, of course, would be that you all dream along with me in the years ahead.


*Daydream Surplus Disorder