Accepting Our Imperfections

Occupying a grand house on the Esplanade, the doesn’t look like a religious institution, and that’s fine with Rabbi David Schuck, who values the intimacy that the house fosters during the synagogue’s regular Shabbat services.

In the second of my interviews with Pelham clergy, Schuck sat down with me in his book-lined office on the second floor of the house, where I found him listening to Schubert lieder early one morning.

Schuck, 38, grew up in Mount Laurel, N. J. and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan in 2004. He’s been the rabbi at the Jewish Center, a Conservative congregation, since 2005.

Shuck and his wife Tali Aldouby-Schuck, who works at a private academy in Greenwich, live in Pelham. They have two sons, Noam and Nadav.

On the center’s website, you joke that you didn’t think seriously about becoming a rabbi until it was clear that you had no future in baseball. How would you describe the path that led you to the Pelham Jewish Center?

Growing up, I went to Hebrew school, but I wasn’t particularly religious. But I felt deeply connected to the Jewish community. That’s what led me to go to Israel. When I was 18, I went to Israel for a kind of “gap” year before college, and I lived in a kibbutz there. Judaism became a very important part of my identity.

When I first came to this synagogue, people were nervous that they were getting an Orthodox rabbi. But I’m not Orthodox. I don’t believe that the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is the literal word of God written down by Moses. I believe they’re a human document—a sacred document, but a human document.

How do you define your role as the spiritual leader of the Pelham Jewish Center?

I never really felt deeply connected to rabbis. Although I loved my rabbi when I was growing up, I found many rabbis to be self-referential. There is such a distance between rabbis and their congregations. As I got older, I learned some of it was the person, not the profession.

I try really hard to cultivate a sense of modesty as a principle of my religious life. That’s a very important part of my attempt to connect with God, to be humble. During our Shabbat services, I don’t sit outside of the congregation, and I don’t wear special robes.

In addition to your work here, you’ve served on the Pelham Guidance Council board. Was your work with PGC the reason the documentary was shown at the center a couple of months ago?

No, that was separate. I thought it was really important to show the movie and make a contribution to the larger community. We’re trying to figure out a way to contribute to the larger Pelham community. The more our communities of faith work together, the more we’ll find out how much we share, and we’ll also be better able to understand our differences.

(pastor at the ) and I did a pulpit exchange (in which each man preached at the other’s service), and things like that are really important if we’re to grow as a community.

And yet, isn’t there concern among some Jews that the Jewish community in America has become so acculturated that it’s at risk of losing its identity?

It may be true from a sociological standpoint that the more we interact, the more we are likely to lose our Jewish identity, but that doesn’t mean the proper response is to seclude ourselves.

Being in America has offered us a way to enrich our Jewish identity in ways that are unprecedented in our history, and if your reaction is seclusion, you’re going to construct a community that is extremist and not going to contribute to the larger community.

Where you see this is in Israel, where there are ultra-orthodox communities that view the state of Israel as a secular institution that they want nothing to do with. The toll of this community on the state is profound.

So to me, part of what it means to be religious is to have an openness to other cultures. For instance, you have the golden age of Spanish Jewry in the Middle Ages. There was an exchange of ideas with the larger community at the time, which happened to be Muslim.

You’ve spent a lot of time in Israel over the years. Have you been there during particularly troubled times?

Yes, I was in Israel in 2001-2002 at the height of the second intifada. It was awful. There were buses or cafes being blown up a couple times a week.

We’d say, “We’ll eat in this café because there isn’t a lot of glass,” or “We’ll sit behind this column and maybe we’ll be protected.” Realistically, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference, but it was a way of telling ourselves that we had some control.

Everyone there knows somebody who has been hurt or killed in a bombing or in a war. It’s such a small country, the size of New Jersey. It never felt distant.

You’ve said that writing a good sermon is a difficult task—you want it to be meaningful and sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear. Is there a theme that’s particularly important to you?

We have to be kind to ourselves. We hold ourselves often to impossible standards. I think part of my work is to remind people that to be human is to be imperfect. One of the interesting differences between Christianity and Judaism is that we don’t have a figure of perfect conduct (like Jesus). All of our Biblical heroes have flaws. That’s a theological statement.

How so?

All of Jewish life is premised on the fact that we can repent. That’s the ideal religious state in Judaism—a flawed human who is constantly working to become a better person.

We need to learn how to live in a state of great turmoil and darkness, and if religious leaders don’t help people figure out how to do that, we’re offering nothing.