Am I Missing My Calling?

It was my first year in the rabbinate. Ron, a local Minister I had just met, asked me: “When did you receive your calling?” I was tongue-tied, with just the vaguest idea of what he even meant. When people would ask me back then “When did you decide to become a rabbi?” I would jokingly say: “I haven’t decided yet.”

Ron’s question was foreign, yet familiar. Ministers are expected to be called by God because one cannot enter a sacred vocation without being invited first. Divinity schools all have web pages exploring questions like “How do you know you’ve been called to ministry?” And each minister has a story to tell. One told me she had received her call as a teenager, when, during a church service, a voice told her “You should do this.” And so she did.

Rabbis don’t talk this way. Let me explain why.

Undoubtedly, multiple Jewish sources support this idea in the abstract. In the Tanakh, when Mordechai calls on Esther to save the Jewish people he says “Perhaps you have come to this royal position for a time such as this?” In other words, Esther’s destiny was to save the Jewish people. The 12th-century Sefer Chasidim explains that each Jew has a unique Torah insight to add to the world, one known only to them. The founder of Chasidut, the Baal Shem Tov, said that “each soul that God sends down to this world has a mission that must be completed.” Each of us has a unique purpose in life.

However, the beginning of Parshat Lech Lecha offers an important insight into the concept of calling. Abraham is abruptly chosen by God to build a great nation and transform the world. No background to this choice is offered. This is puzzling. As Rabbi David Tzvi Hoffman put it: “Why doesn’t the Torah hint at all as to why Abraham was specifically chosen by God?

Even the earliest commentaries struggle with this question. Midrashim tell the stories of young Abraham, who searches for God, destroys his father’s idols, and defies the wicked King Nimrod. They portray him as someone deeply deserving of divine revelation, a man in search of God who eventually receives His call. They answer this question by writing a prequel to the Biblical story.

Other commentaries focus on the biblical text, trying to explain the seemingly random choice of Abraham. The Maharal of Prague argues that the very randomness of it indicates that God’s choice of Abraham was unconditional, a matter of God’s will; it was not based on any merit, and therefore is unchanging. God chose Abraham because he desired to choose Abraham.

A dramatic answer to this question is found in the Sefat Emet. He explains, based on the Zohar, that God’s call went out to all of humanity; Abraham was the only one to answer.

In other words, Abraham wasn’t called by God because he was exceptional; he was exceptional because he accepted God’s call. To challenge isn’t to hear the call; it’s to have the courage to pursue it.

Perhaps this is why Rabbis don’t seek out a divine sign before joining the rabbinate. Like every calling, all those who want to take part should come and take part.

Yet even so, Ron’s question has always bothered me. To pursue one’s mission is the highest religious obligation; so why don’t we ever think about our calling?

Because we are too comfortable. Contemporary society can point to remarkable successes in science, technology, and economics. What humanity has achieved in the last 300 years is nearly miraculous. But it has led to spiritual mediocrity.

Success has heightened our natural craving for stability and comfort. Vulnerability frightens us. Ironically, because life is generally quite good, we are less capable of coping with challenges than previous generations who endured more. No one wants to make dramatic changes when life is perfectly balanced.

Comfort can dull the soul; it is far easier to pursue wisdom passionately when sleeping on the floor and eating bread and water. Kierkegaard called the bourgeois of his time “philistines,” a derisive way of pointing out that their supposed sophistication actually turned them into crude bores. As he put it, “The philistine tranquilizes himself with the trivial.” Materialism is obsessed with maximizing even the smallest detail, improving on things that need no improvement. And in the chase to find the best of everything, we forget what our true mission is.

Rabbi Soloveitchik adopts this critique. He writes that the “The philistine personality leads a narrow shut-in existence, focusing all his efforts on a single object: self-preservation. . .” This, he explains, is not about the specific dictates of the Torah; it is about self-absorption. One may have great piety, but still be a philistine.

We are all “philistines” in this sense. It would be difficult for us to walk away from home, leaving jobs and friends behind.  And that’s why most people don’t pick up and go on a journey when God asks.

But Abraham did.

In the last 13 months I have met quite a few “quitters,” people who left behind their jobs and businesses to devote themselves to others. A young man who left his job in New York to return to his army unit. A middle-aged man in the food business who flew to Israel and ended up never leaving; he is now spending all of his time helping children affected by trauma. Two Israeli women who dropped everything to establish centers for evacuees. And these are just examples; so many others have done the same.

One of these “quitters” is a woman who left an excellent job in hi-tech to care day and night for the children orphaned by this war. She is getting new job offers regularly; people advise her to consider them, because her project is nearing a turning point, and she can now hand it over to others.

But she won’t consider job offers right now. She had battled cancer just a few years ago; and she is certain that she was given extra years in order to fulfill her mission.

That is a true calling.

All of these remarkable “quitters” heard God’s call and immediately said yes. They are Abraham’s disciples, who know that in life there is a choice between embracing your mission or being a mediocrity.

They chose their mission.  And the rest of us have to ask ourselves:

Am I missing my calling?

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.