Rabbis Aren't Just Bookworms: They've Seen It ALL! #shorts

I think a lot of people assume the rabbi's the last person that they would want to speak to when something unfortunate is going on in their life, something that they wouldn't be proud of cuz they assume the rabbi is you know only sitting over a Gemara all day and what will he do with this? A seasoned rabbi, not talking about someone with 30, 40 years, but a rabbi who's in the field and connecting with his congregants probably has seen much more than your friends, much more than another type of mentor. Why am I not going to go to the rabbi? The rabbi's understanding of many of the issues going on in the community is much greater and society and the culture is much greater than the average person. When we're trying to train rabbinical students to be prepared for a range, I mean a very wide range of possible issues and challenges that are brought to their attention, very often the rabbi will say to himself, "Why are you coming to me?" And you know, to change train them first of all, as Rabbi Goldberg said, not to not to look at them and say, "Oh my gosh, I've never heard anything like this before. That's That's crazy." And if somebody's really, you know, if they want to know, you know, what, you know, I I can't decide where to get pizza tonight. I think, you know, I think you can actually say to them, you know, "I'm not really sure that I have much to offer here and and and in case you do." But if somebody's coming and they're they're they're not necessarily even asking a question, but want to talk about a particular topic and you're saying to yourself, "Why Why are they coming to me?" I know that Rabbi Pinner has offered some a whole range of possibilities why people would be coming to the rabbi other than, you know, the most obvious reasons to you know, to because they're seeking halakhic counsel. >> And many more than the rabbi fixing it. Sometimes they hope, in the case of this example, that the rabbi's going to fix the problem. Very often I think that, you know, you learn this after that we all have those things. When someone comes to us and they're like, "Okay, how am I going to fix this?" Very often they're not really coming to the rabbi to fix it. And I think that was one of the hardest things for me to learn as a young rabbi. I remember a situation where a woman shared with me an abusive situation with her husband. Um but she didn't she didn't want me to reach out to the husband. At the time I thought, as a young rabbi, that if I could just speak to the husband, I could solve the problem. But of course that's not true either. What she really needed was someone she could talk to and someone she could cry to. And I think that that's something that you really learn as a rabbi and something that sometimes only a rabbi could do. Maybe a good friend. Not everything could be shared with a good friend. That the role of the rabbi is simply to be there for somebody, even if the problem can't be solved, can't be fixed. That simply being someone that somebody checks in on you, someone who knows what's going on checks on you. And that was a really important lesson to learn. If I could highlight a different reason that people come to rabbis that maybe we need to be more sensitive to be able to see through