faith – Finding Ourselves In The Bible

52 years ago, I was part of the largest ordination class in HUC history. We were a class of 54 all male, all white, straight (at least to outward appearances because an out gay would have been expelled), almost all of us between 27 and thirty years old. Most of us entered HUC straight out of college to prepare for careers as (for the most part) pulpit rabbis.

Our ordination ceremony was formal and impersonal. Except for a few liturgists, our participation was minimal. When they called our names, we walked across the stage, heard several seconds of kind words from President Alfred Gottschalk, who then conferred the priestly blessing of ordination on us. We received our beautiful ordination diplomas and walked back to our seats.

What a sharp contrast there was between that ceremony – meaningful as it was – with the ordination-graduation exercises Vickie and I attended on March 27, 2026, at the Academy of Jewish Religion. We were there because our Cantorial soloist at Temple Beth Shalom in Vero Beach, FL, Kelly Onickel received ordination from the academy as both a rabbi and a cantor. Kelly and I worked together last year when I served as Temple Beth Shalom’s interim rabbi. Because her support did so much to make my year successful, I wanted to be there to share this pinnacle moment in her life.

The ordination class was much smaller than mine: three men and seven women became rabbis and cantors. Throughout the proceedings, which began at 2:00 p.m. and ended at around 6:30, each candidate received extensive recognition and affirmation. The ordainees differed in age and sexual orientation. Beyond that, it seemed like none of them was there to prepare for a profession. All had either been working in the Jewish community, and most were not moving on to different jobs by virtue of their ordination.

Kelly Onickel, for example, had worked as a cantorial soloist for many years before and during her years of study. She had already served Temple Beth Shalom for two years, and she plans (at least we all hope she plans) to stay with Temple Beth Shalom for the foreseeable future.

In other words, the primary purpose the students studied at AJR was to deepen and intensify an already deep and intense connection to and desire for Jewish learning. The care the students clearly feel for one another was heartwarming. They marveled at each other’s journey, and they were genuinely thrilled with all their academic and personal milestones. They love one another.

To be sure, some deep friendships developed among my classmates back in the day, but the truth is we were also competing with one another for what felt at the time like a limited number of jobs.

The ten individuals ordained at AJR have such idiosyncratic careers, two as army chaplains, one as a hospital chaplain, one as a pastoral counselor, and some in congregations. It struck me that none of them seemed in competition with any of the others.

Perhaps the starkest difference between the two ceremonies was the connection between the faculty and the graduates. To be sure some of us back then developed special relationships with professors. But for the most part, we viewed the faculty as a set of obstacles we had to get over, under, around, or through, to receive that coveted rabbinical ordination diploma.

By contrast, the AJR faculty knew each student and his or her story intimately. They were fellow travelers and friends with the students on their journey to deeper Jewish knowledge. It was a beautiful sight to behold. The way the Dean and CEO of the seminary, Rabbi Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, could speak with deep knowledge and genuine affection about each of the ordainees was beyond heartwarming.

To witness a ceremony so warm, so personal, so loving, and so affirming of the long journey each of the ordainees has completed was beyond inspiring.

So, I wish more than a hearty Mazel Tov to Kelly and her classmates. I extend my gratitude to them and to the AJR faculty for a truly inspiring day that I shall always remember.

My Conch on the pulpit of Temple Beth Shalom, Vero Beach, on Rosh Hashanah

One of my always on file petitions to the Eternal One is, “Please, God, no deaths in the days before Rosh Hashanah because I am too busy preparing for the Days of Awe, Amen.”

As has happened several times over the years, God recently gave this prayer a, “No.” It saddened me to learn Gary Hodgkin’s, a congregant at Temple Beth Shalom in Vero Beach, FL, which I am serving this year as Interim Rabbi, had died.

I met with his widow Megan who shared they were both marine biologists and that they had met and gotten to know one another through their work. I had never met a marine biologist, so I asked, “What specifically do you focus on?”

“Conch,” she answered, a subject about which I knew nothing.

“And what do you do with these ‘conches,’” I asked?

“I grow them,” she answered modestly.

As we continued to talk, I learned that these magnificent shells with the eerily beautiful pink interior are pronounced, “Conk” and the plural is pronounced the same way, “like sheep,” she added.

A bit of research after I returned home revealed that professionally, Megan Hodgkins was Dr. Megan Davis, the world’s foremost expert on Conch. She is a research Professor at Florida Atlantic University and Principal Investigator at their Queen Conch Lab. She sets up conch aqua farms at several places along the Florida Keys and the Caribbean Islands. In these laboratory farms she and the many scientists she trained cultivate and grow conch embryos.

When they are sufficiently mature, she introduces them back into the ocean. There they continue to mature and feed on plankton which cleans up the seagrass and helps reverse some of the horrible ways we humans have polluted the ocean waters and grossly overfished Queen Conch for their meat and their beauty.

Dr. Davis’s work intrigued me, and I asked if might include some of what she had taught me in the Rosh Hashanah sermon I planned to deliver on how we humans have done a terrible job of fulfilling God’s charge in Genesis’ Creation Story to oversee and exercise prudent responsibility in caring for this planet God has entrusted to our care.

In agreeing, Dr. Davis helped re-steer my sermon from a lament of our failure to a hopeful concrete example of how we can reverse the ravages to the environment we humans have perpetrated.

When we met a second time in my office, Dr. Davis presented me with a gift I shall always cherish: A magnificent Queen Conch shell of my own. I placed it on the Bima in front of the congregation on Rosh Hashanah, and now it sits proudly on display in my office at the Temple. It will always symbolize for me that each of us can do something to make our world a better and more beautiful place.

Of course, I am very sorry for the reason I met Dr. Davis, but I hope it comforts her to know how her sacred life’s work of repairing the oceans eco system inspired the congregation on Rosh Hashanah.

Personally speaking, it will always inspire me to try to fulfill the essential message of this Holy Day season: to continually strive to do more to improve the world around me.