There are many unsung heroes among us most of whom will never be recognized at all — and likely want it that way. Some are struggling with disease; others are dealing with multiple familial issues at one time. Their heroism does not lie in the magnitude of the issues they face which are rarely the result of any conscious choices on their part but rather in the smiling faces they offer to the world when we cannot even imagine how we would get out of the bed in the morning in their circumstances.
But what I want to focus on is an even subtler type of heroism — dealing with disappointed aspirations. I suppose most of us fall into that category to one extent or another. In our youth we dream of being president or a fireman or even better the next Rabbi Akiva Eiger. Ortega y Gasset once wrote “The charm and insolence of youth is that they are everything in potentiality and nothing in actuality.” The possibilities are unlimited. Few of our lives measure up to the dreams of youth.
There are few professions in which the potential for disappointment is so great as the rabbinate. What reader of these pages will ever forget Rabbi Chaim Simkowitz’s faded yellowing raincoat in the opening episode of Dov Haller’s “Waiting for the Rabbi.” Purchased by his wife Eve at the outset of his rabbinical career when she harbored no doubts that he was destined to be a rising star in the firmament of the American rabbinate Rabbi Simkowitz is still wearing it five decades later after Eve has passed on taking along with her the dreams of a prominent rabbinical career for her husband.
The potential for disappointment in the rabbinate is greater precisely because the idealism of those who enter the profession is so high. Every year dozens of talented young men eager to inspire congregants with the beauty of Torah and mitzvos enter the rabbinate. They imagine congregations filled with youth whose own idealism is just waiting to be stirred by a dynamic young rabbi.
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