By Rabbi Rachel Esserman 

I have what some might consider an unusual quirk when meeting someone new at my synagogue: I never ask them what they do for a living. While I’m more than happy to learn about their work/career if they are interested in talking about it, in the context of the synagogue, it is irrelevant. As far as I am concerned, once we enter those doors, we are all equal. From the rich and powerful to the poor and powerless, we all count the same in the minyan. Our worth outside those doors doesn’t matter.

While I’ve learned to say that this is because we are all B’tselem Elohim (made in the image of God), I really learned this lesson years ago, long before I went to rabbinical school. The reason is intensely personal: I was once the person who was considered beneath consideration in many places. For years, I had health problems that made it difficult to work. That might have been excused if at least I’d been married, but I wasn’t. The members of my synagogue, though, welcomed me because I showed up and pitched in when and if I could. It was the one place besides my parents’ home where no one looked down on me. 

I thought about this recently because I attended the burial of Marilyn Aigen, who had been a member of Temple Beth El of Endicott during the years when that synagogue was my second home. I owe a great debt to her and her late husband, Joe. When their son became a Reconstructionist rabbi, they brought Temple Beth El to the Reconstructionist movement. I’d always identified as Jewish, but had not been particularly ritually religious. But, as I learned with the first Reconstructionist rabbi we had, I could finally bring my whole self to the prayer services and classes – both my spirit and my brain. Questioning was encouraged and no question was off limits. 

If Temple Beth El had not become Reconstructionist, I would not be a rabbi. The Aigens supported and encouraged me to begin leading services. After my parents, they were the first people I told when I was accepted to rabbinical school. They and others from the temple became part of my extended family: they rooted for me and cheered my successes. Most importantly, they never made me feel less than anyone else, even when I was an adult living at home unable to work.

And that is why I don’t care about what people do for a living once they walk through the synagogue’s doors. I carry my experience at Temple Beth El – a lesson I learned from wonderful people like Marilyn and Joe – that a synagogue should be a safe haven from the world, a place where we are all equal, even if we have health problems, even if we are unable to work, even if we’re unmarried, even if we don’t fit neatly into one of society’s boxes. That generation – the generation of my parents – is almost gone, but I still owe all of them a debt of gratitude and pay it back the only way I can: by trying to make others feel as welcome in my current spiritual home as they made me feel in my former one.