Love: The Most Critical Job Description
Rabbi Moshe Taub, Feb. 2025, Ami Magazine
I am my shul’s Candyman.
This means that troughout davening, kids will mount the few steps to the podium and, depending on their age, will either stick out their hand, request a candy, or say ‘Good Shabbos’.
If they approach during leining or kaddish I teach them to wait and read along with me, training them in the importance of silence during teffila.
But that is not my central motive in embracing this role.
Once a child is of speaking age, they know that they will only get a candy if they name the parshah, leading to some tots yelling out ‘T’tzaveh!’ long before they reach me!
As they get older, my ‘candy-interrogation’ become more age-appropriate, where I request they share what the parshah about, along with more detailed information and questions.
While this is a great way to get to know the kids, this too is not why I chose this role.
Rather, the two main reasons are to create a girsa d’yankusah.
I. Chibuv
For one, these are dangerous times. These same children will soon grow into teenagers. The day may come when they will be tested, when two paths will appear before them. Temptation or technology, friends or fascination, may entice one path. Such luring pulls require we implant now equal competitive future forces.
Should such moments of trial arise, few teenagers will be thinking of a drasha or a rav’s distant words of inspiration.
What their mind may drift toward is true feelings of chibuv/love. So, while the rav may not come to mind, the ‘Candyman’ might.
In our day, an earnest sense of affection toward the rav of one’s youth is indispensable.
A guest once challenged me, “It’s very nice and all, but is this role appropriate for a rav? Shouldn’t a rav present himself more reserved and distant from such petty matters? Teaching children that a proposed talmud chacham be shown extra dignity is also chinuch!”
I explained by sharing the purpose of Moshe rabbeinu and Dovid hamelech having served as shepherds. Chazal explain that in that role they had to care for these creatures to the point of cleaning up their dung. This infused them with a model for leadership, training them in the fact that if an act is permissible and purposeful then it is not seen as ‘beneath one’s dignity’.
And purposeful this is.
When I was in high school, I heard that a camp friend suddenly left his yeshiva. What happened to him after, and his state of religiosity, becoming somewhat of a mystery. No one in my friend group knew where he was living, let alone how he was living.
Several years later, I bumped into him by chance in Buffalo. His head was shaved clean, he wasn’t wearing a yarmulka, and the rest of his look seemed to confirm my worst fears.
After exchanging pleasantries -and without prompt -he opened up about his childhood – one stained with severe trauma. It went unspoken, but this no-doubt offered a glimpse into his stung spirit.
He then shared something unbelievable:
“While I wouldn’t say I’m frum, you should know that I’ve never once been michalel Shabbos on a Torah level all of these years”.
That comment led to many questions, however in these situations one best keeps quiet, allowing the speaker to decide what he wishes to disclose.
After I nodded alone, and became oddly silent, he shared an explanation.
When he was a young boy, about seven or eight, his private trauma was unfolding, a rav was asked to consult, Rav Gedalia Felder, tz”l.
He was little at the time and his awe of the rav and his fear of sharing, of ‘taking sides’, caused him to cry in response to the rav’s first question.
“I was ashamed to be crying, thinking this was not the time or place.
“But as I looked up, I saw that the rav was also crying…in reaction to my pain.
“This only made me cry more.
“This in turn made the rav cry more.
“At the end of the meeting all one could observe was two people crying – a child in agony, and a rav aching from that child’s pain.
“That memory is so fresh, and no matter what I’ve done, no matter where I’ve been, no matter how much I’ve ‘fallen’, whenever I am about to break Shabbos I think of Rav Felder’s tears. I don’t know if I still believe in Yiddishkeit, but I still believe in him because he believed in me”.
II. Approachable
This leads to my second reason for serving as the Candyman.
Not only do I want the children to feel I care about them, I also want them to know I am accessible.
If they learn to approach me when they are young, it will be far easier when they grow up.
For this same reason, on my halacha exams at Shevach High School in Queens, I offer an extra credit at the end of every exam -told to them in advance – that each share a shailah they asked their rav, or any rav who is not related to them and who does not work at the school. I urge this because, Sadly, too often, people are too shy or too afraid or feel their question is not important enough to call a rabbi.
I often share with my wife:
“I’ve rarely been called on a taanis by someone who feels sick yet for whom the psak is that they must continue Fasting.
“This is because most people are too shy, afraid, embarrassed, or reticent to even ask the shailah.
“Those that are sick enough to actually pick up the phone probably should have done so hours ago!”
In our generation especially, a communal rav being perceived as aloof can be perilous.
Being approachable doesn’t mean the rav can’t present himself with authority. Rather, that this authoritative presence is not to be kept on a mantle, untouched by the masses.
The day may come where this young boy or girl is tested, and that fleeting thought of ‘Should I call my rav?’ will be quickly dashed by the sword of unapproachability.
There is an old saying that as much as a rav is annoyed by getting a call during dinner, he is more annoyed not getting a call during dinner.
If one wishes to enjoy the rewards that come with rabbanus, he must make the sacrifices too -and let people know he is accessible.
Such is our task in this role.
In truth, it is little sacrifice if done out of love – and doesn’t hold a candle to what true gedolim must endure.
As the Rambam expressed to his student:
“G-d knows that in order to write this to you I have escaped to a secluded spot, where people would not think to find me, sometimes leaning for support against the wall, sometimes lying down on account of my excessive weakness, for I have grown old and feeble…I cannot but say how greatly your visit would delight me…Yet …Do not expect to be able to confer with me…for even one hour either by day or by night, for the following is my daily occupation [Rambam describes his heavy palace workload, as well as its great travel distance]…Then I am almost dying with hunger. I find the antechamber filled with people, both Jews and Gentiles, nobles and common people, judges and bailiffs, friends and foes — a mixed multitude, who await the time of my return. I dismount from my animal, wash my hands, go forth to my patients, and entreat them to bear with me while I partake of some slight refreshment, the only meal I take in the twenty-four hours. Then I attend to my patients, write prescriptions for their various ailments. Patients go in and out until nightfall, and sometimes even, I solemnly assure you, until two hours and more in the night. I converse and prescribe for them while lying down from sheer fatigue, and when night falls, I am so exhausted that I can scarcely speak. In consequence of this, no Israelite can have any private interview with me, except on the Shabbath. On that day the whole congregation, or at least the majority of the members, come unto me after the morning service, when I instruct them as to their proceedings during the whole week; we study together a little until noon, when they depart. Some of them return, and read with me after the afternoon service until evening prayers. In this manner I spend that day. I have here related to you only a part of what you would see if you were to visit me…”
(Translation by R. Isadore Twersky)
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