Mensch Marks

Mensch Marks, the subtitles tell us is a book of "Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi", "Wisdom for Untethered Times".   That really captures the essence of what you will find when you read this book. 

Rabbi Joshua Hammerman started out as a young Rabbi in 1985.  He was twenty eight years old and has become the spiritual leader for a congregation in Connecticut. As the new young Rabbi, he writes, he realizes that being so young he may not yet look like a rabbi.  His energetic and over the top enthusiasm is attributed to his newness and others say it will diminish with time and experience.

He realizes that congregants are asking themselves; "How can this rabbi be mature enough to comfort mourners when he hasn't known a lifetime of personal grief? How can he represent us... when he hasn't what we've seen? Can a rabbi who is not battle scarred truly be a rabbi?"  Through the writings in this book, you watch as this young rabbi gets his feet wet, and is toughened up over the course of his career. 

Over the years Hammerman writes about everything from condolence calls to Bar Mitzvahs to questions of Kashrut and other rituals.  In 2018, after the Parkland, Florida school shooting a march was scheduled for a Saturday.  He talks about joining the March for Our Lives even though it means breaking the rules of Shabbat.  Hammerman writes that "sometimes filling G-d's command can only be done by violating it".  Hammerman talks about Pikuah Nefesh, reinforcing the idea that commandments are intended to sanctify and preserve life, not cause undue risk of death.  So that, like other famous rabbis before him, including Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched alongside Martin Luther King in Selma, saying he felt like he was praying with his feet.  Rabbi Joshua Hammerman hopes that by joining the students marching, "I will be praying with my feet, too. And while I am walking, I'll be praying that, in small way, I'll be saving lives, and thereby, just maybe, helping to save the world.