A
tearful congregant at my student pulpit
approached me, needing help with a
family crisis. Sadly, the situation in-
volved child abuse, drug abuse, financial
problems, and family secrets – things I was
accustomed to seeing in my professional life
as a social worker. Only this time, the
“
client” didn’t come to see a social worker,
the congregant came to see a rabbi.
I have always wanted to be a rabbi, but
it took me a while to get here to HUC-JIR.
I became President of the Temple Youth
Group, Social Action Vice President of what
was then SCFTY, and a CIT at Camp Swig.
During college, I was the youth group advi-
sor and day camp director at my synagogue,
and my teachers and mentors encouraged me
to go to HUC-JIR. But my life took a dif-
ferent course.
I earned a Master of Social Work degree
at USC and specialized in Community Or-
ganizing, Policy, and Administration. For 12
years I worked at the policy, management,
and administrative levels of a Los Angeles based
nonprofit agency serving women and chil-
dren with histories of poverty, family
violence, mental illness, and homelessness,
and then at another nonprofit agency that
specialized in policy analysis and advocacy
for women and children to improve collab-
oration between substance abuse agencies
and child abuse agencies across California.
I loved social work and relished the op-
portunities to engage in social justice, but
I wanted to do that work in a Jewish way. I
wanted to nurture my love for Judaism in a
deeper way than I had done before, to learn
and to share that learning, to teach it, and to
live it. I felt called to become a rabbi, and a
trusted mentor helped me to see that I had to
pursue that path.
Once I became what HUC-JIR calls a
‘
second career student,’ my experience dif-
fered from that of most of my classmates.
This was especially true during our first year
of study in Jerusalem. Following my accept-
ance in 2004, my husband Harvey and I sold
our house and moved to Israel with our two
daughters. At 7 and 3, Rebekah and Eliana
were the perfect ages to learn a new language
and adapt to life in a new country.
I might have missed out on some op-
portunities that my classmates enjoyed.
While they were climbing Masada, I was
waving as one daughter rode to
Tali Bayit
v’Gan
by school bus and walking the other
to
Gan
at Congregation Har El in Jerusalem.
While my classmates were spending their
free time in local bars and at concerts, my
family and I were having play
dates with Israeli parents and cel-
ebrating birthdays and holidays
with Israeli families. My children
created their own community, but
they also loved being immersed in
the HUC-JIR community. Our
apartment became the place for
anyone and everyone to spend
Shabbat
.
My children considered
all my classmates to be their fam-
ily – they joked that it was like
having 70 cousins!
As a student in graduate
school for the second time, I had
life experiences behind me and dif-
ferent expectations for my future.
It was a special challenge to bal-
ance school and internship
responsibilities with my family life
and life in my own Jewish and
neighborhood community in Los
Angeles. It was not always easy to
explain this path to people of my
age who were already settled in
their homes and careers, so I
found myself having even more in
common with my classmates. To my school
community, I contributed my personal and
professional life experiences to help make
theirs easier. My classmates and teachers
opened my eyes to new possibilities, and
they taught me to be more open to change.
Along this path I have reenergized my
counseling skills, reawakened my commit-
ment to social justice, and discovered a love
of Liturgy, Biblical Poetry, and Jewish
Thought. Most importantly, I continue to
develop a spiritual side of myself that has
helped me to become a more fulfilled human
being and a more complete Jew.
Rabbi A.J. Heschel wrote, “We must
learn how to be one with what we do.”
When people come to me needing guidance,
I no longer question whether I am the social
worker or the rabbi. Skills and experiences,
old and new, all combine to create one whole
person with varied and complex facets: a
rabbi. Eventually, I even managed to climb
Masada.
MEET HUC-JIR’S STUDENTS
2009
ISSUE 72 | 47
Rabbi Karen Sherman, L ‘09
A SECOND
CAREER
CALLING
Rabbi Karen Sherman, L ‘09
