Rabbi Leo Dee
Rabbi Leo DeeCourtesy

On a recent visit to London, I had the honour of davening one morning in the presence of the great Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman from Migdal HaEmek, who was also visiting for a short speaking tour. Aged 22, the young Rabbi Grossman left his haredi home in Meah Shearim and travelled to the north of Israel, to a town full of new immigrants with poor education and a high crime rate. He became known as the “Disco Rabbi” because he would go to nightclubs to chat with disillusioned young people. After one year, he was appointed as Israel’s youngest municipal Chief Rabbi and he soon founded his “lighthouse” educational institution, Migdal Ohr, that now educates over 6,000 boys and girls in 15 high schools and elementary schools and seven daycare centers.

I approached Rabbi Grossman after the morning service and thanked him for his inspiration. “What inspiration?” he asked. I told him how I had been a financial investor in my twenties and, at the age of 32, had quit a successful career in order to become a Rabbi, with the support and encouragement of my late wife, Lucy z”l.

Just as I was weighing up the decision to leave a high paid job to become an unpaid Rabbinical student, a friend sent me a short video of Rabbi Grossman being interviewed before receiving the Israel Prize in 2004. Standing on a hill, wearing his black hat and coat and surrounded by non-observant teenagers, the reporter asked him two million-dollar questions, “Why you?” and “Why here?” I told Rabbi Grossman that I have never forgotten his answer. He turned to the camera and said, “One morning I was standing in Meah Shearim and I looked around and asked myself, ‘Do they need another one of me here?’ I honestly had to answer, ‘No!’ So I asked myself, ‘Where do they need me?’ And that’s why I am here.”

That was all I needed to hear to convince me to move on in my career. You see, a regular person in a job will ask themself questions such as “Am I doing a good job?”, or “Is this job a good fit with my qualifications?”, or “Am I ready for a new challenge?” But that was not Rabbi Grossman’s question to himself. I imagine that Rabbi Grossman was content in Meah Shearim, with access to all the shiurim and kosher stores that he and his wife could ever need. He could have made a career for himself as an educator amongst his people and never ventured out of his ghetto.

But his question was not about himself. His question was about the world.

We may reach a state of comfort in our daily lives and feel that these are our just rewards for all our life’s efforts, but what if we were meant to do more? What if someone else could be doing our job just as well as us and we are needed somewhere else completely? It may be that the next move is less prestigious, less comfortable than our current occupation, but it may be that you are the only one qualified to do it. With that inspiration, and inspired by Lucy who always had clarity of purpose, I set about recruiting my replacement in the financial investment firm and quit to become a Rabbi. Sometimes, however, if we don’t choose to make the move ourselves, Hashem will orchestrate the situation so that we must.

This week’s parsha starts by telling us that “Yaakov settled” (literally he “sat.”) The Midrash explains that Yaakov was resting under a misapprehension, because there is no rest for the righteous in this world. That is why his description as “sitting” is swiftly followed by the shocking events involving Yosef and his brothers.

How often do we feel too comfortable in our lives to make any changes? What if the right thing is to move on, to a new challenge or to Eretz Yisrael? Is it enough to consider that we are “doing an important job” if someone else could do it in our place? I believe that these are questions that we need to battle with throughout our lives.

People assume that the greatest test of Emunah is having the faith to go on after a tragedy, and to see the good in every situation, even (or especially) when things go wrong. However, I believe that the greatest test of Emunah is not how we respond to life’s challenges. From Rabbi Grossman I learned that the greatest test of Emunah is to make changes to one’s life when things are going well.

We could all do with asking ourselves from time to time: “Where do they need me?” If the answer is “Not here” then we should also ask “Then where?”

Rabbi Leo Dee is an educator living in Efrat. His book “Transforming the World: The Jewish Impact on Modernity” was republished in English and Hebrew in memory of his wife Lucy and daughters Maia and Rina, who were murdered by terrorists in April 2023.