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Rabbinic Insights: The New Rabbi

San Diego Jewish Times, June 16, 2006

By Rabbi Wayne Dosick

When Diane Elliot came to San Diego in the late 1990s, she was a mid-40s highly accomplished professional. A native of Chicago — where she grew up in the congregation of the esteemed and highly innovative Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf — a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan, she had a distinguished career as a modern dancer, choreographer, and movement teacher who had performed throughout the United States, Canada, France, and Hungary. She was trained in Body-Mind Centering, and was a practitioner and teacher of Somatic Movement Therapy. She was a healer of body and spirit. She was also a prolific writer, whose articles and poems had been widely published. In a short sojourn in Seattle, she had learned from and worked with the visionary Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, zt"l, who introduced her to the ideas of renewing Judaism in this generation. In Minneapolis she was active in professional theater and dance, in emerging women's groups, and she took a leadership role in the alternative Jewish community.

Here in San Diego, Diane found her way to the Jewish Renewal community, where she became an active member of the independent chavurah Shir HaYam, and of The Elijah Minyan, where her warm and engaging personality, sweet spirit, lovely voice, and immersion in the world of Spirit, immediately endeared her to everyone she met.

It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. The sum of Diane's life led her to unfolding interest in Jewish spirituality, deep Jewish learning, and Jewish leadership, at the very same time that the Academy for Jewish Religion, a 50-year-old pluralistic rabbinical and cantorial seminary located in New York, was establishing a branch in Los Angeles. Unlike the denominational seminaries that train rabbis and cantors for a particular wing of Judaism, AJR has faculty from every place on the Jewish spectrum, and its graduates serve klal Yisrael, the entirety of the Jewish people. While AJR holds the highest standards of scholarship and learning, its emphasis is on the world of Jewish spirit — not only the Jewish mind, but the Jewish heart and soul. As well, AJR caters to second-career professionals. Its classes are held three days a week, so that people with jobs and families can study and learn, while maintaining the rest of their lives.

Becoming a student at the Academy was not easy. Diane faced a six-year program of intensive learning, taking classes, writing papers, earning grades — all the "hoops and barrels" of graduate school — immersing in Jewish texts, acquiring professional skills and experience, growing in her own spirit and soul — all beginning around the age of 50. As a single woman, she had to earn her living, even as she commuted to Los Angeles every week for classes. It was an arduous, challenging, fulfilling, and often frustrating six years of single-minded dedication.

Yet, despite all the possible obstacles, Diane' s life and callings gave her the perfect proficiencies with which to come to the rabbinate. The contemporary rabbinate is being defined far differently and far beyond the rabbinate I entered 33 years ago, and even the rabbinate that my colleagues entered 10 years ago. The new rabbinate is informed by the emerging of the world of Jewish spirit, by the Jewish feminine, by the fullness of the Divine, by the emphasis on the personal, intimate covenant with God, as well as the enduring communal covenant. Diane well understands the mindset, and the needs, and the desires of contemporary Jews. She knows God panaim el panim, from "the inside of the insides;" she lives with God; and she lives a Godly life; she brings God to each moment, to each encounter, to each soul. Unlike the rabbis of my generation, she will not build Jewish buildings or institutions; she will help build Jewish hearts and souls.

The Jewish Renewal community in San Diego recognized Diane's great talent and deep devotion, and her awesome potential as a spiritual leader, so the members and friends of The Elijah Minyan and Shir HaYam established a scholarship fund that provided the monies for Diane's tuition and books. Over the years, in addition to gaining professional experience in a variety of settings as a facilitator of prayer, ritual, and lifecycle events, she served as Rabbinic Intern for Shir HaYam and Rabbinic Assistant for The Elijah Minyan. Most notably she took on more and more of the 1eadership. The Minyan's High Holiday services, where her deeply inspirited davennen and her kavvanot of deep spirit touched Jewish hearts and souls.

On Memorial Day Monday, Diane Elliot stood for rabbinic ordination in a deeply moving ceremony in Los Angeles. In the program booklet she wrote, "I look forward to serving families and adults who wish to enter deeply into Jewish spiritual practice, whether through prayer, creative life cycle celebrations, meditation practice, text study, or guided retreat time. I hope to contribute to the ongoing, dynamic, creative renewal of spiritual practice that is currently transforming Jewish life across all denominations."

Diane gave me the great privilege and the high honor of presenting her to the Beit Din, the Rabbinic Court for the purpose of s'micha, the traditional "laying on of hands" by the members of the Beit Din, that transmits rabbinic authority from teacher to student, to a new generation of new rabbi. After reciting the fixed formula, I said, "She has demonstrated the personal and spiritual qualities required of a Rabbi and Teacher. At her core, she holds deep, and ancient, and infinite wisdom. In her, the Miriam energy, the priestess, the goddess, the Shechinah, energy has bubbled up, so that she knows l'shem Yichud how to touch and honor the fullness of the Divine; to connect Malchut and Keter in the heart-space of Tiferet.

"She knows that body and soul are one; that all of creation is One with the Eternal One, so that with ease and grace, she weaves together the Four Worlds into holy wholeness. She is sweet compassion, profound love, eternal goodness; she knows how to guide us to 'the highest of the high and the deepest of the deep.' In her every word, in every movement, she teaches us to dance with God."

On Shabbat-Shavuot, Shir HaYam and The Elijah Minyan joined together to celebrate Diane's ordination. We composed this prayer for her community to consecrate her to her sacred task.

Let her be for us a RAV — our TEACHER who wisely instructs us, astutely enlightens us, and passionately inspires us with words of Torah.

And let us, and our children, and our children's children be her thirsting students.

Let her be for us a KOHENET — our PASTOR who creates our sacred space, hallows our times and seasons, and brings sanctity to the tragedies and the triumphs of our lives.

And let us open our hearts to her awesome holy energy and her profound compassion.

Let her be for us a N'VEEAH — our VISIONARY who cries out for what is right, and just, and good; who calls us to the best within ourselves.

And let us be undaunted idealists who dare to dream.

Let her be for us a CHAVERAH — our FRIEND who shares with us and cares with us, who laughs and cries with us; who profoundly loves us.

And let us be her sweet and loving companions, embracing her and each other in respect, honor, and affection.

Let her be for us a REBBE — our SPIRIT GUIDE who weaves the Four Worlds into holy wholeness, guides our souls to the "highest of the high and the deepest of the deep," and teaches us to dance with God.

And let us journey the mystical pathways to the Holy Presence, and be bathed in the Light and the Spirit of the One.

 LET HER BE FOR US OUR RABBI.

 Amen V' Amen.

Rabbi Diane will be moving to the Bay Area, where she will finally(!) begin to share a full-time life with her fiancé, our distinguished colleague, Rabbi Burt Jacobson, and where she will focus her efforts on lifecycle and ritual leadership, pastoral work, and teaching "embodied Judaism" to adults and young people.

Rabbi Diane Elliot will be a great and sacred servant of God and the Jewish people. She is a rabbi for Judaism's coming new age — steeped in ancient Jewish tradition, envisioning and molding a glorious Jewish future. Rabbi Diane Elliot is, in the words of our great teacher, Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel, "God's stake in human history." May the words of her mouth, the meditations of her heart, and the work of her hands be truly blessed, and be an ever-continuing blessing.

Rabbi Wayne Dosick, Ph.D., the spiritual guide of the Elijah Minyan, an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego and the Director of the 17: Spiritually Healing Children's Emotional Wounds. He is the award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books, including Golden Rules; Living Judaism; and Soul Judaism: Dancing with God into a New Era.