There’s an excellent expanded issue of the journal Shma, published in March, about challenges to the contemporary rabbinate.
I love this point, from David B. Thomas, a rabbi in Sudbury, Mass.:
Burnout is not the inevitable result of being too busy; it is the result of being busy with things that wear you down. The antidote to burnout is engaging in something that nurtures the soul.
I thought of this yesterday when I read Michiko Kakutani’s review of Richard Wolffe’s new book about Obama, Renegade: The Making of a President.
Mr. Wolffe tells us that since becoming president Mr. Obama has shifted his reading “from nonfiction narratives to dry academic studies” on specific subjects, like the world financial system or historical analyses of Afghanistan.
It’s a relief, of course, that we have a president who absorbs that stuff. I just hope he starts making time for the more meaningful reading, too. Maybe, on this swing through the Arab world, it wouldn’t hurt to bring along a good biography, or even a book of fiction?
As any good rabbi knows, burnout has serious consequences.