rCa
•
Martin Pasternak: tired .
of living a contradiction.
ne
Rabbinate
:
s a college treshmen,, I was too
cool to be Jewish," recalls-Martin
J. Pasternak of Detroit, now a
fourth year rabbinical student at the
Jewish Theological Seminary: "What
could be better • at Michigan State than
dancing at Dooley's and then a cheese-
- burger or pepperoni pizza at Lizards
Underground or any of the other treife
places in East Lansing? At home I'd
daven up S storm; but. at school, who
knew from things like 'that?"
He hid attended Hillel Day School
, through ninth grade and grew up in
what he describes as a "mainstream •
Conservative home." His father Abe, a
Holocaust survivor who is now a tire
dealer in Pontiac, had been: yeshivah
student.
The road back from pepperoni was a
convergence of many influences, but
Marty 'remembere inparticylar one
Passover, when. hey came home from
'College. He found ' himeelf at :B'rtak
Moshe, ."davening: ,up a storm as
usnal." He broke out of < a; reverie —
"maybe I had been falling asleep • dur-:
ing the sermon" — and realized that "I . '
hid ._become • something I had denig-
is6d. I had ,become even less than a
Shabbos 'Jew.2-1,clidn't like that Living
a Contradiction hothered me. I have
different ideas for my
H e wanted deeper personal
' more - than
!anted. PePPerenii and
grater suste an cefroin his
.
,
•
n
an he received from casual 'relation.
sh ips with non= Jews
earn
=kk
economics and psychology, then a mas-
ter's in labor relations and human
resource management. His first munici- -
pal governinent job fizzled when the con-
tract he worked on was settled instead of
arbitrated. He waited tables at TGIFri-
day's for nine months and pondered
career options. 'rending through Europe,
he sought° out the Jewish landmarks.
Caught up in the atmosphere of a Portu-
guese synagogue in Amsterdam -- the
candles, the wood, the age of the place —
"I almost entered into a transcendent
vortex of some kind." "
' The rabbinate began to figure serious
ly as a career alternative to labor rela-
tions. On a United Synagogue Youth
summer pilgrimage to Israel, Marty saw
an:advertisement on a bulletin board for
an introductory Thlmud course at the
Seminary's Israel campus. He stayed on
in. Israel and "managed to establish ,a
•friendly ,relationship with text rather
than an adversarial relationship," he
recalls. He returned to Israel last year to
complete the year of study there required
of all JTS rabbinical candidates.
His Seminary, experiencehas con-
firmed his decision. He loves the rigorous
study. "Being a rabbi should only be half
as much fun as rabbinical school," he
comments. .
eminary career, Pasternak
. During his Seminary`
has served' as a chaplain at the U.S. Naval
'-, Hospital at Portsmouth, working with
AIDS.patients and others, and as a stu-
dent rabbi at a heltisorti congregation in
lusel. He works with eyoungleadership
uP and in Amdzaleing the Few*
dation for Conservative Judaism in Is-
rael. He teaches=Hebrew at the Seminary
high school and in a suburban congrega-
tional school.
He attends both the traditional and
egalitarian services at the Seminary, and
he's all for. the ordination of women as
•cantors, although he knows some of his •
contemporaries oppose the movement to-
wards egalitarianism in Conservative
Jewish life: "Every time I go to minyan
I'm going to find something that. I like
or dislike. Some of my likes today may
become dislikes tomorrow. 'lb hear a
soprano is not what I'm used to, yet sit-
ting next to my mom and sister was
great. If you can hold on to a hand and
get support and strength from that hand;
if you have your wife or your daughter
next to you sharing the siddur,' I think it
adds a 'whole lot," he remarks. •
Would he marry a woman rabbi? "Sure,
why not? I think a bit of tension in a rela-
tionship could be exciting."
Pasternak wants to be a pulPit rabbi.
"Despite everyone who says don't do it,
I want to go home to Detroit. My family
is there. My gang is still there. These are
people who know me as Marty. Why go
someplace else and start all over again
tabfiljeed? ,
tw:fr is already befan
ali th
t. myneki
w
i hvre
,
,
,
Coming home from the Seminary these
days is different from his coilege holidays.
!When I go home, I'm not the recognized
authority,"‘ he admits. "With my father,
it's :!Oh yeaht Oh yeah? Let's take out the
books and we'll learn a little together.'-!
He likes that.