Wise people have long commented that the only real downside of a vacation is coming back to reality when it ends.  I would imagine that just about everyone feels that way at one time or another.  After all, who wants to go back to work, right?  For clergy, though, it's even more true.   It's not just work you're going back to, it's the whole life package that goes with it.

When I teach my seminary students about the challenges of the clerical life, I try to help them understand the fundamental difference between the clergy and almost all other jobs.

Most "normal people" who work for a living commute to their jobs.  Here in New York- say, in Forest Hills, where I live- most of my working members take the subway into Manhattan, where their offices are, and then commute home at the end of the day.  Some go out to Long Island, or to teach or work in another borough.  But most of the members of my congregation don't work here
in Forest Hills.  Of course there are exceptions; one or two physicians, a vet, a few teachers….

But basically people tend not to work where they live.  They go to work, and then they come home.

Not so rabbis- at least those rabbis who will not drive on Shabbat.  We live where we work.  Most often, coming home from work means walking or driving the few blocks between the synagogue and our homes.  Our time is largely spent in a relatively small neighborhood, and there is not any real sense of "going home," or leaving work behind.  The people that I work with are the people I see in the supermarket and theaters, on the street buying a paper, and in line at the drug store. 

Many of us remember that feeling of, on the rare occasion, seeing our teacher in the grocery store when we were growing up.  It was almost like "How did you get here?  You're from a different part of my life" 

To my congregants, it's not such an unusual event to see me around- or the members of my family.  After all, we live here, just like them.  I remember one day at a beach club some years ago when a young member of my congregation saw me and a friend, a local physician, walking near the shore.   He later confided to me that it had been one of the really great days of his life- he had seen his rabbi and his doctor in shorts! In one day!  Poor kid, I remember thinking; he needs to spice up his life…

Other than spending time with my family in Israel, which was sweet indeed, the nicest part of getting away for a few weeks was- as it always is- being a (relatively) private citizen for just a little while.  It's the greatest pleasure when my whole family is with me, which, sadly, they weren't on this trip, but it still felt awfully good to be in supermarkets where (almost) no one recognized me, and especially in synagogues where I was just another "Jew in the pews."  

I don't mean to imply that it's so difficult to come back to work.  I'm one very lucky rabbi.  I like where I work, I like the people I work with, and I'm pretty sure they like me, too.

But still… there's something truly wonderful about just being me for a few days, without the trappings of the office, and without the recognition.  Some rabbis, I'm told, become dependent on it for their sense of self.  I was reminded on this trip of how not true that is for me…. and how gratifying it is to be reminded of that after twenty-seven years.