Leaving a Rabbinic Dynasty and Finding Your Own Path with Rabbis Haskel and Josh Lookstein

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

I want to begin again with my gratitude for your taking the time both of you are extraordinarily busy I feel like I'm stepping into uh the Museum of American Jewish life this is like really an incredible incredible place to be and what I want to focus on in our conversation is the notion of professional Divergence when a child chooses to chart their own path and when we were talking before I mentioned a word that you said don't mention that word again and I'm going to mention it again right at the ET there are people and we we mentioned there's a great article by Adam fer who use the word dynasty to describe what you've built through KJ through ramas and you push back say I don't want to use the word dynasty so I guess I wanted to begin by asking you why don't you like the word dynasty and then maybe we could talk a little bit about the first time that you realize that there were any expectations Maybe not dynastic expectations but any expectations that you were going to go on a certain path to begin with you have a couple of hours uh to discuss this uh first of all the word dynasty is very presumptuous and I don't like presumptuous things um my great-grandfather the ramas ra mosha zul and Margolis came to our congregation kahila jashan KJ in 1906 and served there as the rabbi the senior Rabbi until 1936 when he passed away my father came as his English speaking assistant Rabbi Joseph H Lin before he was actually even a rabbi he didn't have SM yet from Yu and he came as the English speaking assistant and in

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00I want to begin again with my gratitude for your taking the time both of you…
2. 6:19basically I said what do you think I should do I said well what do you…
3. 12:48i p I paid him even if he w't Israeli he would not have that you…
4. 19:07decorum order uh Cod bakes the glory of the sh uh a lot of the formality…
5. 25:41reputation the the the model that my father had set and that my grandfather Al shalam…
6. 32:18their their Dres and I I did it and I gave what people said was an…
7. 38:49a job sure am I stating it yeah yes I mean you also understood it's a…
8. 45:18he spent four years very successful years uh people thrilled with him but he was alone…
9. 51:51alternative timeline that the whole world knows where you started on this path that was like…
10. 58:19make the decision that he made I'm just curious and and we're going to wrap up…

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