Please Forgive My Relative Lack of Humility . . .

Dear Family and Friends, Colleagues and Congregants, Students and Readers:

From time-to-time, I am asked that most obvious of questions “What do you do for a living?” It is usually met with silence and a pull on my beard. I have long thought that the reason a rabbi has a beard is so that he may look reasonably wise even though he hasn’t the slightest idea of what the answer is. (I use the masculine pronoun here; despite the fact that I have many brilliant female colleagues, none of them have beards!)

The problem I have in answering this rather simple question is that over a period of more than a half-a-century, I have been:

A practicing rabbi;
An adjunct professor of Politics, History, Cinema and Literature at several universities for more than a quarter century
A political biographer with numerous published books under my belt;
A political speechwriter, Capitol Hill staffer and campaign surrogate for the likes of Barack Obama and HIllary Clinton;
One of the first environmental ethicists ever to serve in government;
A radio journalist who covered both Watergate and the Patty Hearst kidnapping;
A blogger with more than 1,000 essays posted on everything from Ancient, American and European History to classic literature, baseball trivia and the creation of the motion picture industry;
A longtime medical ethicist who has participated in a majority of all COVID-19 and Cancer Moonshot clinical trials;
An actor who has staged more than 400 performances of “An Evening With Sholem Aleichem.” over a 45-year period.
And most importantly, a son, brother, husband, father, grandfather and pet lover.

Writing all this out brings on a wave of fatigue . . . but that’s part of what I’ve been doing to earn a living since my late teenage years.

Is it any wonder that I pull on my beard when asked what I do for a living?

Well, just the other day, the good people of “Who’s Who in America,” of which I’ve been a part since 1997, informed me that I have been selected as a recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. Unlike most of the other recipients over the past century, I will be one of the few who is not listed in any one field. . . . it’s the “polymath syndrome” within me. By definition, a “polymath” is a person characterized by a great curiosity that leads him/her to continuous learning and involvement (if not mastery) in many different subject areas and languages,

I guess that’s me. I’ve always believed that “growing old is a fact of life; growing up is purely one’s choice.”

I did not want to share this “achievement” with all of you lest you think I was qvelling (Yiddish for “boasting” or “bragging.”) However, Annie urged me to write this essay for, as she bluntly stated, “You’ve earned it.”

Even though it’s not the Oscar, it’s something I will value all the days of my life.

Thanks for reading . . . and for being my family and friends (some, like fellow “Hollywood Brat” Alan Wald, since early childhood) students, and congregants, critics, naysayers and admirers.

KFS