Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Harvey.
Hi Michael, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born in a Conservative Jewish kosher household in St. Louis, Missouri. My mother was a Conservative Jew from New Jersey, and my father was Reform from New York. I have a twin sister who works for a Jewish non-profit, an older sister who is a lawyer for the NY court of appeals, and an older brother who works in public policy. I attended Hebrew school throughout elementary school and regularly attended services at Temple Shaare Emeth in St. Louis, MO. I attended middle and high school at Mary Institute St. Louis Country Day School (MICDS) in Ladue, MO, a private secular school. While attending Hebrew school and confirmation classes at Shaare Emeth, I also joined the youth group: NFTY – North American Federation of Temple Youth, a national youth group for Jewish teens. I not only attended youth group activities and regional learning conclaves, but I was also elected to be the Religious and Cultural Vice-President of the region, which put me in charge of writing services, and being in a religious leadership role for the first time. When I was 16, I was lucky to be part of a 6-week NFTY Israel trip. With hundreds of other Jewish teens, they flew me to Greece, and then we took a boat to Haifa. On a bus with 40 Jewish teenagers from around the country, we traveled from top to bottom of Israel, discovering our Jewish roots, singing, and celebrating our heritage. I returned to Israel the following year with my congregation and other families for a 2-week trip. I was officially inspired! Part of my curriculum at MICDS was a career day. I chose to spend the day with my Rabbi, who inspired me, so I spent an entire day doing the work with Rabbi Jay Perlman, including spending time at a hospital with patients. My mother died of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when I was 15. Though my faith was shaken originally, she has been a strength and a source of inspiration for me throughout my career.
I attended Boston University in Boston, MA, majoring in Psychology. In addition to my psychology major studies, I always took electives that were religiously themed, including Religions of the West (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), Hebrew Literature, and Holocaust and Music. In my third year at Boston University, I was chosen to intern for the Lipper Internship at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Once a week during my later undergraduate years, I traveled to Boston’s inner city schools and provided basic Jewish education and Holocaust studies to non-Jewish students, ranging from 5th grade-12th grade. The internship required extensive training in how to teach those of other faiths, some of whom had never had a chance to speak to a Jew. After college, I worked several secular jobs in St. Louis, including Enterprise Rent-A-Car, where I started their management trainee program and learned to run a business. I also traveled to South Korea to teach English and worked in customer service. It wasn’t until 4 years after I graduated college that I realized that Rabbinical school was what I truly was passionate about. I traveled to Israel again to study in the WUJS-Hadassah Program in Jerusalem. For six months, I learned Hebrew, Talmud, Zionism, Kabbalah, and Archaeology. I returned home, charged up, and ready for the next step. I took distance learning courses at Siegal College, one on Education and development and one entitled “Soloveitchik on Jewish-Christian Relations.” This course provided controversial ideas by Joseph Soloveitchik and his interaction with church leaders to initiate interfaith conversations.
I was accepted into Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion spring of 2010 and began my studies there in June of the same year in Jerusalem. I began to seek out this energy as my years in seminary continued in the four years I spent at the Cincinnati campus of HUC-JIR. Sporadically, the dean of students would receive requests for interfaith speakers from schools, churches, and other institutions around the Ohio area and would offer a first-to-email-back-gets-the-gig system. When opportunities presented themselves, I was always first in line, whether it was to travel to rural churches, teach at the local Catholic school, or host visiting non-Jewish groups. The elective classes I chose to take also reflected my passion, as I scrambled to write notes quickly in classes such as Christian Scriptures. As the time came for me to begin thinking about the topic for my master’s thesis, I found my way to the faculty’s New Testament scholar. Eventually, we decided to look at Nostra Estate fifty years later would be a fruitful exercise.
Additionally, each summer during my years in seminary, we students were responsible for finding an internship or summer job that would help enhance our rabbinates. After ordination, I made it a point to engage in interfaith activities in my rabbinate in whatever way possible. Each summer, I chose interfaith-focused jobs, including being a Jewish representative of the Chautauqua Institution; serving as the first Jewish chaplain at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky; and traveling to Switzerland to participate in an interfaith seminar at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey. My ecumenical activities were not limited to the summers. I also volunteered to work with the American Jewish World Service and traveled to El Salvador with rabbinical students of varying denominations to help with environmental concerns.
In the absence of an interfaith council at my first pulpit, located in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, I took it upon myself to create and lead the Interfaith Council of the Caribbean, which, at the end of my two-year tenure, represented over fifteen faith communities in the US and British Virgin Islands. I also sought board positions in non-Jewish organizations, such as the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and United Way. Giving a Jewish voice to the issues in the community, surrounded by non-Jews, I made educational progress with those who only Christian understandings of religious matters had sadly sheltered. At my second and final congregational pulpit in West Lafayette, Indiana, I followed the same path, serving as the director for the Interfaith Leaders of Greater Lafayette as well as a board member for the United Way Emergency Food and Shelter Program, the Downtown Ministers (a Christian group until my addition), the Lafayette Transitional Housing Caring Committee, the Tippecanoe County Opioid Taskforce, and the Medical Ethics Committee for IU Health Arnett Hospital. In these positions, I could contribute to my community and educate about language, inclusion, and threats to minority groups, such as Jews. As the leader of the interfaith coalitions that I served, I instituted multifaith panel discussions on issues facing the local community. I befriended local ministers, imams, pastors, and priests; gave guest sermons and lectures at their houses of worship; and invited them to teach with me on interfaith matters or in-class sessions. I created Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Pride interfaith services that welcomed neighboring congregations into mine and brought my congregation to local churches and mosques.
Engaging in interfaith activities, no matter how long or difficult, consistently made me feel energized and alive and left me wanting more. The joy and fulfillment that these activities brought me far outweighed the day-to-day duties of a Reform rabbi: leading services, providing pastoral care, teaching Hebrew school, and providing Bar/Bat Mitzvah training. After the latter activities, I felt drained, tired, and anxious. It did not take me long to realize that while congregational work provided an outlet for these passions, I was not to be a congregational rabbi if I was to follow my true fervor in my field.
All of this, including my love for biblical scholarship, led to the conception of my first book. However, the final catalysts for developing a book proposal were the weekly (if not more frequent) phone calls and emails from Christian clergy asking questions. These ranged from Judaism 101 questions to more in-depth philosophical and theological queries. Having established myself as a champion of interfaith work in each community I served, these calls and emails naturally found their way to me. These calls from Christian clergy raised questions about Old Testament verses, Hebrew pronunciation, biblical exegesis, or Christian verses with Jewish connections. Out of respect and to serve their communities, these pastors, ministers, and priests wished to gain more knowledge of the Jewish roots of Christianity. While Christian clergy does study Hebrew and a great deal of the Old Testament in their years at seminary, these aspects are often forgotten over time, as seminary students are also required to learn Greek or Latin and a wealth of Christian theology that far outweighs the Jewish foundations of their learning. I can empathize with this, and I admit that my memory of Modern Hebrew soon faded as I embraced biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Rashi script and gained sufficient knowledge of Akkadian and Syriac. Therefore, I felt no resentment toward my Christian colleagues when they told me they had sadly lost their mastery of biblical Hebrew, its roots and grammatical rules, and the like. While these calls and emails occurred within the flurry of other communications and tasks in my rabbinate, I always found the time to answer them, not just with quick responses but with in-depth answers that would serve my colleagues well. I recommended websites, books, commentaries, and exercises to help them. It was important to me that Christian clergy had a mastery of Judaism if they were to teach it to their flocks—not only to remove false and misleading ideas but also so that Judaism and Christianity could grow together. My teachings would be even if I could not be present in their church settings.
Eventually, I understood what my purpose had become in the community. Word had spread that if you needed expertise on Judaism, you called Rabbi Mike, the moniker I followed in every community. Soon I began to receive calls and emails from those members of the clergy I had yet to meet, I gathered more members in my interfaith coalition, and my time teaching on social media became more frequent. I took to writing articles based on frequently asked questions and began cutting and pasting links to my articles when I found posts or tweets that needed more information. After years of this practice, I gathered enough questions and answers to create what I ultimately realized Christian clergy needed—a handbook, something to reference when they had questions and couldn’t reach or have access to a “Rabbi Mike” in their communities nationwide. That handbook became “Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians” (https://www.amazon.com/Lets-Talk-Rabbi-Speaks-Christians/dp/1088050700/ref=zg_bsnr_172800_1/143-5315816-1404301?pd_rd_i=1088050700&psc=1) which was published June of 2022 and became a best seller on Amazon and continues to gain popularity almost a year later. With my book and social media presence fighting for interfaith education and understanding, people took notice. I have been invited to speak at churches, synagogues, and conferences and to teach classes, such as the one I will teach this Spring with the Lutheran School of Theology. As someone who returns home to St. Louis frequently to see family and friends, I was thrilled to come back and teach!
From the Lutheran School, the info is as follows:
Upon registration, those who participate in this class will receive a copy of his book. The book can be used as a teaching and discussion guide for adult education sessions of any size and continue to be a handy reference guide. The class presentations and content in the book will likely shape participants’ journey toward scholarship and interfaith education. This way, the class can be a jumping-off point for discoveries, new philosophical views on old topics, and a hunger for new material.
Dates and Times: Zoom sessions on Thursdays: April 13, 20, 27, May 4, 11, 18, 9:30 – 10:30 am Central Time
Registration: $50 includes a copy of Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians upon registration. Please register by March 20 to ensure book receipt before the first class. I truly look forward to this opportunity! https://lststl.org/lets-talk-a-rabbi-speaks-to-christians/
https://lststl.org/lets-talk-a-rabbi-speaks-to-christians/
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not remotely. I have encountered trouble and challenges almost every step of the way. I still experience challenges as I find my place in the world, now a non-congregational rabbi and a Ph.D. student, in a world where Liberal Arts colleges are eliminating departments and the work of an expert in religion is not necessary, or the positions are filled and not going to open any time soon. However, I do my best to find joy in my “secular” job that pays the bills while I use my spare time to do what I am passionate about teaching and writing. But needless to say, a Jew working for education and understanding in a time of rising antisemitism and Christian fundamentalism, and Christian nationalism is full of problems, including bullying, doxing, lack of opportunities to teach, and attacks. But, I press on because I have built over a 12k follower member classroom on Twitter and a dedicated following of those who read my book and understand its necessity in this world. But the road could be smoother up ahead!
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’ve worked hard to find my place in the world after leaving congregational life in 2020. I had incredibly meaningful and difficult experiences as a hospital chaplain in the IU Health system in Indianapolis during the peak of COVID-19. I worked in the ICU and even went “viral” with my description of my time: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/2022/01/10/covid-indiana-chaplain-mike-harvey-chronicles-iu-health-icu-losing-battle-viral-tweets/9159191002/
As well as my book, I am proud of these things. What sets me apart from others is that I recognized that congregational life as a rabbi was not good for my mental health, and I took a huge risk moving away from it. Rabbis, in my position, easily make six figures, and I went from that to making 38k as a chaplain and not 58k as a manager of a local restaurant. Is it what I dreamed of being or doing? Of course not, but as I said, while I am pursuing my Ph.D. and continuing my writing for my second book, the bills have to be paid, and these days in this economy, an expert like me has few homes!
What do you think about happiness?
Besides my two beautiful children (8 and 4 years old), what makes me happy is when I hear from those who have read my book and have had those “ah ha” moments, transformative realizations that help them to be better allies to Jews. It gives me hope that there are more good-hearted Christians out there than the rabid antisemitic Christian Nationalists who are loud!
Pricing:
- Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians – Paperback – $22
- Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians – Kindle – $9.99
- Lutheran School of Theology Class Registration: $50 includes a copy of Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians
- Speaking fees and honorarium: $1200/session
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rabbimichaelharvey.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rabbimichaelharvey/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RabbiMichaelHarvey
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeleharveyhuc/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RabbiHarvey
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@teachmejudaism9316
