What is the connection between outer appearance and sense of self? Can we express in an action that which we feel on the inside? Does how we look help or hinder who wish to be, and what effect does it have on how others relate to us?
Usually, by this point in the cycle of Sefiras HaOmer, I am the point of wishing I could shave. The enjoyment of being able to sleep a bit later a few days a week has worn off, and the annoyance of itchiness and waking up with drool in my beard has increased. This year, I have wondered whether I should shave off my beard when Lag Baomer arrives.
It is not that I think a beard has any inherent religious meaning. I also don’t think it changes who I am as a Jew. Still, when I look in the mirror, I see a different person staring back at me. Part of this is the increase over the last few years, of white hairs in my beard. Each time I see myself in the mirror, I am reminded that I am getting older. While part of me wants to fight this sense of no longer being so young, I wonder if it’s not time to embrace, or at least accept it.
The excitement of seeing their normally clean shaven teacher with a beard has also worn off for my students. The sweet and funny comments which come from middle schoolers who are always ready to give style advice to their teachers are no longer made, as the novelty has worn off. I find myself wondering whether they see me as more rabbinic when I have a beard, and if so, whether that is a good thing. I am unsure whether being a rabbi helps or hinders me in my attempt to teach them about Judaism, and I am often convinced it’s the latter, as the title marks me as other, different even from the other adults they know.
What does it mean to look more rabbinic and why would I even want that? I already have a complicated relationship with the title “rabbi”. If I’m to be honest, I must admit that there are times when I enjoy being called rabbi, even as I feign humility and ask those who are not my students to call me by my first name. Other times, it legitimately feels like a burden, a title that I don’t always feel I deserve, one which doesn’t help with my Avodas HaShem.
There is, I believe, a reason why something as insignificant as whether to shave, matters to me right now. My relationship with Judaism, and I how I experience being religious, is not a linear one. I am not one of those people who long ago picked a “team” and knows where they fit in. Right now is one of those times where I feel like I’m in transition, where I don’t feel completely at home with myself, as what I learn and read, and how I experience God is in flux. So it’s not about the beard. It’s about identity, and a need right now, to see when I look in the mirror, some of what I’m experiencing inside.
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