The world is full of beauty and wonder
Two local rabbis capture images far from the bimah
If you’re a rabbi, you have a massive, wide-ranging job.
Although of course no one rabbi can do all these things equally well — or necessarily even do all of them — in theory a rabbi is a scholar, a teacher, a halachic decisor, a counselor, and a leader who both cares for the community and represents it to the outside world. Rabbis often are expected to speak well in public and to write at least acceptably. If they can sing, that’s great too.
But even rabbis aren’t expected to be able to do everything. Their responsibilities might include seeing beauty, oddness, pathos, personality, narrative, outrage, silliness, or joy around them— but the verb “seeing” there would be metaphoric.
There’s a group of local rabbis who see all those things, and many more, not only metaphorically but also literally. And then they photograph them. And then, if the rest of us are lucky, they post those photos online, or display them in exhibitions, and we get to see what they see.
Here, two of them — David-Seth Kirshner of Temple Emanu-El of Closter and Ned Soltz, retired from pulpits in California and Texas and now a member of Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck — talk a little about photography, as we show a very few of their many images.
“I always had been interested in photography,” Rabbi Kirshner said. “I always took a lot of pictures. When I was in rabbinical school, when I led trips to Israel and Poland, I always had my cameras with me.
“And then I got married, and I had kids.” He also became the senior rabbi of a big shul. He had many calls on his time. He no longer had his cameras with him.
“But then, I became an empty nester, and our synagogue went on a mission to Kenya.” Rabbi Kirshner and members of his congregation travel frequently, often but not only to Israel, but this time, just a few years ago, was different.
“We went on safari. And I took my old camera gear, traded it in, got a newer, updated camera, and I used it on safari. It reawakened my passion for photography, and I’ve been doing it ever since.
“Since then, I’ve had a show at the Kaplen JCC — they took about 35 of my pictures from Israel and put them up for a month. The Rockland JCC is taking another curation and putting them up, and our synagogue did another one, and I’m also doing another series of synagogues around the world.
“I’ve been taking classes,” Rabbi Kirshner continued. “I’ve been learning some in person, some online, and it’s been fantastic and fun, and I really really enjoy it. It’s good to use my mind for something that’s not about the existential threat to the Jewish people.”
Rabbi Kirshner’s photographs are online at www.dskphotos.com
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“Since even before my bar mitzvah, I enjoyed taking pictures,” Rabbi Soltz said. “I started with an original Kodak box camera. One of my bar mitzvah presents was a Polaroid. And then as I got into high school and college, I took it a little more seriously, with Canons, and then in the mid ’80s and ’90s, I moved primarily into video, and I became a professional video shooter and editor.”
At the same time, he was a congregational rabbi. “I began shooting videos in Israel and of Jewish communal events, and editing then. And then, when we were in California, I got into more heavy-duty professional work in software. I became a columnist and journalist, writing primarily about video production, hard, and software.
“I co-authored four books, all on video technology. And then, for the last number of years, until about two years ago, I wrote regular columns” for trade magazines, even as those publications shriveled and died.
How did he balance his video work and his life as a rabbi? “When I was an active congregational rabbi, my writing was spare-time stuff,” Rabbi Soltz said. “I could take time away from the congregation for the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention, things like that, or for an occasional thing on Sunday. So I was able to balance all sides of my life.”
More recently, Rabbi Soltz moved back to still photography. “I got more and more interested in it,” he said. The equipment is more manageable, and covid and the boom in visual technology rearranged the industry’s ideas anyway. So he went back to photography as art.
And he loves it.
outside the Rema’s grave in Krakow. (David-Seth Kirshner)
“It is incredibly liberating,” he said. “I particularly enjoy photographing nature. It is incredibly spiritual. And that’s where the Jewish part comes in.” He can take pictures of “nature and creation,” he said. On rosh chodesh, the first day of each new month, daily davening often includes Psalm 104. “I call it the safari psalm,” Rabbi Soltz said. “There is so much nature imagery — the young lions, the wild goats in the high mountains, the cliffs, the birds, the wine that gladdens the hearts of man. How great are your works, oh God.”
Rabbi Soltz’s photographs are online at nsoltz.smugmug.com