I’ve just returned from the annual conference of Reform rabbis. More than 400 rabbis participated this year – young and old, male and female, congregational rabbis and organizational rabbis, from small towns and from large cities all over North America.

While we may differ in our politics, personalities and predilections, we have this in common: an intense desire to serve the Jewish people, model a committed Jewish life, help people mark Jewish time, and open a pathway to God for everyone we meet. It’s refreshing beyond imagination to spend a few days with others who “get it” and get you.

There were, of course, many workshops that were professionally helpful and many moments of worship together that were personally meaningful. But there was one small instance, unplanned and unprogrammed, that was the most powerful of all for me.

During the Thursday morning service, when the Torah was being read, different rabbis were called to the bimah for aliyot. The last aliyah went to rabbis who have served in the rabbinate for 50 years. A hush fell over us as four men walked forward proudly: one held onto the arm of a younger colleague, one had a walker, and two walked on their own.

As they approached the bimah, the entire room rose to its feet. Hundreds of rabbis, most much younger than me, who may never have heard these four rabbis speak or known their names before, spontaneously rose in honour, respect and deference. Not because these four had “survived” the rabbinate for 50 years. Not because they were old. Rather, because they represented a lifetime of commitment to an ideal, and they hadn’t let themselves become jaded or “burned-out.” They didn’t flee the rabbinate when it was frustrating, and they didn’t feel despair over the personal sacrifices many of them made to remain in the rabbinate for so long.

We all rose, I think, because for us, these four rabbis deserve the old-fashioned and increasingly unpopular “kvod harav” – respect for the title, learning, and position of the rabbi in a community— that few of us receive today. Yes, it’s more common in the modern Orthodox and haredi communities for people to rise when a rabbi or their rebbe enters the room. But even in those communities there’s still plenty of “rabbi-shopping” to find the rav who answers your questions in the way you want, and plenty of quitting the shul if you don’t “like” the rabbi, as well as plenty of rabbis disrespecting other rabbis in public.

I remember one of my rabbinic mentors once telling me, “When I die I don’t care if people say I was a loved rabbi. I care if they say I was a respected rabbi.” Today, rabbis are expected to be popular, liked, accessible, warm, friendly, people-pleasers. We have to be equally great with little kids, teens, young parents, boomers, zoomers, empty-nesters and seniors. We have to preach well, teach well, console well, celebrate well, officiate well, eulogize well, listen well, organize well, plan well, be financially responsible, understand budgets, report to boards, find donors and inspire people we don’t see very often.

We’re often treated like employees or managers, like commodities or a checklist item. (Flowers? Check. Caterer? Check. Rabbi? Oops, forgot. Let’s call around and find one available for the date we’ve already chosen.) We’re asked to be very modern and very traditional at the same time, to represent history but to live in the present. We have big name rabbis, best-selling rabbis, rabbis on TV and rabbis to the stars that we can emulate.

But there are also rent-a-rabbis who will do anything you ask – with a Jewish flavour, for a fee. There are rabbis who offer counselling without credentials, rabbis who say yes because that’s what the “customer” wants (and for some odd reason, female rabbis are expected to say yes to things their male counterparts are never even asked to do). And there are, to my utter dismay, rabbis who sully the title with scandals.

For those of us who entered the rabbinate with fear and trembling, who believed the title would be something to earn every day of our career, who hoped that the community would respect us even more than love us, who believed that the rabbinate was a sacred calling, those four men may be a dying breed. We rose in hope that they’re not.