We were lucky to catch up with Michael Harvey recently and have shared our conversation below.
Michael, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?
The main reasons for developing a book proposal were the weekly (if not more frequent) phone calls and emails from Christian clergy asking questions. These ranged from what I call 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 own communities, these pastors, ministers, and priests wished to gain more knowledge of the Jewish roots of Christianity. While Christian clergy do 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 as well as gained sufficient knowledge of Akkadian and Syriac. I, therefore, felt no resentment toward my Christian colleagues when they would tell me that they have 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 seemed to find the time to answer them, and 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. Even if I could not be present in their church settings, my teachings would be. 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 went by 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 simply began cutting and pasting links to my articles when I found posts or tweets that needed more information. After years of this practice, I had gathered enough questions and answers to create what I ultimately realized Christian clergy really needed—a handbook, something to reference when they had questions and couldn’t reach or didn’t have access to a “Rabbi Mike” in their own communities nationwide.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Since the beginning of my rabbinical training, interfaith work has always been one of my passions. Indeed, my passion for interfaith dialogue and education began long before I entered seminary—when I was attending Boston University. I was a psychology major, but I always had an interest in Judaism and took electives that would fulfill my need to learn more about it. I was lucky enough to be attending a university with a strong Jewish studies department that offered classes on Jewish philosophy taught by Elie Wiesel and classes beyond the standard spectrum of core classes, such as Holocaust and Music, which analyzed the Jewish music produced before, during, and after the Holocaust. It was in this class that I was introduced, by way of a guest lecturer, to the Lipper Internship of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, a living memorial to the Holocaust. The museum, located in Battery Park, New York, sponsored students in the Northeast and trained them to become docents of the museum itself. We students also traveled to schools in the Boston area to teach non- Jewish students about the Holocaust. Armed with slides, curricula, and my Jewish upbringing, I stood in front of middle school and high school students attempting to help them understand the horrific consequences of anti-Semitism. After a first session in the classroom, I would be the docent for that class when the students took a field trip to the museum in New York City.
As I sat on the express trains from Boston to New York with business commuters, I went over each exhibit in my mind and outlined what I would say to the group of students. While the Lipper Internship only lasted a year, I was not ready to let go, and the museum allowed me to come and substitute or teach from time to time. It was then that I realized I had awakened something in me, but I was unsure of what it was specifically. Was it an interest in the Holocaust? Genocide in general? Museum work? Teaching? It was not until six years later, while studying in Jerusalem for my first year of rabbinical seminary at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC- JIR), that I realized it was, indeed, interfaith dialogue and education that brought me so much joy. Just a short tram ride from the HUC-JIR campus was a Swedish theological Christian seminary. After some from that seminary were invited to speak with us on our campus, we were invited to visit theirs. I volunteered to take the lead and be the liaison for this program, walking my fellow students down the cobblestone streets of Jerusalem to the Swedish seminary building. In speaking about Judaism to the excited and curious Christian students, I realized that the energy that they were exhibiting fed my own energy, and their respectful questions yielded respectful answers, humor, and joy—all discovered in our similarities and differences. 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, and eventually, together we decided that a look at Nostra aetate 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. 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 take part in an interfaith seminar at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey.
My ecumenical activities were not limited to the summers, as 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. After ordination, I made it a point to engage in interfaith activities in my rabbinate in whatever way possible.
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 out 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 was able to make educational progress with those who had been sadly sheltered by only Christian understandings of religious matters. 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 was able not only to contribute to my community but also to 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 and 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. 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.
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. Engaging in interfaith activities, no matter how long or difficult, consistently made me feel energized and alive and left me wanting more. 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 book, “Let’s Talk: A Rabbi Speaks to Christians.”
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I, like many others of my generation, began my journey on social media when Facebook opened its doors to local colleges. I was at Boston University at the time and added Facebook to the many other new aspects of the internet, such as Napster. I was a child of the AOL generation, with a strong understanding of the internet programs, communication platforms, and eventually social media. Until I began my rabbinical career, I used these social media platforms for connecting to friends and family, as I had not thought about using them to promote my brand or projects. This all changed as I entered seminary and realized the potential. As I am a networker myself, I had already established myself in the rabbinate as one who connects to others and fuels those connections for mutual beneficial situations. Before I was on social media, I had a rolodex, and I called on my contacts, sent them cards, and made sure they remembered me. I treated my social media network the same way. I found the most success on the platform Twitter, before it became X and turned into a cesspool of antisemitism, trolls, and bots. Thanks to my “threads” on learning, particularly the most interesting and gratifying lessons, I gained upwards of 9,000 followers. This, of course, had its downsides, and eventually led to doxxing, antisemitic clutter, and my inevitable decision to leave the platform. I am currently on Instagram’s Threads, where I am currently building my connections as well, so far almost at 1,000 followers. I provide real genuine fascinating topics, things that engage the average person into learning. This is what has driven the attention and connections and why people have followed me and read my book.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
In today’s world of capitalism, CEOs, work schedules, overtime, pay gaps, wealth gaps, PTO and sick days, and the daily monotony of most jobs, the only escape is to be creative. Most people go home from their jobs exhausted and spent, perhaps depressed or yearning for their next vacation. I vowed that I would not live my life that way; that I would not work at a place that made me miserable; that I would not live only on my vacation days. The most rewarding aspect of being creative, being an artist, is that my work, whether it be during the day or after hours, is something that I create, something I make, something that is mine. It doesn’t belong to the corporation, it doesn’t belong under fluorescent lights and cheap wooden tables or uncomfortable office chairs. Being creative is the escape from the day to day that most people survive in; being an artist in some way, in my case a writer, is a chance to dive into my interests, my passions, something that is mine, a journey, a peace, an escape, and to present that to the world and ask others to join me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rabbimichaelharvey.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rabbimichaelharvey/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RabbiMichaelHarvey/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeleharveyhuc/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@theadultstable