why are people who DO NOT have smicha called rabbi? there are places where, as soon as a man gets married, everything that comes addressed to him says rabbi. is that all it takes to get smicha?
I am also very much against this. If anyone calls me “rabbi” I correct him or her and insist that they either call me by my first name or use “Mr….” I likewise do not open mail addressed to “Rabbi…” that arrives at my home.
In fact, this past summer, a fellow (whom I don’t know) greeted me on Friday night by addressing me as “rabbi.” I told him that I don’t know who he’s talking to as I am not a rabbi and there was no one else present. But okay, perhaps since he didn’t know me he was trying to err on the side of courtesy. I can understand that. Nonetheless, after I made the point that I wasn’t a rabbi, he insisted on defending his action by saying that today “everyone’s a rabbi.”
I took umbrage at the idea, since I feel that if “everyone’s a rabbi” then the title is meaningless. In addition, I feel that calling non-rabbis “rabbi” is an insult (even if not intended as such) to all those who have put in the hard work and effort to actually earn the honorific. To award it to everyone demeans the title.
My greeter then replied that the title was already demeaned. My response to that was “so why demean it further?” To further prove my point, I mentioned the Tanaim Ben Azsai and Ben Zoma. The reason they are not called “Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai” and “Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma” is simply because they did not earn the title — they never earned smicha*. That’s not to say that Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma weren’t brilliant chachamim — they certainly were. But due to other circumstances in their lives, they never earned smicha, and so were never given the title “Rabbi.” If Ben Zoma and Ben Azzai were never given the title because they did not formally earn ordination, then I, certainly, should not be given the title.
To that he had no response, and we simply agreed to disagree. But I remain firm in my conviction. Barring some exceptional circumstances, I believe the title of Rabbi should be reserved for those who have earned it — and those ranks do not include me.
The Wolf
* Yes, there were tanaim who did not use the title “rabbi” (such as Hillel and Shammai), but they lived before the title came into popular use. Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma were contemporaries of Rabbi Akiva — by whose time the title was clearly in use.