Buchdahl traces more significant moments in her rabbinic career. On December 6, 2013, Sulja traveled from Tacoma to San Diego, California, for the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, where 6,000 Reform Jews gather every two years. A convention official initially assumed that she was at the wrong event; she corrected him by announcing that her daughter was leading the service. From the convention-center bathroom, she called Buchdahl to report that women in the stalls were excitedly discussing her upcoming senior rabbi role—and that she announced herself as her mother.

That morning, Buchdahl shared the pulpit with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. He introduced Buchdahl by recounting how audiences perpetually questioned her Jewishness; the crowd laughed, and Buchdahl, now able to laugh with them, reflected on how far she had come. Rabbi Jacobs urged the Reform Movement to move beyond narrow ethnic definitions of Jewish identity.

Buchdahl briefly traces Reform Judaism’s founding mission: reconciling Jewish ethics and social justice with modernity, ordaining women in 1972, and welcoming interfaith families. The movement also welcomed openly gay students to its seminary starting in 1989.

From the pulpit, Buchdahl acknowledged her Korean Buddhist mother. She thanked her for sacrificing her own religious tradition to raise her and her sister as Jews. Six thousand attendees rose and applauded, moving Sulja to tears. For Buchdahl, the moment confirmed that she belonged as a Jewish Korean American woman without choosing among her identities.

Buchdahl discusses anavah (“humility”), recounting how in 2014, she initially declined an invitation to bless the White House Hanukkah party for President Barack Obama, dismissing herself as a token choice. Her husband challenged her to accept the invitation, arguing that her distinctive identity was precisely why she must accept. Drawing on Moses’s forceful but self-subordinating leadership and a Musar aphorism from author Alan Morinis—“no more than [one’s] space, no less than [one’s] place” (214)—Buchdahl reframes humility as claiming one’s rightful role. She invokes the biblical story of Queen Esther to reinforce the point. With these considerations in mind, Buchdahl ultimately  agreed to lead the blessing at the White House.

In December 2016, Buchdahl was invited to join a panel at Kehilath Jeshurun, a prominent Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side—the first time a Reform rabbi had spoken from its pulpit. Her fellow panelist was Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, senior rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue and a leading voice in the Conservative Jewish community. Their host, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Kehilath Jeshurun’s newly appointed senior rabbi and the first outside a century-long rabbinic dynasty, deliberately sought progressive dialogue partners.

Surveying the pews and the women-only balcony, Buchdahl’s anxiety rose. She mentally rehearsed her credentials but found an Orthodox counterargument for each. Even still, she addressed the congregation, recalling the headline in The Jewish Press upon her Central appointment: “It’s Official: You Can Be a Non-Jewish Rabbi” (221). In retrospect, she understands the context for her dread at the time: The Rabbinical Council of America reaffirmed in 2015 that women’s ordination violates tradition, and her interfaith parentage makes her non-Jewish under traditional law. She contrasts this with Rabbi Alexander Schindler’s landmark 1978 sermon calling on Reform Judaism to welcome children of interfaith families—the ruling that enabled her own family’s full inclusion but drew Orthodox suspicion.

Rabbi Steinmetz’s reassuring smile steadied her pulse, and Buchdahl found her footing and answered the moderator’s questions about pluralism, prayer, and antisemitism. Afterward, she realized that no matter how far she traveled, doubt and the desire to belong could still destabilize her.

In the theological section, Buchdahl explains that the rabbis attributed the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 CE to infighting among Jews. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the patriarch of Rabbinic Judaism, comforted his student Rabbi Yehoshua amid the ruins, teaching that gemilut chasadim (acts of loving-kindness) could replace animal sacrifice as a path to atonement. Buchdahl distinguishes gemilut chasadim from tzedakah (a gift of resources), concluding that because kindness replaced sacrifice, it must cost us something real.

Buchdahl describes the rabbinic role as being in the awe business. In her first months as senior rabbi, she learned of the sudden brain death of Riley, a nine-year-old congregant and friend of her daughter, Rose. When Buchdahl spoke with Riley’s father from the hospital, he described lying beside his daughter while the family kept her on life support to donate her organs so that her heart could sustain another life. His generosity amid devastation restored Buchdahl’s own faith.

Buchdahl then contrasts such profound moments with the unglamorous bulk of rabbinic work, such as fundraising, human-resources management, security, and budgeting. The Talmudic phrase “If there is no flour, there is no Torah” frames her insight that the practical and the sacred are inseparable (227). Through two experienced executive directors, she learned that expanding family-leave policy, raising the minimum wage, and managing social justice programs are themselves expressions of Torah. She also confesses her persistent anxiety over the needs she fails to meet across a congregation of more than 3,500 households.

Buchdahl reflects on an experience she had when she was 24. During a Wexner Graduate Fellowship workshop in Miami, leadership scholar Ronald Heifetz singled her out and instructed her to sing the group’s song using only the syllable “la.” She began by performing her own melody before  Heifetz stopped her. On a second attempt, she looked at each classmate and let a collective tune emerge. When she finished and immediately sought the group’s approval, Heifetz stopped her again: A leader who relies on affirmation from those she serves will make decisions based on popularity rather than purpose.

In the closing theological section, Buchdahl explores yirah (“fear and awe”), which is distinct from pachad (“dread”) via biblical stories. For example, the midwives in Exodus defy Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew infants because they answer to a higher moral authority, a posture of trembling reverence. Buchdahl cites Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s call to radical amazement and a Lake Powell guide who told his group they had come simply to feel small. Awe, she concludes, tempers ego and orients us toward service.

Buchdahl continues to reflect on her rabbinical experiences. On January 30, 2017, she was in Dallas, Texas, for the annual meeting of large Reform congregations when President Trump’s travel ban convulsed airports nationwide. Protests filled the terminal, and over 100 attorneys set up a legal aid operation in her hotel basement. Buchdahl and Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback, a Los Angeles rabbi, lead a prayer service for the assembled conference, using a song that Rabbi Zweiback wrote overnight that Buchdahl helped develop, invoking words about opening to kindness, love, and justice.

Buchdahl recalls a recent exchange with her congregant Beverly, who had converted to Judaism with her wife, Nina, but felt alienated by what she saw as Central’s insufficient response to Trump’s inauguration and nearly left the congregation. Buchdahl argues that a community where people of differing politics coexist is a strength in an increasingly siloed society. Beverly stayed and helped lead a politically diverse Torah study group. Another congregant, Andrew, pushed back from the opposite direction, objecting that the Reform Movement’s use of the Torah to critique immigration policy alienated Jews who favored stricter enforcement.

Buchdahl cites the Talmudic story of Hillel and Shammai, whose opposing interpretations are both declared “the word of the living God” (238), to affirm that Jewish tradition holds multiple truths simultaneously. By way of example, she references her October 2016 High Holiday sermon. In the sermon, she revealed that a 1939 Gallup poll—which showed that two-thirds of Americans opposed admitting 10,000 refugee children—concerned Jewish children fleeing Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht. She uses this data point to make the case that Jewish people have been refugees in the past and should have compassion for the refugees of the present. When congregants objected to politics from the bimah (synagogue pulpit), Buchdahl invoked the Talmudic instruction to see beyond the sanctuary’s walls. Back in Dallas, she and Yoshi closed the service with the words of poet Emma Lazarus, inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.

In the theological section on hevruta (“sparring partner”), Buchdahl describes the legendary study partnership between Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and Resh Lakish, a former bandit whose challenges pushed Rabbi ben Zakkai past easy answers. When Lakish died and a replacement who only agreed with him took his place, Rabbi ben Zakkai became despondent, believing that without opposition, clarity was impossible. Buchdahl argues that this conflict explains the saying “Two Jews, three opinions” (242)—the third opinion is the higher truth two honest disputants reach together. She urges readers to seek a real sparring partner, not an echo chamber, aiming not to win but to understand.

Buchdahl describes the pervasive influence of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, an unconventional Orthodox rabbi born in Berlin in 1925 whose melodies are so embedded in Jewish life that most people assume they’re ancient. Carlebach collaborated with folk musicians like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, founded a countercultural synagogue, and championed women’s leadership within Orthodox circles—yet he was also accused of sexually molesting women and girls for decades.

Buchdahl reveals that she had heard rumors about Carlebach’s behavior as a teenager but continued performing his music, reasoning that great art can be separated from a flawed artist. The #MeToo movement in 2017 renewed Carlebach’s reckoning, and a woman’s account of encountering her mother’s abuser’s music in every Jewish space she entered forced Buchdahl to recognize her own complicity. In 2018, she brought the question of whether to continue using Carlebach’s music to Central’s clergy team and board and then reached out to Shlomo’s daughter Neshama Carlebach, who was also a musician and had publicly written about her struggle with her father’s legacy. Central decided on a one-year moratorium on Carlebach’s music as a signal to survivors. Many congregations followed.

An unintended consequence followed: Neshama was disinvited from Jewish venues nationwide, becoming collateral damage of her father’s indiscretions and crimes. When the year ended and Central reintroduced a Carlebach melody, Neshama contacted Buchdahl. In a meeting with Buchdahl, Neshama revealed that the enforced pause of her father’s music had driven her to create an album of entirely new music in her own voice. Buchdahl invited her back to the Central bimah, acknowledged the harm her father had caused, and affirmed to the congregation that Neshama stood on her own. The evening felt like a tikkun—a repair.

The theological section on gibor (“hero”) begins with Buchdahl’s childhood admiration for King David. Her reverence for David was disrupted when she later read the parts of the Hebrew Bible depicting David’s abuse of power: He covets the married Bathsheba, arranges the battlefield death of her husband, and takes her for himself. Buchdahl likens this story to a 2021 incident in which a former congregant accused a beloved former Central rabbi of abuse from 40 years earlier. After a second survivor revealed that the rabbi had pursued a relationship with her beginning at age 15, Buchdahl and her leadership team launched an independent investigation, which confirmed predatory conduct including with a minor. They informed the congregation, left the rabbi’s photograph on the wall of past senior rabbis, and added a plaque explaining the investigation’s findings and his expulsion from the Reform rabbinic body. Buchdahl closes by noting that God forgave King David’s sins but refused his request to erase them from the biblical record. The tradition’s message, she concludes, is clear: Forgiveness is possible, but forgetting is not; the Hebrew word gibor (“hero”) derives simply from gever (“man”), affirming that all heroes are merely human.