“You’re a rabbi?”

I get asked that question a lot, mostly from people who knew me as a teenager or a young child. They usually pause – then say: “Yes, I can see that.” However, the rabbinate did not enter my mind until my early twenties. I had a lot of growing up and searching to do until I was ready to see where my journey was taking me.

Not long ago, I wrote of a memory of my grandfather (may his memory be a blessing), about walking to the synagogue in Jackson’s Point near my family’s summer cottage. I think those were my first steps toward the rabbinate. But those ideas must only have been active en route to the old one story building on Dalton Road. I must have repressed those initial notions of wanting to be a rabbi. At this kind of synagogue, the women sat in the back corner behind a curtain on uncomfortable wood chairs. The women were barely part of the service, the rabbi was someone far away, revered, untouchable and male. Being a little girl, I really had no desire to sit in there alone, so I played outside with a girl I called Rugalach. I think it was Rachel or something like that. I had an imagination.

I grew up as a Conservative Jew in Toronto. My parents belonged to a Conservative synagogue and I was active in youth groups. But in those days, women rabbis were not accessible to me. When I was ten years old, women such as Nina Feinstein and Amy Eilberg were banging on the doors to be let into the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological Seminary. I was ten years old. My Jewish life then was about day school, a kosher home, Jewish art on the walls, Shabbat dinner, Passover Seders and other holiday celebrations.

Like many young people that I knew, specifically my cousin Karen, I spent a year of college at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There was very little that I did not experience that year – mentally, emotionally, spiritually or physically. I made amazing friends, some who I still speak with many times a week; My grasp of the Hebrew language skyrocketed and I learned a lot about the ancient land of Israel. One evening, after learning about the 1967 war, I remember leaving my class with a feeling of excitement. The professor had just lectured about the day the Israel Defense Force captured Mt. Scopus, which was where we were located. There was something in the air. When I left campus I walked out, and saw Jerusalem aglow beneath me. It was then that I knew. I knew I would spend my life somehow working in the Jewish community.

When I returned to college I was convinced to go the Jewish Federation route. It was one of two options that were offered to me. The other was being a teacher. Back then teaching seemed scary and overwhelming. Upon graduation from college, I accepted what I thought would be a one-year position working for Hillel’s Centre for Jewish Engagement as a Jewish Campus Service Corps Fellow. Thinking that this would be a one year opportunity, I took a position far away in a make believe place – Miami, Florida.

On my first day of work, someone said to me: “You should be a rabbi.”

I ignored that advice, because I was not able to fully understand what it meant. I was a woman, I was hip; I was not a man with a beard. Still, that year I undertook a big change – leading a Shabbat observant lifestyle. It would not be too difficult. I lived alone in an observant neighborhood. Being Shabbat observant did not equate being a Rabbi in my eyes. It was an opportunity to make friends, by enticing them over for my delicious cooking on Friday nights.

That year I was accepted into a graduate program in New York City at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work. The idea was to get an MSW and a Certificate in Jewish Communal Service to cement my career as a Jewish professional. At the time I was thinking Hillel or other non-profit agencies.

Midway through the program I read three books simultaneously for a class called Jewish Social Philosophy that changed my life forever. The books were The Lonely Man of Faith by Rav Soloveitchik, The Sabbath by A.J. Heschel and Judaism as a Civilization by Mordecai Kaplan. I took their ideas about God, faith, observance and community and fused them together in my head. Once they were scrambled enough, the output said to me ”Rabbi.”

But how could I be a Rabbi?

I was an individual. I was a fun, hip, young Jewish professional. I loved Torah, and I loved God but I also loved shopping and Crosby Stills Nash and Young and Philip Roth novels. Could the two parts of me be conflated? Apparently yes.

After much internal debate I placed a call to the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism. It was a match. In August of 2000 I packed up my belongings once again and moved to Los Angeles where I spent four amazing year of growth, along with one year studying in Jerusalem at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies, a special part of the program.

These days it is hard to separate Robyn Fryer from Rabbi Fryer, and that’s fine with me. My blood pumps with Torah and Shabbat is my favorite day of the week. But I also get manicures, watch VH-1, admit to a shopping problem and can be found now and then at a neighborhood watering hole with a Cosmopolitan in my hand.

My rabbinate is not traditional, and my ‘congregation’ is comprised of the students and staff at the Jewish high school were I work. I love it. We just graduated a class of seniors and the remarks they wrote in my yearbook were validating and they made me proud. The students used words like inspire, role model and hip.

The road to the rabbinate was not easy. It took a lot of time, and it cost a lot of money. Nonetheless, I cannot think of any other way to live my life. Being a rabbi is who I am. In essence, every step I took formed a direct line to the rabbinate. It just took me a while to realize it.

The author is a Rabbi-in-Residence at the Chicagoland Jewish High School.