I am a rabbi. Ordained at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1977, I was the founding rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield, New Jersey from its inception in 1980 until my retirement in 2018. I take great pride in my service to that community. I will always be a rabbi.

But among the things I’ve discovered about myself along the way, I’ve come to the realization that I am very visual. To paraphrase from the film Being There, I like to look. When I was young, still living at home, I would constantly rearrange my bedroom. This was not a function of feng shui. I was just trying to make my space look right. Then, as a congregational rabbi, I developed a reputation as something of a movie aficionado, largely owing to my frequent use of film references in my sermons. (Upon my retirement, my congregation held a film festival in my honor; I only wish my mother could have lived long enough to see my name on the marquee of the Clairidge Movie Theatre in Montclair, New Jersey.) Along similar lines, I was invited to be the editor of the national Newsletter of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, a role which was driven by my fascination with graphics and page design. Simply put, I have always found my peace within a visual world. And I still love to watch movies.

None of this is to say that my reverence for the written word has waned. The sacred texts of Judaism embody the very soul of my faith. But by the same token, I have come to appreciate that my affinity for the visual is profoundly compelling. Even magnetic. I am drawn to that which I can see. My eyes perpetually search for order. And balance. Structure. And symmetry. And beauty. And meaning. And while the Torah warns us from being led astray by our eyes, for me it is my eye that paves my way. It is my eye that leads me toward wisps of light, and shaded doorways, people in crosswalks and the arrangement of objects on a table. Truth be told, these two pursuits — the rabbinate and photography — are not inconsistent. As a rabbi I saw myself as a storyteller. I aspire to do the same with a camera in my hands.

And so, notwithstanding a lifetime of taking pictures, in my retirement I have sought to master the craft of making pictures. While cameras have always been part of my life, I now seek to embrace the art of photography as something akin to sacred ritual.