Who is your Dumbledore? A reflection for Shabbat

In a recent conversation with my colleague Rebecca Schisler, she told me about her high school principal. This was a special person in Rebecca’s life, someone she referred to in our conversation as “her Dumbledore.” “You do know who Dumbledore is, right?” she asked. I reassured her that as the father of three boys born in the last 20 years, I am intimately familiar with Albus Dumbledore and the world of Harry Potter. And I commented that it would be a wonderful question to ask people, “Who is your Dumbledore?” It’s an amazing conversation-starter.

For the uninitiated, a Dumbledore is like a Yoda, or a Gandalf, or a Buddha, or a Hillel: a powerful wise elder who consistently evinces kindness, wisdom, and compassion toward younger people—while also being a master of their craft (and usually capable of being a total badass when necessary). They frequently present as a guide and mentor to a younger person on their journey of becoming—e.g. Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Bilbo Baggins. (N.B. I pause to acknowledge here that the examples I have cited are all male—well, Yoda would seem to present as male—and that there are gendered aspects to this discussion, as you’ll see below. My intention is not to be prescriptive or comprehensive, but to share my own experience and those that have been shared with me.)

Coincidentally, I received an amazing message this week from one of my own Dumbledores, Larry Livingston, an orchestra conductor and teacher who had an extraordinary impact on my life as a teen. His influence was and remains such that I refer to him as one of my Rebbes—though he’s not Jewish. I had sent Larry a copy of my book (link in my bio below). He wrote to say how much he was looking forward to reading it and drawing wisdom from me, and that I remain the boy who was one of his most beloved students. I have, thank God, received my fair share of compliments, and I’m always touched to receive them. But this one touched me in a special way, a way that, in my experience, is unique to a Dumbledore. It was a particularly good and affirming feeling—the kind of feeling that, even as a middle-aged man, evokes the powerful needs and sensations I experienced as a young person finding my way in the world with the guidance of a wise and generous elder.?

Part of what makes these relationships so powerful, even decades later, is that Dumbledores often appear as parental figures at a moment when a young person is leaving home and, in the process, redefining their relationship with their parents. (Or, in the dramatically heightened cases of a Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker or virtually any Disney main character, standing in for parents who died.) They provide both support and challenge: support that the world, though it may feel like it’s crumbling, is, in fact, a place of promise and possibility, and that, despite the young person’s personal doubts, they do in fact have everything they need to weather the storms; and challenge, to persevere when the going feels hard, to be soft when youthful instincts might pull in harsh directions, to love oneself even one doesn’t feel loveable. While parents can do some of this work, Dumbledores, by virtue of not being the young person’s parent, have a distance that enables them to do it in different, often more effective, ways. In Jewish parlance, Dumbledores are Rebbes.

Joseph, like his father Jacob, is a young person on a journey. Unlike Jacob, who left home voluntarily after a traumatic incident he brought about, Joseph leaves home, and his father, against his will, the victim of trauma perpetrated by his brothers, which they, in turn, inflict on Jacob too. Where Jacob finds a father figure—and father-in-law—in Lavan (though he was no Dumbledore), Joseph struggles more. Potiphar is one potential father figure, and that relationship ends badly. Pharaoh ultimately becomes another, though my sense is that relationship is perhaps more transactional, less intimate, than a genuine mentoring relationship. Perhaps because of the traumatic nature of his departure from home, Joseph seems to retain a childlike connection with his father, such that, when he ultimately reveals himself to his brothers, he says, “I am Joseph, your brother. Does my father still live?” (Gen. 45:3)

Yet Joseph clearly develops a deep spiritual resilience, a fortitude that enables him to endure the hardships of servitude and imprisonment in a land far from home. We catch glimpses of it in the text. The Divine is very much present in and through Joseph while he is a servant in Potiphar’s house (see Gen. 39:1-5). And the Holy One is again with Joseph as a prisoner (38:9), showing him?hesed.?In fact, Joseph’s spirituality is so evident that when he is eventually brought before Pharaoh, not only does he invoke the God in answering the king (41:16, 25, 28), but even Pharaoh can sense Joseph’s spiritual attunement: “And Pharaoh said to his servants, ‘Have we ever encountered a person like this, in whom is the spirit of the Creator?” (41:38)

Perhaps Joseph is the exception that proves the rule, reminding or revealing to us something about the essential nature of mentors or Rebbes or Dumbledores. Joseph has no one to guide and challenge him in healthy and supportive ways, no one to help him develop the self-love and compassion that will enable him to love, care for, and serve others—so the Holy One steps in to do it. But in most cases, that guiding and challenging, that loving and caring, comes through images of the Divine—human beings. And that reminds us that the work of mentoring, of serving as a wise elder, of accompanying young people on their journey of becoming, is the work of making the Divine Presence visible in the world.?

If you’ll indulge me one final note: As I write these words, I think of my own father, whose fourth yahrtzeit takes place this coming week. While I am grateful to have found father figure Dumbledores along the way, I am also grateful that my father, a psychologist by training, was aware that I would need to find those Rebbes and encouraged me to seek them out. And I take pride in the fact that, as a teacher and volunteer and Scoutmaster of our Boy Scout troop, he too was a Dumbledore for others. His example continues to inspire me as I become a mentor in the lives of younger colleagues, of the Josephs who are ever on their journey of becoming.

Shabbat shalom.