Marketing Expert to Rabbi
By Bill Spring
As the rabbi of Adat Shalom, a conservative Jewish temple in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westwood, Michael Resnick, 45, is the spiritual leader of more than 300 families. But for much of his life, Resnick barely knew what it meant to be a Jew.
In a dramatic journey from marketing expert to man of God, Resnick has discovered both a deep faith and an appreciation for the beauty of life.
Growing up in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley in the '60s and '70s, Resnick led what he describes as the typical American suburban life. His Jewish parents were not particularly religious, and the family stopped attending a synagogue when Michael was very young. "This is embarrassing," he recalls, "but at Hanukkah we would actually get a tree, and decorate it blue and white. My understanding of Judaism was minimal."
When Resnick celebrated his bar mitzvah at age 13, he looked out into the synagogue and asked his mother who all the people were. "She explained that these were people who had shown up for the traditional Saturday morning Shabbat service," Resnick remembers, "and I said, 'What service?' "
In 1981, Resnick graduated from California State University-Northridge with a degree in psychology. Unsure of what he wanted to do, he bounced between jobs for years before starting his own company, Linkage Marketing, in 1988.
As sole employee, Resnick evaluated every aspect of a client company's marketing strategy, from corporate logo to employee uniforms. "I loved working with the art and the visuals," he says. "What I didn't love was dealing with people when they were only concerned about money. Money was always the issue."
Although the company did well, Resnick couldn't help but feel there was something missing. At the same time, a close friend was starting to become more religious, and the two began discussing Judaism. "I didn't want to hear any of it," Resnick remembers.
But despite his resistance, the conversations had an effect. And in 1989, he decided to explore his identity as a Jew.
While studying the story of Cain and Abel with a rabbi, Resnick experienced a life-changing moment that showed him the beauty and the promise of his religion.
In the English translation of the Torah, when Cain kills his brother, God says, "The blood of your brother cries out to me from the Earth."
"But in the Hebrew," Resnick adds, "the word for 'blood' is plural. It says 'the bloods of your brother.' Rabbis have interpreted this to mean that when Cain killed Abel, he also killed everyone who would have come forth from Abel."
In a single Hebrew letter, yod, which makes plural the word for "blood," Resnick saw the universal truth of the value of a single human life. Equally profound, he also came to understand that humans interpret, and therefore better understand, the word of God. "It felt like someone had poked a hole in the blackness, and a little bit of the light of truth came forth," he says.
Resnick entered rabbinical school in 1990. After a year of preparatory study in Los Angeles, he moved to Israel, where his yearlong visit coincided with the first Gulf War. "I remember sitting in sealed rooms wearing a gas mask," he says. "I heard the explosions of buses."
Surrounded by violence, Resnick felt compassion for people on both sides of the conflict. He also felt a very strong connection to his religion and heritage. "I felt like I was home in Israel. I felt like I was family," he says.
Resnick continued his education with three years at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan. "In my first year," he recalls, "I got a job as the rabbi at the Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, where there were 500 people over the age of 90."
Resnick found himself presiding over 300 funerals before graduating. While many students would find this depressing, Resnick found it uplifting. "It was magical to have the privilege of hearing about a life lived spectacularly," he says.
Of his time in New York, Resnick says: "It was, and continues to be, the single most satisfying work I've ever done in my life."
After being ordained in 1996, Resnick spent a year at a synagogue in Palm Beach, Fla., before taking his current assignment in Los Angeles. As rabbi, Resnick wears many hats: business administrator, spiritual leader, educator and counselor.
Although Resnick would like to marry and start a family, his work fulfills his need to help people in difficult times, and he's also grown as a human being and as a Jew. "Being part of a community where we're working together to create is great satisfaction."
| 
