Heath Watenmaker shares how a summer job led him to pursue a completely different career path.
The summer I turned 15, I started my first job filing at a radiation oncology center. Mine was a rather mundane role: sorting doctors’ correspondences in triplicate, filing and refiling patient charts, pulling MRIs and X-rays as doctors requested them. It wasn’t a patient-facing role, but working in the front office, I got to watch and occasionally interact with some of the patients as they came and went.
I worked there for two years, and at one point, I had shared with my rabbi how incredible it was to see these patients coming in, with worry written all over their faces as they battled cancer of various stages, coming in each week for their prescribed dose of radiation.
But when they left, they were more at ease, many smiling. I shared this as the rationale for why I wanted to be a doctor. After listening intently, my rabbi sat for a moment, then asked, “Have you ever considered becoming a rabbi?”
A simple question that ended up changing my life’s trajectory. His question caused something deep within me to click into place: yes, I wanted a career where I could offer support to people in meaningful ways, but perhaps medicine was not my path. My work in that oncology center ultimately set me on a course towards the rabbinate.
Today, I work as the Senior Rabbi at a large synagogue where every day is different: some I spend engaged in pastoral counseling, some celebrating lifecycle rites of passage with families, or at the bedside of someone taking their last breath, or officiating a funeral and helping a mourning family to navigate the complex path of grief.
Every day, I find myself grateful for the gift of being able to be present in such different, profound moments in people’s lives. I am so thankful to that team of radiation therapists and their patients for showing me what a profession as a giver of care could look like. With a Perspective, I’m Heath Watenmaker.
Heath Watenmaker is a rabbi at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. He lives in Mountain View.