“I’ve had this New Yorker cover on my wall for years”

Two sides, but one and the same

 

By Dan Rickman

Editor’s note: Dan Rickman is one of three new International Region members from the United Kingdom who attended FJMC’s Leadership Development Institute in Baltimore early this month as part of an effort to launch a men’s retreat in the UK in 2027. These are his impressions.

Two men standing back-to-back on the subway. Same beard. Same face. One in a black hat and long coat. One in skinny jeans and headphones. Two sides that clearly don’t fit together.

I always thought that was me.

I just never understood how I could be both without feeling like a walking, talking contradiction. They’re literally facing away from each other, like you have to pick a side, like milk and meat. They just don’t go.

For a long time, that’s exactly how I felt.

Part of me has always been drawn to the spiritual side. Texts. Learning. “Praying” in my own slightly alternative Dan-Rickman style. Trying, in my own clumsy way, to build a relationship with Hashem. The version of me that tells his colleagues that Thursday night shiur is the highlight of my week.

And then there’s… the other side: The immaculately trimmed beard. The skinny jeans that are probably getting a bit too tight for a 40-year-old. And, don’t say it too loudly because my grandma really does hate it, yes, the tattoos.

I love a good night out. Loud music. Throwing a few dad shapes on the dance floor. A general bit of chaos.

I have always felt slightly torn. I didn’t quite fit the neat version of what a “religious” guy is supposed to look like. But I also found myself playing down the spiritual side in the “secular” world.

And for years there was this question quietly humming in the background: Can you be both?

Can the wannabe rock-star, party-loving version of me also be legit-kosher? Or eventually do you have to choose which one is the real one?

Last weekend in Baltimore, I think I saw an answer.

I had been invited to run a “Get Men Talking” session at the FJMC International Leadership Development Institute, a program bringing together over 100 Jewish guys from all over North America to spend Shabbat together. (“Get Men Talking” is a British program started by Rickman that is similar to FJMC’s Hearing Men’s Voices.)

I went thinking I was there to deliver something. Share the origin story of GMT. Run a taster session. Hope it landed with a group of mostly 60-something American men from a very different Jewish culture to the one I know.

Gulp.

But as it turns out, I was the one who got the lesson.

By day, these guys were serious. Properly serious.

Workshops on how to grow their local regions. How to engage the next generation. How to support their communities better. Real conversations about responsibility and leadership.

At one point we had a random team exercise about what you’d take if your plane crash-landed in the middle of a frozen forest. When I said whisky, chocolate, and his phone power-bank, pointing at the guy next to me, it did not go down well.

Over lunch you’d hear:
“Try this in your shul.”
“We tested this in Chicago, it works beautifully.”

For UK readers, imagine a room full of Larry Davids asking each other to pass the chicken soup.

No ego. No territory.

Just men who genuinely care about the people back home and want to support them better.

It wasn’t a jolly.

It was leadership. Responsibility.

You don’t just turn up. You show up.

And then Shabbat ended… and suddenly the ties came off.

One room transformed into a pseudo-casino. Another became an aggressively competitive game of Cards Against Humanity – yes, I am really telling you, these were grown men taking it very seriously. Somewhere else was basically a fully stocked bar for anyone who didn’t fit in the first two.

Singing one minute. Arguing over cards the next. Arms round each other for Adon Olam, then someone mock-flipping a table because they lost a hand.

It was loud and messy and hilarious.

And weirdly… it felt holy.

Because underneath all of it wasn’t the booze or the games or even the ruach.

It was trust.

These weren’t strangers networking. They were brothers. The kind of men who can talk seriously about their communities at 10 a.m. and then be absolute lads together at midnight. The kind of men who can be vulnerable and ridiculous in the same day.

And somewhere between the singing, the shouting and the second double-whisky, something clicked.

This wasn’t a contradiction.

This was the point.

The learning and the laughing weren’t opposites. They fed each other. The brotherhood is what makes the leadership possible. The banter is what makes the seriousness sustainable.

You can only build meaningful community with people you actually feel safe enough to be yourself around.

Then I had this oddly familiar feeling.

This is basically what I’ve been trying to build with “Get Men Talking.”

Not therapy. Not fixing anyone. Not fancy programs with big outcomes.

Just a room. Some chairs. A few questions.

A space where men slowly chip away at the whole “men don’t talk” nonsense and actually say what’s going on.

A place to show up as your full, contradictory self.

Serious and silly. Spiritual and sweary. Talking about life one minute and ripping the piss out of each other the next.

The same energy I was seeing in Baltimore is what I see in every GMT session, just with different accents.

I thought I had invented something new.

Turns out Judaism beat me to it by about three thousand years.

Because maybe that New Yorker cover had it wrong all along.

Those two guys aren’t pulling away from each other.

They are just two halves of the same person.

The rabbi and the punk rocker.
The beit midrash and the bar.
Prayer and poker.
Both hats. Same beard.

And maybe being whole was never about choosing one or the other.

Maybe it’s finally realizing you’re allowed to be both.

 

Dan Rickman is development director for the London School of Jewish Studies and former CEO of ORT UK from 2019 through June 2025. He is also an experienced facilitator and founder of Get Men Talking, a men’s discussion format similar to FJMC’s Hearing Men’s Voices.