Cover Yourself With the Dust of Your Rabbi

In the ancient world, a disciple who accepted the call to follow a rabbi, entered into the inner circle of that master, sharing life in all of its intimacies – warts and all. The aim of being a disciple was the application, the translation of all the long learning & memorization of the Hebrew Scriptures into real life lived under the watchful eye of the Rabbi.

A disciple would follow his rabbi everywhere. One of the sages of Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, used to say, “Cover yourself with the dust of [your rabbi’s] feet, and
 drink in [his] words with gusto.”

The idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi came from something that was a common sight in 1st century Palestine.

I like how Rob Bell describes this… He says a rabbi would be walking down a dusty local street and right behind him would be his students doing their best to keep up with him, as he went about from place to place teaching his yoke. By the end of the day, the disciples would have the dust from whatever their rabbi had been walking in literally caked all over them.  

Covering yourself in the dust of your rabbi… this is what devotion means when you are a disciple of Jesus.