Wednesday the rabbi slept late

So there I am at some ridiculous hour of the night in the shul office, having come straight from overtime at work, trying to do the last of the editing and formatting of the synagogue’s quarterly bulletin (already overdue at the printer because of my illness last week). The president, who’s often at the shul at even more ridiculous hours, calls the rabbi on the phone to discuss something or other, and I ask him to ask the rabbi whether he has any comments or corrections to my bulletin section on the laws of Passover. The president tells me that the rabbi said that he hadn’t seen the bulletin that I’d e-mailed him at least a week before, because he was too busy studying. Okay, so let me get this straight: A congregational rabbi is too occupied with his own personal studies to answer sh'eilot (questions concerning Jewish religious law) that affect the entire congregation. How odd. I thought that answering sh'eilot was one of the principal responsibilities of a rabbi.