Death and Life and Love

It has been, as often the case, an interesting series of days.

This weekend we had one of the most joyous aufrufs and weddings that it has been my honor and pleasure to officiate. Without naming names, our President's oldest son was married to a lovely young woman who studied with me for many months to become a Jew-by-choice. The aufruf was fantastic on Shabbat morning. Lots of participation and the joy of the moment was visible to all. When it came time for the special blessing for the bride and groom preceding the impending wedding - everyone surrounded our center bimah, waited for the completion of the benediction and the wished them sweetness in life by gently pelting them with candy. So much love and so much joy.
The wedding itself was equally wondrous. I don't often officiate at a traditional tish (groom's table) and bedekin (veiling of the bride), but that was the plan at Adas Israel in DC. One hall was reserved for the tish - where there was plenty of drinking, a traditional dvar torah (sermonette) with interruptions, some pretty good singing; a really loving celebration of the groom to relax him before the ceremony (and signing the ketubah - the marriage contract). In one of the chapels the bride awaited the groom's party - we danced in, regaled the bride a little, and then veiled her in front of all the guests.
The huppah (service under the 'bridal canopy') was filled with beauty and meaning: beautiful singing from Hazzan Komard and Cantor Judson, lighting a yahrzeit candle for loved ones present in spirit, but most of all just two amazing young people so in love, so filled with joy, sharing the moment with everyone. Then there was a fun reception - great time, great music, good food - being able to part of two extended families knowing what's really important - being in a sacred weekend of love, family and community.
Yesterday, I received a call mid-day from a member that her mother was dying any minute. So I raced over to the Nursing Home. We talked for a moment or two, I spoke with the 82 year old woman who was in extremis. It was clear from her breathing that the end was very close. After a few Psalms we recited Vidui - Final Confession. It's a powerful prayer that prays for a miracle - but if not that death will be forgiveness. Then a prayer for the family of the person and ends with Shema Yisrael and a few other lines affirming our faith. I've said Vidui many times and been at a death bed several times - but I've never recited it before and then in only ten more minutes watched a loving, stubborn and strong soul take her last breath. I then stayed another hour to help make plans for the funeral out-of-town. Having known the woman who passed away for a decade - it's always sad and strange to watch a life come to an end. And yet, as a remembered her joy at her granddaughter's birth and naming, the bnai mitzvah of her two grandsons, her coming to Active Retirees meetings in healthy days - I know she enjoyed a good, long life - not without it's pain and sadness - but met with incredible determination and great devotion. Her memory is a source of blessing.
I feel very alive this week in the face of love and death. I have felt the Presence of God in the holiness of a series of moments - of seeing souls alive with love, bidding farewell with a contemporary to the wellspring of her life, and a being truly present for the final neshama - the final breath of life. Just being wide open to these moments enables me to feel a connection to something more than myself.

Back from Vacation and Tisha B'Av

Vacation was wonderful. Loved the beach in Lewes, DE - lots of bike riding, walking around in Lewes, great beach, lovely weather. Relaxed, exercised, read - perfect for recharging my spiritual batteries. Florida last week with my parents went fine - today actually is their 59th Anniversary. Got a lot done to help out a little.
Tisha B'Av begins in a few hours. I have such powerful memories of this day from years of Camp Ramah observance. To commemorate with ritual communal destruction and death was and is truly powerful. We have holidays for joys of life and relationship with God, for historical celebration, for serious reflection and introspection, for finally for sadness and loss. Judaism truly is a "way of life" in the way that it ritualizes the range of spiritual experience. Remembering our loss of central sanctuary and other tragedies of Jewish history is not unique to our community, but it part of Judaism's uniqueness.
I am always ambivalent about how to fast on this day. With the reality of a Jewish state in my lifetime - I wonder with many others whether it is appropriate to fast for the full day. In reality, I normally fast until the mid-afternoon when just the experience of the summer heat, work ,and the drop in my blood sugar make eating a healthy choice. I've always found it much harder than Yom Kippur when although I work harder - I am distracted from my hunger and totally focused on the rituals and words of the day.
What am I thinking about for Tisha b'Av this year? Tisha B'Av is about loss. Loss of the Temple and sacred community. Most of all its about the sense of the absence of God - often experienced in tragedy. With so much suffering, illness and death this past year - I have been feeling the 'eclipse of God.' Maybe going through the losses is the only way to come out the other side. If God is everywhere and in everything - then God must also be experienced in sadness and passing. I know this is true - for so often I have experienced the certainty of connection in moments of visiting the sick and in comforting the grieving. Maybe it is in God's love in those moments that the spiritual flow of the universe is truly known.

Ready for my vacation

Today is my last day at work before I take four weeks off. It seems like it never slows down anymore. Over the past couple of days four different member's parents have entered into their last days of life and another parent passed away... It's been a rough year: with the economy, with Diane's surgery and with all the illnesses and deaths in our community. I'm not only ready for a break, I really need it.
What am I doing for vacation? We'll be a week at Lewes, DE. We had been at Rehoboth Beach last summer and what we saw of Lewes: quaint, quiet, nice little shops and access to the beach, is what we like. There's not a lot to do - but we'll certainly go to the Outlets in Rehoboth and take the ferry over to Cape May, NJ. Later in the month, I'm also going to spend a long weekend with my parents in Boca. In between, I'd just like to read and exercise. If I can get my body in a little better shape and recharge my mental/spiritual batteries - it will be a great month.
If I read something interesting - I'll blog. Mostly I'm planning to read shlock (Clive Cussler, etc.).
Wishing everyone a restful and rejuvenating July...

Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett

It both amazing and weird that two of the great icons of my college and grad school years, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett passed away yesterday. Their impact on popular culture of the 70s and 80s - was incalculable. Although I never owned the famous Fawcett poster - I certainly watched for several years Charlie's Angels. It's good to remember her growth as a serious actress and also her courageous battle with the cancer that took her life. I don't know enough to even begin to offer a eulogy, but it seems appropriate to realize that she was a real , complex person: sex xymbol, a life of difficult relationships, great success, and painful, prolonged illness. May her memory be a source of blessing.
Michael Jackson was one of the greatest musical and performing talents of my lifetime. His voice, his dancing, and his choreography were wondrous. In good days, his generosity was equal to his talent and sadly his strangeness was just as great. One of my favorite comedians is Lewis Black who has this funny shtick: that Michael Jackson is a punch line. All you had to do was say the name: and people laugh. While that is true for many ... I'd prefer to remember the singing and the dancing. At his best, Michael Jackson filled us with a joy - of the ability of the human soul to create beautiful music and movement - to celebrate the fears and joy of life and to expand the imagination in videos of sublime storytelling. That's what I choose to remember.

Catching Up and Common-wealth

Sorry been off for a while. Was in Florida two weeks ago visiting my parents. Will be on vacation soon for the month of July.

Next Monday I'll be in NYC for the afternoon at a National Gathering of the Industrial Areas Foundation. IAF is the parent organization of Action in Montgomery (AIM). As I had written a few weeks ago, one of the issues which concerns us all is the economy, but also the culture which encouraged and permitted the abuses which lead to the recent economic downturn. This meeting in part will be strategizing what can we do to represent the average person in the national conversation about re-creating a healthy and equitable economy for the benefit of all.
One of the interesting conversations around this theme which has fascinated me is the idea of COMMONWEALTH. When I look back over much of the past two or so decades - I've done OK financially. But I look at the frightening gap growing between have and have nots. In recent years, a very few have become fantastically rich, while the poor remain poor and the middle class has not grown individually or collectively. We have created pockets of wonderful prosperity, but only for a few. We have not invested in the infrastructure which creates wealth across broad spectrums of society. I was blown away in Israel by quality and speed of cellphone and wifi service. It creates wealth. When I hear about high speed trains, high speed wifi and cellphone service in "Third World" countries - I wonder why we don't have or have to pay so much for these vital, 21st Century "basic" services.
Maybe it's time for our country - private and public to invest in the kind of services and infrastructure that are communal wealth and spread productivity throughout our society. That's what commonwealth is about. Having the roads - physical highways and communication pathways to be able to make and get products in order to generate economic well-being for vast sectors of our country. I don't know how to do this - but I'd like to be part of conversation about achieving ethical prosperity.

Staying Positive In Hard Times

One of the hardest things as we observe people losing their jobs, watch as the markets wipe out years of retirement savings, and see our vital institutions hamstrung by falling membership and contributions - is to see the positive despite the negatives.
How do I keep my spirits buoyed? First, it is observing all the willingness of people to help those in real need. There has been so much generosity in my Jewish community and in the larger community from those who care ... to those in trouble. I have not lost my faith that God acts through the hands and checkbooks of good people. Tikkun Olam, repairing the world, especially in hard times, is primarily achieved through regular people doing the right thing, kindness and justice - personally, communally and politically.
When I see what's happening in the larger community and certainly in the Jewish professionally community, with the terrifying loss of parnassah (income sustenance) - it's good to realize that personally it's not so bad. In fact, it really is good. I have my health (as it is). I have a wonderful job. All the members of my family are doing as well as they have in a pretty good while. In the scheme of things that really count - I'm lucky and feel a true sense of gratitude for all the blessings that I enjoy. That appreciation energizes me to help those who don't have all the things that fortunately I do.
If anything of what I've just said makes sense, then for me the last step is to be proactive, to take responsibility for what's happening, and choose as an act of will not to be despondent. To pararphrase the "Serenity Prayer," I may not have control over what happens to me, but I do have control over my response to my circumstance. I can wallow in self-pity and anxiety or I can find help and work with others to make things a little better. I can respond to the pain of others with help and hope. As a Jew I am eternally optimistic - that with God's help, which is experienced when we help - things will be OK. In the end I really do have bitachon, confidence in God's love and power. I know that everything is not always going to be OK, but ultimately I have sublime faith in God's goodness for me, my family, my community, and our world.

Usury and The Financial Crisis

While Judaism encourages hard work and wants people to be wealthy - Judaism places limits on the dangers of exorbitant wealth. The law in Bible mandated for landowners and tenants to tithe, to leaves dropping, corners and the forgotten produce, and to give second tithe to the poor directly twice every seven years. In Rabbinic and Medieval periods, a communal chest was almost universally established in communities with standards of contribution and distribution to protect the well-being of the poor. Additionally, subsistence loans according the Torah were prohibited from charging interest. Later Hillel's prosbul permitted the "legal fiction" of paying back commercial loans to the court, so the loaner could be repaid. It is still a practice in the Orthodox world than rather than give a loan to a fellow Jew, that a partnership with shared risk and reward is executed.
We've all been tightening our belts and prioritizing our finances. As we slowly, I pray, begin to recover from our economic crisis - it's crucial to pause and reflect upon the factors which lead to this painful reality for so many: not just lost of wealth and retirement investments, but loss of job and home and the ability of many to provide for their loves ones. There's nothing wrong with wanting more and working to get it. Greed though is excessive striving for acquisition of personal wealth. There's something perverse about our culture that idolizes athletes, entertainers and leaders of the business community to earn tens of millions annually, while those who educate our children and protect our communities in many towns can't afford to live in the community they work. The anticipated changes to our regulatory mechanism will hopefully do much more to prevent illegal financial dealings.
I've been upset also reading about the 'Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights' Legislation moving through the House to the Senate this week. It does some necessary and wonderful changes to protect card holders from exorbitant fees. Yet Judaism, Christianity and Islam all forbid usury. I remember when credit card rates were capped by States. Those requirements were undone by Federal legislation 25 years ago. I don't know what rate is usury - but when people are being charged 25% and 30% on their credit card balances - this is not about return on a loan - it's an immoral burden - pauperizing the least able and enriching a few. I haven't heard much about this issue in the public forum.
What should we do? Minimally we should shop around for credit cards that charge reasonable non-usurious rates and switch our balances if we can to them. Second, we need to put this issue in the public square - contacting our elected officials and reminding them that usury is wrong. This crisis is an opportunity for constructive and ethical changes - I pray that this will be one focus where change for the common good will occur.