Before Shabbat

My son, Jonah, was a big Transformers fan. Liza and I bought him his first Optimus Prime. I think his friend, Adam, already had one (Adam always got the cool toys first). With his Transformer in hand, Jonah battled against Megatron and the Decepticons for control of the Creation Matrix.

Ok. Some of you are absolutely on board with me here. These names are familiar. You watched the cartoon. You saw the movie(s). You played with – or purchased – a variety of Transformers. This mega-franchise, valued at over $35 billion, is an example nonpareil, of the sweet intersection of gaming, movies, love of Japanese anime, comic books, and toys.

Undoubtedly there are some of you who are feeling left out of the story. Briefly, Transformers features the battles of sentient, living autonomous robots, often the Autobots and the Decepticons, who can transform into other forms, such as vehicles and animals. The toys could be broken down from a big robot into a car or a truck or a jet or… well, you get the drift.

These Transformer robots had personalities and weak spots. They could be cruel and destructive. They could also be kind and self-sacrificing. It was all about good guys and bad guys and the various humans who intersected with these battling robots.

High entertainment, it wasn’t. The animation was classic Japanese tv cartooning: big splashes of color and not much artistry. The first movie starred Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox. Not exactly art house cinema. But the money poured in and hasn’t stopped.

Despite their mass pop culture appeal (I am a snob and so eschew anything in said category), something about Transformers appealed to me. So much so, that 20 years ago or more, I did a sermon about them. I loved the notion that a simple thing: an old jalopy, could turn into a giant, lethal robot with a sense of humor. Hidden in the form of one thing, it could transform into another.

What was the true identity of Optimus Prime? Was he a robot or was he a fire truck? Of course, he was both, becoming what he needed to be in each particular moment. This notion was so human and so wise.

We are never just one thing. We are comprised of several parts that merge to help us cope with the particular moment in which we find ourselves. It’s a kind of flexibility, an acknowledgment that rigidity and tunnel vision cannot be the way to survive. It’s all about transformation. Or as the theme song of the Transformers cartoon show went: “Transformers: more than meets the eye.” Which is a truth of all humanity.

The creator of Transformers was a Jewish guy named Henry Orenstein. Borne in Hrubieszów, Poland in 1923, he was imprisoned at Budzyn, a German labor camp in Poland in 1944. One day, the Nazis running the camp ordered all scientists and mathematicians to register with the camp administration. Despite not knowing if the scientists and mathematicians would be given better conditions or killed immediately, and even though Orenstein himself was neither a scientist nor mathematician, he signed himself up along with his brothers who were interned there with him. He transformed from a guy with an average knowledge of math into an expert.

The Nazis were organizing a special unit of prisoners to develop a weapon to help the Nazis win the war and the prisoners assigned to the unit were spared execution. Luckily for Orenstein, who was only 16 when the war broke out, the math problems he was required to solve were simple and he, along with two of the three brothers with him, survived the war. His parents, a sister and one brother were killed.

Orenstein ended up creating a toy company after the war. After some good moves – and some really bad ones… he sold his idea of a transforming robot to the CEO of Hasbro. And the rest is history. Orenstein next transformed into a famous and successful poker player… and then into an inventor, creating a poker table with cameras that each player would use to show viewers what cards they were holding without revealing them to the other players. This invention transformed poker into a viewer sport – and made Orenstein even richer. He shared his fortune with many Jewish philanthropies.

Henry Orenstein died this week. His life is a testimony to good luck and a willingness to gamble. He had a deep appreciation for quick thinking and the wisdom to know when to change. He lived a long life as a Transformer. If anyone were to ask me, I’d suggest his epitaph to read: Hinryk Orenstein: More than meets the eye.

Whenever I hear antisemitism mentioned in the news, I immediately perk up. I want to know the details and who’s done what. Where did it happen? Is it violent? It is classical Jew-hatred – you know, with the swastikas and the obsessional charges of Jewish domination of the media or banking or whatever else is popular to blame Jews for…? Is it about conspiracies: Q-Anon nonsense, George Soros, or plain old white supremacist obscene ignorance? Or is it classical anti-Israel, anti-Zionist rhetoric? Is it the far left’s classical dismissal of Jews as having a unique voice rather than just another group of white people who have ‘made it’ in capitalist America?

I want to know what they’re saying. I want to get into the dynamic process of antisemitism and where it’s originating. The more knowledge I gather, the better I feel about how to respond. And this is, parenthetically, why I’ve come away so unsatisfied after a few antisemitic incidents in the Newton public school system. We never really hear about the investigation or what the schools are doing to avoid future acts of antisemitic vandalism.

A recent incident has me confused. Many are calling it antisemitism, but… is it? The city (town?) of Medford sponsored a Holiday Extravaganza last Wednesday and posted pictures from the event. Along with photos with Santa, a wreath sale, and the lighting of the town Christmas tree, the holiday event featured a table inside City Hall with framed descriptions of holiday symbols.
One set of pictures showcased the history of Christmas trees. Another featured the kinara, the candelabra used during the African-American holiday of Kwanzaa. And a third showcased the menorah used by Jews during the holiday of Hanukkah.
Although the table held an electric menorah with nine candles, the menorah in a photo placed on the table wasn’t the one used by Jews during Hanukkah. Instead, it was a picture of a seven-branched menorah labeled with Christian terms. For example, one branch was labeled “cross,” while another was labeled “resurrection.”
The image is widely available online as an illustration of how Jews for Jesus misappropriate the symbolism of the menorah and redirect it to Christian images.

Medford Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn responded with a highly apologetic message from City (Town?) Hall. It was, she said, utterly unintentional. Furthermore, she promised to do better. A leader in the Medford Jewish community told the press, “We were incredibly disappointed to see an antisemitic display at a city celebration, though heartened to learn it was not intentional.”

Antisemitic?

I don’t think so. It was a well-meaning Medford staffer being diligent in fair representation and utterly ignorant of the difference between Judaism and Jews for Jesus. It’s not unusual for people of other faiths to be clueless about our religion and culture. After all, how much do we know about Sikhism? In fact, can you explain the difference between Lutheranism and Catholicism? Is it conceivable that if called upon to decorate a world’s holiday table that you might unintentionally stumble on the wrong symbols?

I intensely dislike the Jews for Jesus organization and how they make a mockery of Judaism and Jewish history. I still remember thirty-five years ago, trying to explain to a Lutheran minister in Arlington, Texas, why it was offensive that his church was hosting a Jews for Jesus “Texas Tour.” It took him about half an hour before he realized that you could be a Jew who admired Jesus or respected Jesus, but not a Jew who believed that Jesus was the Messiah. There aren’t many boundaries in the practice of post-modern Judaism. But that’s a boundary that not everyone knows in Medford – or anywhere else in the world.

We need to be prudent concerning what we label ‘antisemitic’ or ‘racist.’ The tendency to self-righteously smear people with a bristly brush of condemnation is an increasingly common act on the left and the right. In a rush to judgment, people are taken down. Sometimes they utterly deserve it. And other times, innocent people are destroyed. The use of pejorative labels says more about the intolerance of the brush wielder than the ignorant actions of an otherwise well-meaning human being.

About placing that Jews for Jesus photocopy on the Medford Holiday Extravaganza table. Antisemitic? No. Ignorant? Definitely. Forgivable? Without a doubt.

The death of George Floyd cracked something open in our perception of America and Americans. Derek Chauvin, a police Officer sworn to uphold the law in Minneapolis, MN, calmly and deliberately choked Floyd to death. I’ll never get over the image of officer Chauvin calmly pressing his knee down on George Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, with his hands in his pockets. Floyd begged to be released, over and over again crying, “I can’t breathe.”  As Floyd pleaded, Officer Chauvin continued to kill him.

The image awakened many Americans. A white man in a blue uniform believed he could get away with killing a Black man in public. Bystanders screamed while Chauvin’s fellow officers did nothing other than keeping the crowd at bay.

This is a time of reckoning. We are beginning to acknowledge the deeper scars of American history and the dimensions of racism. We are daring to pull back the thick curtain of denial to truly look at how we got here. It’s time to learn about so many things we don’t want to know about slavery and racism and implicit bias and redlining and white supremacy.

This is tough stuff. It has so many implications for American society. We are trying to pull down the lies and the injustice and the self-serving hypocrisy that created a false front, an image of America that sought to exclude people of color and alternative religious faiths and gender identification. We are pulling down the false idols.

We are duty-bound to serve up the truth. We are compelled to explore our new American center of gravity, to find meanings in the new dimensions of American life that are being uncovered and shared. This is the only way to move forward in a progressive, multi-ethnic, multi-racial country. If we don’t acknowledge the fuller truth of the past, as painful as it may be, we are doomed to implode. Without telling the full truth, we run the risk of becoming a neo-fascist nation. The stakes are that high.

There are people who fear disturbing the status quo. I understand that. I’ve seen that response to Jews who sought to matriculate at American universities that had quotas to keep us out. I saw the first Jewish hospitals in America constructed because so many hospitals would not hire Jewish doctors, and they had to practice somewhere. They feared us, scared of our perceived foreignness. They hated us with the two-thousand-year-old canard that we were “Christ-killers.” White Anglo-Saxons were not interested in sharing the pie.

I listen to White people railing against enlightenment at school boards all over the country. I wonder how it’s possible to claim that advancing a more nuanced understanding of race in America is a Marxist idea… And I can assure you that 99% of people who use the term Marxist as a xenophobic sledgehammer have no idea what Marxism is. Opposition to historical facts, like opposition to science, is all about a desperate need to uphold an ideology of the past even as the arrow of time points in the opposite direction.

We can – we must – be able to accept the cruel nuances of our history, that the Founders of America were noble – and that some of them were slaveowners and deeply flawed humans. Knowing the fuller truth chastens us; it lights the way to a deeper wisdom. The story of our nation includes unspeakable violence and racism and slavery and atrocities against Native Americans and people of color and Jews. But those are not the only stories.

We are weaving a complex tapestry that is still coming together. I hope that this Thanksgiving we can braid various narratives together rather than rip them apart. It saddens me to learn the extent to which the quintessential Thanksgiving mythos does not bear much resemblance to the facts. The myth is that friendly Indians, unidentified by tribe, welcome the Pilgrims to America, teach them how to live in this new place, sit down to dinner with them and then disappear. They hand off America to white people so they can create a great nation dedicated to liberty, opportunity, and Christianity for the rest of the world to profit. That’s the story—it’s about Native people conceding to colonialism. It’s bloodless and in many ways an extension of the ideology of Manifest Destiny.

Do we have to get rid of the Pilgrim hats and the head feathers? Is it racist? Or is it aspirational? Is it an image that we have clung to all these years to propose the possibilities inherent in sharing our bounties together? Or is it a cynical dodge for colonialism? I don’t know, but it’s worth talking about.

Hard conversations are necessary for us to move forward. Stonewalling the truth in favor of preserving an idyllic – and imaginary – past will not work. Thanksgiving can take on new meaning. It can underscore the best of our nation: a sincere desire to give all our citizens the opportunity to succeed with grace and dignity and equality. We will create new images. We will tell new stories.

Reform Jews know this so well. We have this ancient history and ancient rituals that we continue to reframe and alter. We abandon that which no longer works, and we adopt a new way of understanding our destiny. It’s hard. And it’s why we are here in 2021, daring to raise up new meanings.

Whatever you do on Thanksgiving, while you feast, give some time to exploring the old stories as you consider what the new chapters will tell us. This must be a time that we recognize just how important it is to braid together the stories that work to unite us, the stories that dare to be truthful.

I’m not what they call an adventurous traveler. I don’t have a particular hankering to hang from a cliff in a harness secured by rope. There is nothing thrilling about a pup tent or a sleeping bag. Sailing on a tramp steamer to Bora Bora does not tickle my fancy.

You might say that I’m overly enamored of my creature comforts, that I prefer a resort to any form of roughing it. Why wouldn’t I? Look up rough in the dictionary. There is not one pleasant or breezy definition. “Something in a crude, unfinished, or preliminary state. Difficult to travel through or penetrate.” Nope. Not for me.

There are many people who delight in facing the harshest challenges imaginable. Cable television offers up a huge smorgasbord of shows that feature such humans. Whether it’s couples walking around in the wilderness naked, looking for water or shelter, or tuna boat crews at sea, getting pounded by huge waves and nasty winds, or people in Alaska doing Alaska stuff (there are so many Alaskans outside in the cold in front of video cameras!), there is clearly a surfeit of folks who love to rough it.

But just because I may not have a taste for the challenge of the outdoors does not mean that I don’t appreciate the call of the wild. I am an explorer. “For all the different forms it takes in different historical periods, for all the worthy and unworthy motives that lie behind it, exploration—travel for the sake of discovery and adventure—is it seems a human compulsion, a human obsession even (as the paleontologist Maeve Leakey says); it is a defining element of a distinctly human identity, and it will never rest at any frontier, whether terrestrial or extra-terrestrial.”

This fact of exploration is in our bones, maybe in our DNA. It drives us not only to enter the woods or get in a space vehicle, but also compels us to delve into the human mind. The exploration of consciousness is a wild ride with so many twists and turns along the way, replete with tremendous implications.

Questions about being and nothingness and infinity and finitude are not imponderable. In fact, they demand we ponder. It’s not a cliché to ask about the meaning of life: it’s mandatory.

I watched a bit of Life Below Zero a few months ago. I don’t know why I did. It’s a hazard when you’re couch surfing. You find something so bizarre, so out of your normal range of interest that you’re drawn to it in all its weirdness. The segment I watched was about a guy who, on his own, was getting ready for winter and building an igloo. And if I tell you that he was in the middle of nowhere, it couldn’t convey just how remote a location he was settling in.

In a million years I would say no. For a million dollars I would say no way. But this man was extending himself way outside his defined box. He was pushing the envelope awfully hard, “for the sake of discovery and adventure”.

Does the show, Life Before Zero change the world? Probably not. But it certainly expanded the consciousness of the igloo builder. And it reminded me that an eagerness to explore is not represented by where you stay: exploration is about where you go. Look at Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norga, the first people to climb Mt Everest. Look at Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the modern age. There’s so much spacetime to cover between Hillary and Hawking. I hope we never stop exploring.

Who knows how certain artifacts, buried in the ground or a closet, emerge after years or even centuries? Most things are stumbled upon by accident. Someone is moving out of a family home, lived in for generations. A new highway is being built when excavators find relics and sometimes ancient settlements. The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 when a young Beduin shepherd, throwing stones into a cave on the outskirts of Qumran, heard the sound of something shattering. He went to look and found large clay pots containing scrolls. He had no idea what they were. Eventually, he traded them to someone in the grey market antiquities business who sold them. It’s a fabulous story, filled with intrigue and hijinks.

Until recently, valuable objects, found by accident, or searched for by archeologists or treasure hunters, belonged to whoever found them – or paid for them. The notion that indigenous peoples were robbed of their sacred objects, family heirlooms, and cultural artifacts, was collateral damage. “To the victor goes the spoils.”

We have recently begun to reimagine to whom these items found in so many museums and private collections genuinely belong. It’s a tough, ongoing conversation, deeply emotional, and filled with issues related to race and culture and the very meaning of ownership.

Right now, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is hearing a case brought against Harvard. For over a decade, Tamara Lanier of Connecticut claimed that the university has photos of her distant relatives photographed while slaves, against their will. The pictures were being taken for a Harvard professor looking to “prove” the inferiority of Black folk. Lanier says the university has no right to keep these images, that they should go to her as a living descendant.

Harvard disagrees and claims that the images, despicable as they may be, will form part of the collection to illuminate how the university, like many in America in the 1850s, was racist and cruel. The lower court agreed with Harvard, saying, “the law, as it currently stands, does not confer a property interest to the subject of a photograph regardless of how objectionable the photograph’s origins may be.”

The MSJC ( MA Supreme Judicial Court) pulled the appeal to this case to the front of the line. They see it as a timely and vital conversation around history, property ownership, and justice. Some justices highlighted cases in which historical crimes have resulted in the eventual repatriation of remains or artifacts left in indigenous reservations, internment, and concentration camps.

This, of course, brings up all kinds of questions about the many Holocaust images taken by Nazi soldiers that we see in textbooks and museums. To whom do those photos belong? In Israel, there is an extensive conversation going on right now around Holocaust artifacts of significant historical meaning. Through an Israeli auctioneer, an anonymous person is attempting to sell eight fingernail-sized steel dies, each lined with pins to form numerals, that were pressed into prisoners’ flesh with ink to brand their serial numbers. Holocaust survivors sought an injunction against the sale, and the regional court in Tel Aviv subsequently put the transaction on hold.

Israel has no law to prevent the sale of Holocaust relics in private hands. But Yad Vashem says it’s utterly preposterous and shameful to allow such auctions. As Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and research center, officials say that such artifacts belong to them.

A spokesman from the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland said photographs of the dies appeared similar to those in its collection. “If they would be authentic, then the very fact that such unique historical items are put up for auction – and not given to an institution that commemorates the victims and educates about the tragedy of Auschwitz – deserves the words of protest and condemnation.”

History is generally not good to the victims and the vanquished. The arrow of time continues to slice through spacetime. The relics of the past, things so dear, symbols so potent, end up eroding under sand or burnt by an ignorant mob or displayed like trophies.  

What about the souls of those African slaves? What about the Jews who died at Auschwitz? Where is the compassion and the dignity they deserve? What is to be done with the pieces of history that are left behind long after the innocent are gone?

Dear Ms. Rooney,
Let me admit it right away: I haven’t read your work, and I didn’t watch the screen adaptation of Normal People on Netflix. But I know many people did, including some of my own children. The consensus is that you are a fabulous talent.
The word on the street and in social media is that you are the voice of the millennial generation. You’ve created a voice at once unique and simultaneously one that captures the zeitgeist of your generation and your times.
I congratulate you on your enormous success. To become a writer takes hard work. It can be brutal putting yourself out there in print, subject to the slings and arrows of critics. But based on my cursory research, your reception has been very positive. You’re no flash in the pan. At age 30, you are a literary force to be reckoned with.
This open letter has nothing to do with the contents of your fiction or the style of writing you use to such good effect. The issue that motivates me to write this missive concerns your audacious decision regarding a Hebrew translation of your latest best-selling fiction, Beautiful World Where Are You.
You said that you were proud to have “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends,” published in Hebrew. You also said, “Likewise, it would be an honor for me to have my latest novel translated into Hebrew and available to Hebrew-language readers. But for the moment, I have chosen not to sell these translation rights to an Israeli-based publishing house… I do not feel it would be right for me under the present circumstances to accept a new contract with an Israeli company that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and supports the U.N.-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”
You added that the Hebrew-language translation rights to the novel are still available and that if you can find a way to sell them and adhere to the B.D.S. movement’s guidelines, that you will be very pleased and proud to do so.”
I’m very critical of the Jewish State and the gross inequities that define the Arab-Israel conflict. There are so many egregious social, legal, and moral issues in play. That Israel must commit to peace and cooperation with the Palestinian people is essential. The lack of movement on this front pains me deeply.
However, it’s worth noting that many Israelis and Palestinians are working together to do what they can to bring about change on a grassroots level. It’s slow going, but it’s real. The commitment to ameliorate this decades-long struggle is an admirable dimension of Israeli-Arab dialogue and action.
You seem to admire the B.D.S. (Boycott Defund Sanction) movement. It’s a big deal in the Western world today. I imagine that your refusal to allow your novel to be translated into Hebrew unless you vet the publisher’s political stance is a variation on the B.D.S. theme.
It is so discouraging that a gifted young author would act in this way. You exhibit no sense of the political and cultural nuances of your actions. There are undoubtedly people applauding your bold statement. But let’s face it: pillorying Israel is so easy.
Now you become a hero of the anti-Zionist left. Various Palestinian committees and organizations delight in your taking up the cause. Like Roger Waters from Pink Floyd, your stage provides you the opportunity to take pot shots. I know you’re not an antisemite. And I’m not accusing you of that.
I suggest that by preventing Hebrew-speaking readers from sharing your insights through fiction, you are losing your power to inspire and motivate them. By turning your back on the Hebrew language – the language – you insult a deep Jewish tradition of learning and reading.
I am neither the first nor the last to suggest that this action of yours is easy. After all, how many readers will you lose? A hundred thousand at the most? How much money will you lose? Not too much. What if you refused the Chinese or Russian editions of Beautiful World Where Are You. There’s no lack of nations doing horrible things to their citizens. But that’s big bucks.
In fact, why publish in any language? Why not boycott all forms of expression until the world becomes what you want it to be? Hold back as an act of political defiance.
Ms. Rooney, we need works of art, expressions of conscience. Your singling out Israel from other nations is a cheap trick, a dance for the feckless, ineffective B.D.S. movement. I wish you luck with your writing career. And I hope you’ll mature into a great writer. In the meantime, it would serve you well to reconsider.

I’ve been around a lot of Torahs. Big Torahs. Little Torahs. Torahs with exquisite covers, with simple crushed velvet covers, or no covers at all. Torahs scribed in the Hasidic style, the Czech style, the Tzfat style, the Lithuanian style, and others I could not identify. Some Torahs were in terrific shape, like our very own commissioned Torah: so bright and clear, the black ink still gleaming whenever the light hits it. Some, like our Holocaust Torah and others, are over a hundred years old, the parchment drying out, the ink chipping away from endlessly rolling forward and backward and forward again.

I’ve never taken a Torah scroll – any of the ones I’ve held and/or read from and/or kissed with my tallit as it passed before me – for granted. I embrace the sacredness of the scroll. I understand its history and the traditions around holding it and honoring it, and reading from it. I cherish the responsibility with which I am charged to teach Torah in all its multitudinous layers.

But I am not in awe of a Torah. It doesn’t scare me to pick it up or to roll it. It’s a regular part of my life, integrated with prayerbooks and blessings.

We brought the kids outside for the opening of our Wednesday Jewish Enrichment Program (ok, I made that name up; I don’t like calling it ‘Hebrew School’ anymore. That appellation is just too fraught with negative connotations) for an inaugural session of prayer and song. Our educators, Heidi and Miryam, wanted to weave Torah learning into the experience. Since Simchat Torah (the end of Sukkot when we roll the Torah from the end back to the beginning) had just passed, we thought it would be a good time for our kids to see the Torah they would one day chant from for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah.

There, on a table in the middle of the TBA parking lot, I opened our beautiful Torah scroll to the very first verses of Genesis. I then asked the kids to gather around the table in concentric circles to get an up-close view. A few of the kids were nonplussed, but most of them were awestruck.

I gave them some basic facts about the scroll. They stared at the Hebrew intently. They touched the parchment, remarking on its smoothness. I saw wonder and amazement emanating from their eyes. This was very special: even with masks on, their faces were shining.

Then the questions started, lots of questions. “Rabbi! How long is the Torah when you open it all the way?” “Rabbi, what happens if you drop the Torah?” “How long does it take to write a Torah?” The questions were pragmatic, focused on the Torah as an object.

And then one of the kids asked, “Rabbi, is it real?” In all these years, no one had ever asked me that question before. I wasn’t even sure I understood what she was asking me. I asked her, “You mean, is this a real Torah, not a paper copy like the ones we give out to kids when they start their Jewish education?” No, she said, that wasn’t what she meant. “Is it real?”

It was, I supposed, a 4^th grader’s invitation to a theological discussion about the origins of the Torah and who the Author – or authors – were. I tried to explain that the Torah was a series of stories written by humans who had experiences about who God is and what it means to be a Jewish person living in a big tribe with other Jewish people. I said the Torah reminds us to be the best humans we can be by showing love and kindness and understanding others.

I’m not sure the extent to which she took this explanation in or if I was answering her question at all. But I do know that it was a lovely moment of encounter and learning. I reveled in the circle of kids and teachers who were all so happy to be so close to the Torah, a real Torah.

Every year, Jews get to the end, and then we start all over again. No matter what else is happening, we follow this tradition. These are the things that define meaning. As the Universe rolls ineluctably to disorder, to have a dependable structure to hold onto until the end of time is a transcendent blessing. It makes us whole.

Shabbat Shalom

This has been the longest roller coaster ride of my life… The roller coaster metaphor barely approximates this year without equal, this annus horibbilis.  What a ride…

There were many fraught moments when I remembered the Anthony Newley musical title, Stop the World – I want to Get Off. Where is the exit sign? Where is the Instruction Manual? What next?

This year of surgery, plague and anxiety, recovery, vaccination, and redemption is slowing down; the cars are pulling into the station. Finally, I can see faces again. I can hug again. I can take a deep breath.

Before Shabbat is going on hiatus for the summer, and so am I. The Stern Gang will be away seeking R&R during the month of July. I’m going to Cape Cod – again. It is, as so many of you know by now, my place of refuge. It’s where I excel at sitting in the sun and listening to jazz. I get to watch the ocean’s dynamic, ever-changing rhythms.

My Before Shabbat hiatus comes to make room for new thoughts and themes. It’s a way to consolidate my brain’s hard drive. I’ll be doing some reading, some grilling, and some relaxing. I hope to create some quiet time to think new thoughts about where we are right now and how we move in time.

Vacation or not, High Holy Day sermon themes rush through my head. It’s a long-time habit, a reflex. So I’ve been thinking about the things we learned over this past year. How did we alter our behavior? What motivated us to hold on? What were the sources of our resilience? What were the ways we stepped up and became better citizens? What lessons do we hope to adopt into our worldview permanently? But, just as importantly, what did we learn about ourselves that we vow never to repeat?

To help answer some of these questions, I’m waiting patiently for the first comprehensive history of this pandemic. It’ll take a few years for that text to be written. It must be a study of heroes and villains, of scientists and scholars, of fools and scofflaws. It will feature politicians who endeavored to head off the avalanche of preventable deaths.  It will expose other politicians who betrayed the health of their people in service to shameful preening self-interest.

Until that book or books appear, I’ll be compiling my answers and sharing them with you from time to time. I hope to provide some clarity and shed some light from our tradition. I take my inspiration from the rabbinic tradition, a two-thousand-year-old willingness to process history and experience through Jewish eyes and with a Jewish heart. I have always sought to express myself from that same place of engagement with life rather than retreat and pen commentary from a distance.

For now, though, as Nobel laureate Bob Dylan once sang, “This ol’ world/Keeps on and slowly going/ So I’m gonna sit here on this bank of sand/ And watch the river flow.”

Bank of sand or Nauset Beach, river or sea, it’s all about the breathing free and watching life flow.

General John A. Logan, commander in chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, declared that “the 30th day of May 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion [the Civil War], and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet in the land. In this observance, no form or ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.” The holiday would first become known as Decoration Day. Memorial Day became its official title in the 1880s. After World War I, Memorial Day was officially designated to honor Americans who died in all wars.

Wars are vicious. They scar a nation’s soul and the souls of those who fought in them. Like Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who coined the phrase, “War is hell,” those who have fought in war know it better than those who merely write the stories of war and those of us who read or view their analyses. To know war as a soldier is to know that it is horrific. Hell can be defined simply as the furthest away you can get from what is good and right, the furthest away you can get from God; war is hell because whether we succeed or fail in our military objective, everybody finally loses a lot, even those who live through it.

Post-traumatic stress disorder can derail the best efforts of veterans when they get home. Depression, substance abuse, and homelessness are plagues that afflict far too many men and women who chose to serve their country. Since 2006, there has been an 86% increase in the suicide rate among 18-to-34-year-old male veterans. Veterans are at 50% higher risk for suicide than their peers who did not serve in the military.

No one has any cogent theories that adequately explain the shocking, staggering numbers. But we do know that there is something desperately wrong with this picture. These statistics are a signal, a bright red warning flag.

It’s essential on this Shabbat of Memorial Day weekend that we remember the veterans who have died in all wars. They deserve our attention. They deserve to be acknowledged, as do their families.

Those veterans who committed suicide and their families: parents, siblings, partners, kids – all deserve recognition and rachmones [empathy]. On this Memorial Day weekend, filled with sales and races and beer, take a moment. Acknowledge the tremendous loss of life in the wake of war. Consider the pain and the loss. We remember them.