Before Shabbat

I had so hoped that this new year would somehow be better than 2014, a year that was filled with so much suffering and death. I don’t know why I let myself embrace that thought, but I did. And here we are, just inside the doorway of 2015 and the news from Paris is horrible and overwhelming. Of course I know there’s plenty of good news in the world. America has more jobs, the stock market seems secure and bullish, kids have gotten into college, the Ebola scare has been tamed, and of course, we’re here, breathing, living, connecting.

It’s not that there is bad news; it’s always been around. It’s the increasing virulence of the headlines and the worsening ways in which some humans extol killing and maiming innocent people as a statement of faith. This scourge of terrorism feels pernicious and long lived.

I actually chose the title of this week’s Before Shabbat 2 weeks ago while I was in Israel. I wanted to tell you a story about identity and Jewishness and Zionism and the different names we acquire at different phases of our lives. The title remains but the original story was wrested away in Paris.

Today I stand in solidarity with all of the journalists and writers and cartoonists and photographers and stringers and critics who risk their lives to speak out and share their thoughts and ideas. Je suis Charlie.

I mourn the loss of Stéphane Charbonnier and Jean Cabut and Georges Wolinski and Bernard Verlhac, Philippe Honore and Bernard Maris, Elsa Cayat and Mustapha Ourrad, Michel Renaud, Frederic Boisseau, Ahmed Merabet and Franck Brinsolaro, the 12 victims killed at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a raunchy political newspaper. I honor them and their bravery to lampoon the status quo. I applaud their right to “go too far” in their statements or their imagery even when I am offended by their crudity. The world needs such people to remind us of our temporality. Freedom requires us to take a deep breath and not take ourselves too seriously.

Radical Islam is utterly unable to abide diversity of opinion and belief. Freedom of thought and expression are anathema to any totalitarian regime. The mere fact that humor and the act of laughing at oneself are unlawful in the eyes of radical Islamists is absurd. That political humor, even poor or low brow humor, might provoke assassination and mayhem is beyond belief.

As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times today, “…provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud. They puncture the self-puffery of the successful. They level social inequality by bringing the mighty low. When they are effective they help us address our foibles communally, since laughter is one of the ultimate bonding experiences.” http://tinyurl.com/o6wf2qt

I have another name today. Actually it is always one of my names but usually not in French. Je suis Juif. I am a Jew. I am one of the customers at the kosher supermarket purchasing last minute Shabbat wine and a challah. Je suis Juif. I’m buying Shabbat candles with my grandson, schmoozing with the cashier about Israel. I don’t have the names of the 4 dead yet, but I know mine. Je suis Juif. I am a Jew, a vulnerable person by virtue of my name and my history. For centuries I hid from the mercurial wrath of antisemites and their ilk. For centuries I tried to avoid trouble, to do the complicated Jewish equivalent of “putting on the ole master”.

But no more. Je suis Juif. I will not go gently into that good night. I will stand for justice and for freedom, for my people, for all people. I will speak out in the face of inequity: in the USA, in France, in Israel.

I guess it was irrational to assume a new year would somehow bring us closer to a Messianic era. I see that the work for this year more than ever is to declare as did the Bratslaver rebbe, “Don’t despair.” It won’t be easy. But that’s a part of why we’re here. Nous sommes Juifs.

“True story of Hanukkah?” you may ask. “Isn’t there only one story?” You’d probably be referring to the tale of the Jewish festival of lights, which celebrates the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BCE), and the narrative that Jewish rebel Judas Maccabeus vanquished the evil Greek emperor Antiochus and rededicated the Temple, at which the miracle of the oil occurred. Only… this isn’t the whole story. (For a great historical overview of the Hanukkah story click here)

But before I reveal the whole story, I share with you a thought. Why have we conspired to keep the story of Hanukkah in the dark? Why do we relegate it to a relatively juvenile passive tale of a miracle happening to us?

Hanukkah has become a significant festival only in the last 75-100 years in a desperate attempt to keep up with the ever more commercial mayhem that is Christmas. With advertising for Christmas starting the first day after Halloween, some Jewish parents need a counterweight, something to divert their kids’ attention to a Jewish theme. In the old days Hanukkah was about lighting candles, eating latkes, spinning dreidels, gambling with chocolate gelt, and maybe opening a tchotchke or two. Now it’s presents and more presents and an easily digestible story.

The Hanukkah story was all but lost by the second century. In fact someone asks the question in the Talmud, “What is Hanukkah?” This is not a pedagogic technique. I think the questioner sincerely challenges his colleagues to share their thoughts. It’s only then that we hear the story of the oil lasting 8 days hence 8 nights of Hanukkah… Nice story. Only…

Spoiler alert… Only the real story of Hanukkah is not about the miracle of oil. The eight days was all about the festival of Sukkot lasting eight days. Confused? It seems that in 164 BCE, when Sukkot time came along, the Temple in Jerusalem was in the hands of the enemy. Therefore our ancestors could not observe this 8 day holiday. We’re not in tune with the Jewish holiday cycle and its agrarian roots. But for our ancestors, the agricultural aspects were primary components of the holiday. Not to observe Sukkot, the festival of the Fall harvest, was experienced as bad form, if not bad karma. What if it cursed the harvest? When the Temple was reclaimed, our ancestors decided that they would start off the rededication by practicing Sukkot; better late than never.

Why does the miracle of the oil story hold sway over the ‘real’ story? At its heart the story of Hanukkah is about revolutionaries evicting a foreign culture and its acolytes. It’s about a corrupt institution (the Temple) being challenged by those who depended on its sanctity. It’s also about a people who were striving to hold the line against innovation and reform, who believed that any change was bad and destructive. All of which is to say that the real Hanukkah story is like lots of stories: good guys acting like bad guys and vice versa. It’s like the home team that slowly gets lazy and indolent and the outsiders prepare to pounce. It’s about how a small force can bring havoc down on the heads of a large established nation and its army. Do you see the problem? We love the Maccabees and their courage. We hate their fundamentalist coercion and their binary worldview. We applaud their audacious unmasking of the corrupt priesthood. We are appalled when the Maccabean descendants themselves become corrupt.

The real story leaves us with many more questions and dilemmas. Is it any wonder that our ancestors went for Hanukkah ‘lite’? It’s so much easier to take the story out of the realm of human foibles and greed, placing it instead in God’s hands, make about the triumph of light over darkness.

Just this morning I taught the TBA preschoolers the miracle of the oil Hanukkah story. That’s how our children should start learning about this holiday. But it does us no good to stay with that story alone. Our Judaism must be openhearted enough to embrace the subtle meaning of miracles of light. It must also be hardheaded enough to withstand the ambivalent message of how the Jewish people have sought to change the way we do things and how sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Our only hope is to be honest and forthright about our past and to stand in the present with integrity. We cannot afford to wait for another miracle story. This time we’re the ones who must bring the light. We have to make the miracle with our own hands and love and sweat and pain. That’s the real Hanukkah story.

My nephew Ben, my sister Marta’s younger son, is an interesting guy. He is funny. He is sensitive. He is big. He is quirky. He’s on the spectrum. And he’s black.

Ben has been lurking in my consciousness for weeks and weeks now, sometimes on the edges and other times up close. I’m worried about him. In fact I fear for his life. Because he is everything that could turn him into a target of law enforcement attention.

There is not a less violent person than my nephew. Ben doesn’t act out or make a scene. But if you know autistic people then you know that one of the major issues in their lives is not being tuned in to subtle and not so subtle social signals.  For instance I could imagine a police officer coming over to him and saying, “What are you doing here?” The right answer is short and sweet; something like, “I’m picking up my brother from work”, or “I’m going to the movies.” The answer must not be even vaguely provocative. But I could imagine Ben answering something like, “I don’t know. What are you doing here?” Not because he wants to challenge the officer’s authority, but just because he might think it amusing. In such a situation it is almost inevitable that the situation would escalate. Ben doesn’t know the script or understand exactly just how dangerous it is out there for him. Because Ben wouldn’t know the proper thing to say. Because Ben is black.

We know how dangerous it is out there for my nephew. I’ve watched the You Tube clips that you’ve seen. I’ve read the articles about Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice and others, so many others. We are living in a time of tremendous cultural stress. The force that supports divisiveness is colliding with the progressive force that supports unity. An innocent black child with a pellet gun is shot and killed by police in a nation with a black president and a black attorney general. Are we in this together or is it the good guys versus the bad guys?

As a Reform rabbi, I am heartsick over the pain and the suffering of the African American community and all people of color. Rabbi Rick Jacobs recently wrote on behalf of the URJ: “We support Attorney General Eric Holder’s federal investigation. Systemic change is needed, and state, local and municipal governments are key partners, especially working with police and community representatives, to begin the process of healing and strengthening that must be done… While our institutions need critical reform, this kind of change must also be addressed through reflection and commitment – from individuals and a diverse array of communities – to transforming what is wrong in America regarding race. The religious community can and must lead this transformation, and we are committed to playing a leadership role to move the conversation, and our country, forward.” http://tinyurl.com/pg4vsdh As a rabbi with congregants of color, I am more committed than ever to assure that our temple will always provide safe, loving space. If people are interested in that discussion, I would welcome it with open arms. As a rabbi with young men of color who belong to our temple, I want to do something to help them so as not to be crushed by this dialectic.

As Ben’s uncle? I worry so much. Our nation grows less interested in connections and more in sides. I love that young man and find it heartbreaking that such innocence and naïveté in his black skin is a dangerous liability. I don’t exactly know what I can do to help, but clearly something must be done. As the husband of a black woman and the father of a black son, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, said: “People need to know that black lives and brown lives matter as much as white lives.” http://tinyurl.com/m88enl6

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

Throughout the centuries people have come up with lots of reasons as to why bad things happen to us. One explanation is that it’s payback: “what goes around comes around.” Another is from the book of Job. Humans, the limited mortals that we are, cannot ever know the reason for our misfortune. We must take it on faith that there is a reason for everything. A third explanation for our misfortune is that we live in a random universe and sometimes bad things happen because that’s the way it goes.

Interestingly there’s not nearly so much thinking about why good things happen to us… Do we even need an explanation or is it simply enough to know that we get good stuff in our lives from time to time? Does performing a good deed necessarily mean that we will reap benefit from it? Sometimes, though we all know the phrase “No good deed goes unpunished”…

Our lives are continuously buffeted by all the things that happen to us and around us. We are overwhelmed by the velocity of every day, every hour. It’s easy in this world to lose track of the good things that sustain us.

Alan Morinis, a leading thinker in the Musar movement (about which you will be hearing much more in the months to come), writes: “…The very essence of gratitude lies in the heart …. An inner attitude or stance of thankfulness provides us with resources that help us face whatever we encounter in our lives. A grateful heart is a platform from which to reach out to take care of others as well as ourselves because this orients us toward the resources we have, not what we lack…”

But in order to attain a grateful heart we have to actually direct ourselves to think and yes, behave in a new way. We have to express thankfulness to feel it. Saying thank you from a grateful heart fills us up with even more joy even as it touches another. A significant part of our liturgy is all about thanking God. Directing our hearts to that task instead of mindlessly reading words connects us to the gifts of goodness we receive every day.

Thanksgiving is an opportunity to speak words of gratitude for more than just the great turkey dinner or the football game. It is the chance to gather one’s thoughts about the past year and to select a couple of things for which you want to give thanks. Maybe you’re comfortable thanking God for the love you feel from others. Maybe you don’t believe in God at all. This does not preclude your actually thanking the people around you at the table for what they bring to your life.

In a way Thanksgiving is like the other side of the spectrum of Yom Kippur when we spend our time asking for forgiveness. It’s time to share our gratitude. Would the world be a better place if people spent more time giving thanks for what they had rather than complaining about what they lack? Undoubtedly. Would we feel better about ourselves if we could acknowledge that we were the recipients of good things and not just hard knocks?

Next Thursday, look around your table and say thank you to the people who have made your life better. Look into your heart and give thanks for your breath, your vision, your mind. None of this is promised to us. We don’t “deserve” good health. We don’t “deserve” a good life. So say thank you.

Shabbat Shalom

On the hot evening of July 20, 1969, I looked up at the moon from Camp Hadar, a Jewish overnight camp in Clinton, CT. The moon seemed so close. I squinted my eyes tightly, hoping to see Neal Armstrong step down onto the surface. On the moon: An ancient fantasy of humanity fulfilled in my lifetime! It didn’t seem possible that such a thing could be, yet there it was, unfolding on a black and white tv, broadcasting live. What did it all mean to a teenager of the 60s? That in a terribly broken world of war and racism and poverty, something profound could happen, something that exemplified the transcendent spirit of exploration, something bright and hopeful. My friend Murray argued throughout the night that this lunar landing stuff was all made up. He claimed that Nixon was using it to divert the public from his criminal actions in Vietnam. I haven’t seen Murray in about 45 years, but the moon landing conspiracy people are still out there. But I didn’t buy the conspiracy then and I don’t now. We did it. We walked on the moon. The probe landing on a comet the other day was certainly not as dramatic as Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon, but still! What an extraordinary achievement. To take 10 years to get there and then actually succeed – not perfectly, but good enough – to touch down in one piece and then start sending back information. Information on what? I hope the telemetry will reveal basic facts on the origins of the Universe itself. In other words, I hope what we discover is ourselves (ok, I was influenced a bit by the movie Interstellar…) Some folks have wondered whether or not the comet may yield evidence of alien life. I have argued about this notion for years. I am not a follower of Carl Sagan, who said, essentially, “Look out there at the billions and billions of stars; how can there not be alien life of one form or another?” I am a believer in the Fermi Paradox which states quite simply, “If there are billions of stars and planets in the Universe that are capable of supporting life, and millions of intelligent species out there, then how come none has visited Earth?” Since there is absolutely no evidence to support either side it comes out to be a question of aesthetics. But what if – just what if – I am wrong. What if the comet ends up holding some amazing and incontrovertible evidence that presents us with the fact there was and there is alien life out there? Does the Dow Jones crash? Does NSDQ soar? Do riots break out? Is there a food panic? And what about spiritually? What does it mean to people of religion if there is non-human intelligence in the Universe, potentially more intellectually advanced? What does it do to our relationship with God? Or to put it more colloquially: is alien life good for the Jews or bad for the Jews? The answer, simply enough is as follows: you do your thing, we do our thing. We respect you, you respect us. After 2000 years of being treated as though we were an alien life form, we can surely show some empathy for others from outer space. How other faiths may respond I can’t say, though my guess for traditional Christians is that a non-human intelligence would mess with their notion of the Trinity. That is, if God is Jesus and Jesus is God and both are spirit, how can there be an intelligent life form outside that sacred triangle? For Jews, God transcends this planet. Our God is not just our God. Our God is not a God of territory or ethnic or racial preference. Our God is larger than us, larger than the Universe itself. I looked up at the moon on a hot summer’s night 45 years ago and I wondered what would happen next? Would I walk on the moon? Would I go into space? Would I go to Vietnam? Tonight I’ll look up at the sky wondering how to even imagine something 300 million miles away. Will my children or grandchild (I’m patient…) leave Earth’s orbit? Will this planet still be inhabitable 100 years from now? Will my progeny one day look at Earth through a telescope, marveling that their roots are interplanetary? With or without alien life, the Universe is filled with mystery and promise and hope.

On the night of November 9, 1938, violence against Jews broke out across the Reich. It appeared to be unplanned, set off by Germans’ anger over the assassination of a German official in Paris at the hands of a Jewish teenager. In fact, German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis carefully organized the pogroms. In two days, over 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted, dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by. The pogroms became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” for the shattered glass from the store windows that littered the streets. The Nazi state imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmarks ($400,000,000) on the Jewish community in Germany. Jews were ordered to clean up and make repairs after the pogrom and were barred from collecting insurance for the damages. The state confiscated payments owed by insurers to Jewish property holders. In the aftermath of the pogrom, Jews were systematically excluded from all areas of public life in Germany.

The morning after the pogroms 30,000 German Jewish men were arrested for the “crime” of being Jewish and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them perished. Some Jewish women were also arrested and sent to local jails. Businesses owned by Jews were not allowed to reopen unless they were managed by non-Jews. Curfews were placed on Jews, limiting the hours of the day they could leave their homes. http://tinyurl.com/84rljhq

Kristallnacht is seen as a decisive moment in what Lucy Dawidowicz called the War Against the Jews. Mass violence was perpetrated against the Jews of Germany and not only did the authorities not intervene, they actually participated in official and unofficial ways. It showed the world that the Jews had been completely disenfranchised and without legal support or representation.

  It is said that many Germans disapproved of the events on that November 9th. It was too much violence for them at that point, and too up close and personal. The Catholic Church and the Protestant community could have spoken up forcibly at that moment, representing those people who were shocked and offended by Kristallnacht. But they did not. Many historians wonder what might have happened had there been some official Christian response to the German violence. Certainly headlines all over the world expressed revulsion, including the New York Times, where Kristallnacht was a headline leading story. But in the end, while many were disgusted, few said something; fewer did something.

The night of Kristallnacht my father was 11 years old living at the Baruch-Auerbachsche orphan asylum in Berlin. I’ve always wondered what it was like to be a Jewish orphan on that night of terror. Were the doors barricaded? Were the windows covered? Were the kids hiding under their beds? Could they smell the smoke of burning synagogues and Jewish businesses? Did they actively fear for their lives? Were these Jewish children, already victims of misfortune to be in the orphanage, utterly hopeless and lost? When these children fled Germany the following year, did they imagine that they would live to see adulthood?

What I know as the child of a Holocaust survivor is that my father was robbed of a childhood. He was robbed of any kind of rational balance point to perceive his world. That is, my father lacked any sense of what was “normal.” How to be a parent? He had no context. Trust in others? Only at risk of losing one’s life. The importance of lovingkindness? He would’ve said he couldn’t afford lovingkindness. He suffered as so many survivors did, the loss of everyone and everything of meaning. When the anniversary of Kristallnacht arrives every November, not only do I think of the broken glass for which the day is named, I think about my father’s brokenness. I think about all of the broken people. I think about all the Jews whose lives were smashed forever.

I carry, as do most children of survivors, my share of wounds and injuries related to the Shoah. Trauma has a way of seeping into the DNA of a family. Sometimes in pictures from the Holocaust I imagine seeing relatives: could that be? It looks so much like… Sometimes I imagine that I see myself. Other times I imagine being in a particularly hellish place and standing no chance of making it. These thoughts and experiences come not only on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Not a day goes by when some Holocaust language or imagery or allusion clouds my life. It is a bitter legacy… But it inspires me to stand proudly as a Jew in the world. It inspires me to declare the words “Never Again!” and mean it, not only for my children and grandchildren, but for all innocent men, women and children. I pray that one day no child will ever know the fear of my father or feel the pain of broken glass and broken dreams.

Shabbat Shalom

rebhayim

Exactly a week ago I was responding to former mayor of Boston Tom Menino’s decision to cease treatment for his cancer. I admired his brave decision to say, “Enough!”, then gather his family and friends around him. Surely, I presumed, he still had enough fortitude to reach Thanksgiving if not Christmas, just one last time. And then in a flash, or so it seems from out here among the living, he was gone.

I listened to countless testimonials about Mayor Menino yesterday on WGBH and WBUR. Parenthetically, for major local stories, there are no better sources for up to the minute news then these 2 NPR affiliates. As I listened I remembered something Maya Angelou once wrote: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” So many people mentioned Menino’s love of and advocacy for children. He was way ahead of the curve when it came to GLBT issues and treated members of that community with enormous humanity. He cared, and his constituents knew it because he was sincere and committed. As Yvonne Abraham wrote in the Globe today, “Tom Menino was a master of the heart.”

One thing I heard really stuck in my craw. I don’t remember who said it. “Mayor Menino could be very tough. He was truly a fighter.” No disagreement there. In fact he could be downright vindictive in the face of criticism. Friends and foe alike knew that you did not want to be on the wrong side of an argument with the mayor. But then the guy said, “The mayor went out fighting.”

In fact, he did not go out fighting. There is great honor in his decision to go gently into that good night. Tom Menino had a choice once he heard from his doctors that they could not vanquish the cancer. He chose death with dignity. He embraced the truth with quiet bravery and wholeheartedness.

The choice to embrace the ending with quietude and dignity has not been honored enough in the contemporary world. It frustrates professional caregivers when a patient says no more. Doctors and nurses often feel like it is a defeat when a patient opts out of the fight and chooses palliative care. In too many situations patients and their families are made to feel guilty, as if they are quitters, when they voluntarily end treatment.

Tom Menino fought his way back from several illnesses and physical challenges in his life. Thank God he did: for the sake of his family, his constituency and for the sake of Boston. I honor him for that indomitable spirit that enabled him to push back the angel of death. And I honor him for reminding all of us that death with dignity is not an abstract concept but rather a real decision that deserves serious consideration and respect.

May Tom Menino rest in peace. May his wife Angela, his children and grandchildren never forget the gratitude of a city well-served by a man of conviction. May all of us derive strength and meaning from his life, and from his death.

When I moved to Newton in the summer of 1997, Tom Menino was already in his second term as mayor of Boston. His accent was so strong, his enunciation so mushy, I think I could make out every 4^th word Menino spoke. Sartorially speaking, he appeared rather rumpled, or, in Yiddish, a little shlepidik. Whatever the opposite of glamorous was, it was him.

Years later, even though I’m a citizen of Newton, I’ve followed Menino and his style.  His intense up close and personal style always appealed to me as did his no nonsense roll your sleeves up and get involved attitude. I’m not saying the man was perfect – I am saying that Tom Menino’s can-do attitude and his work ethic inspired me. I was and will always be proud that he was my “other” mayor.

In his later years in office, Menino endured stretches of poor health, including two earlier bouts of cancer. Every time Menino managed to battle back to good health. But when he was diagnosed with aggressive cancer shortly after he left City Hall, it felt truly tragic. He’d worked so hard, he’d earned lots of free time to spend it with his family. And now he was being cheated.

Today Tom Menino informed us that he was suspending chemotherapy. He’s done. I must say that I, like so many in the Boston area, felt a sharp pang of regret and sadness. He’s a father figure, an institution. People like Tom Menino are supposed to be indestructible. But they’re not. And we’re not either.

Tom Menino had come to understand that his cancer treatment would not, could not bring him a quality of life worth living, and so he said no more. What a brave declaration to make!

Our society has created the expectation that anyone with cancer, no matter how advanced or how debilitating, has the obligation to keep getting treatments, no matter how debilitating or how miserable. The option to say no more has been characterized as dishonorably surrendering to the enemy. A cancer patient isn’t allowed to ‘give up.’

In a world where it seems de rigueur to keep trying the latest chemo or the more extreme dosages despite the massive side effects, it feels like our lives don’t quite belong to us. It often seems to patients and families that the docs and the hospitals aren’t looking at the entire picture. It’s as if the endgame is a different issue. But of course, it’s not. The endgame, after all, is the place where we all arrive.

Doctors have begun to reassess the ways in which sick people are pushed to treatment. They have begun to acknowledge that it can be cruel and futile to operate on elderly, enfeebled people. They have begun to engender a sea change in Western cultural expectations about embracing palliative care and hospice not as failure, but as in lifting up end of life care as gentle and kind.

Atul Gawande’s newest book, Being Mortal,  looks at the issue of dying well in America and the impediments to achieving it. He pushes us to see that living a long life for the sake of living, despite pain and the loss of autonomy and dignity, must be discussed openly. Tom Menino decision challenges us to discuss this, too.

Our tradition reminds us that while we are forbidden to hasten death, we are also forbidden to stand in its way when death is imminent. The fundamental Jewish value, choose life, is exactly what Menino did when he said no more to his doctors. By ending chemo, by commencing palliative care, he is dying on his own terms.  I read that as choosing life.

Like many people, I am concerned about the various African nations afflicted with an outbreak of Ebola. I have deep sympathy for the people suffering and dying as well as for the surviving family members and the community as a whole. The unlikely possibility of Ebola spreading and infecting thousands in this country has crossed my mind, though I can’t say it keeps me up at night – yet.

The chances of contracting Ebola in Newton, MA are ridiculously miniscule.  We are much more susceptible to infections by any number of much more common viruses, from meningitis to the flu. Forbes says, “It’s also important to note that the panic about Ebola in the U.S. is driven more by xenophobia and fear of the unknown than by rational thought, and that a large outbreak here is still very unlikely.”  http://tinyurl.com/kge9jqz It makes sense to just stay calm. Furthermore, the sensational and occasionally ridiculous headlines, the grandstanding, remonstrating, ignorant congressmen, the pathetic warnings of apocalypse – all of this creates a big dose of skepticism. I will not succumb to the panic woven into the 24 hour media blitz. And I certainly will not jump on the “who-can-we-blame” bandwagon.

But then we read the following: “You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. If certain mutations occurred, it would mean that just breathing would put one at risk of contracting Ebola. Infections could spread quickly to every part of the globe, as the H1N1 influenza virus did in 2009, after its birth in Mexico. … [T]he risk is real, and until we consider it, the world will not be prepared to do what is necessary to end the epidemic.” http://tinyurl.com/mggh85m

How worried are we supposed to be? What are we to believe? Who truly is knowledgeable about Ebola?

There is now an answer to these questions. We have an Ebola czar. Do we really need an Ebola czar? There are good arguments, pro and con, on this issue. Frankly, what could it hurt? It is obvious that nobody in this country on the medical front or the public health front seemed to quite know how to initially respond to this devastating virus. So at this point we need all the help that we can get.

The new Ebola Response Coordinator, is Ron Klain, a very bright and a very successful lawyer. This fact instantly calms me down. Why? Here’s the unvarnished truth. I confess: it’s because he is Jewish.

Obviously the Ebola Response Coordinator job is not out of the Talmud. The point is that a man with a Yiddische neshama, i.e., a good Jewish soul, is running that office. I have never met Ron Klain, though as soon as I saw his photo I realized that I do know him, or at least, his physiognomic type. I recognized him as a person I can trust. We stood together Sinai: I remember his face!

I know. This sounds a bit preposterous and maybe even a bit chauvinistic. Obviously I would have no qualms with any qualified person the President chose, regardless of faith or ethnicity. But I know where Mr. Klain comes from. I’d like to believe that his ethical sense of the value of life and the notion that all of us are created equally in God’s image is a part of his Jewish heritage. That Jewish heritage will help him make hard decisions with compassion and honesty. I’m glad he’s there for all of us.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim

I spent a lot of time at Pilgrim Lake this summer while I vacationed in Orleans. It used to be a very crowded, popular place, especially with younger families. Kids could run around by the water screaming and yelling without fearing undertow or great white sharks. There used to be a large raft some yards out for kids and adults to jump off. Liza and I raised our children at Pilgrim Lake and were responsible for more than our share of noisy kids. Usually Liza’s siblings and their kids were running around the beach, too. There were times when half the people at Pilgrim were related to me – it was great.
Pilgrim Lake is the place where my brother Steven drowned 20 years ago. There is a bench near a shade tree that bears his name. It’s a perfect place to get out of the sun and watch the beach. I love it when I see kids and adults sitting there. It’s as if every time the bench is used, Steven’s memory is being well-served.
For whatever reason, things have quieted down at Pilgrim. In fact on at least 3 occasions I was the only one on the beach. It was never for a long time, but long enough to cherish the quiet and the sheer beauty of that spot. I look out to the approximate place where Steven went under and never returned. I remember the madness and the sorrow of that day. And then I look at the sapphire sky and the reflection of the trees in the water. I feel the hot sun on my face and the breeze that keeps me just cool enough to withstand the heat. I realize that in the face of such simple splendid beauty, how can I stay sad? How can I not acknowledge the transcendent power of this place? How can I not celebrate how this place has nurtured me even while it has taken from me, too…?
While at the Cape this summer my son and his wife came to stay with us for a few days, along with their boy – my grandson (God I love the way that sounds…). Of course the whole tribe went to Pilgrim. I watched as my son Jonah played with Caleb, my grandson. There they were having a really good time. Caleb would throw some sand and Jonah would chase him. It was one of those silly games that seem so engrossing when you’re playing with a 1 year old.
It struck me quite suddenly as I sat there at Pilgrim that time had simultaneously expanded and contracted. It took my breath away. There I was, watching my son play the same game with his son that I had played with him when he was my grandson’s age. It was an infinite loop, a picture in a picture in a picture… It was a form of time travel.
Pilgrim Lake is the site of my pain and my pleasure, my past, present and future, beginnings and endings. If, as Sheryl Crowe says, “Every day is a winding road”, then at least for this summer if not for every other day, that road has passed through Orleans and led right to Pilgrim Lake.
This winding road has so many hairpin turns, so many surprises and hazards and vistas. Not even Google maps can provide me a surefire way of navigating it. All I can do is keep my heart and my eyes open, appreciating every moment of love and grace.
There will be time to comment on the world’s crises and angst. There will be opportunities to acknowledge the challenges to which we must respond. The new year’s to-do list grows by the second. But just for now – right now – before all of the hard work begins, let me share simply how good it is to be alive, to thank God for the blessings of transcendent beauty, for the mystery of the winding road.
It’s good to be back.

Shabbat Shalom,

rebhayim