%$#@!ing Goodbyes

SO. MY 89-YEAR-OLD father entered a Jacksonville hospice yesterday following a week-long bout of very severe pneumonia/COPD (reports vary) and attendant complications. When I spoke with him by phone, his speech was slurred as he said, “It’s been a wild ride.” Those may have been his last words to me; I don’t know if he was talking about the illness, which robbed him of his natural optimism, or his life in general – the latter being very full with people he loved and who loved him in return. He taught me to be a mensch and how to appreciate eating and cooking (especially the adventurous variety), classic comedy, baseball, Slack, music, generosity, thrift, and “the little things in life you treasure.” (See more at “Why I Love My Dad.”)

As Dad would say, “C’est la vie.” I believe he will eventually be at peace.

But dammit — he will be missed.

(And today, the 23rd of January, at 2:40pm Eastern, he is. Terribly. BD”E, Dad, and welcome to the What-Was.)

Teapot Tempest

OUR SMALL COTERIE WAS IN Oakland in 1989, and in that aftermind imbued by any Grateful Dead concert: happy, playful, joyful and a wee bit mischievous.

We were also ravenously hungry, so on the way back to the car we stopped halfway through Chinatown and took in a restaurant crowded with locals. Somehow and somewhere along the way, I had acquired a small chip of dry ice and was amusing myself (and the others) by tossing it about inside my top hat. But once we were seated, I realized I needed to divest myself of my acquisition.

So I dropped it in the hot teapot sitting in the middle of our table.

You may imagine the scene which unfolded next. (No? Well, then: imagine a thick column of steam roiling up from the pot’s spout, expanding outward along the ceiling to the edge of the room, and slowly creeping down the upper part of the walls. Silence reigned among the astonished diners, while I sat there wearing my best “I meant to do that” face. Got it now?)

The rest of our meal passed in peace and relative quiet, concluding with an enormous tip and profuse thanks to the unsmiling owner.

It’s a wonder he didn’t kick us out. I guess you can’t argue with physics.

More Better

A KEY PHRASE in this week’s Torah portion of Va’eira (Exodus 6:2-9:35) reveals much about the state of mind of our centuries-long Egyptian slavery. It happens after G?d tells Moses to proclaim that G?d will liberate our ancestors and bring them home to the Land of Promise.

However, nobody pays attention: “Moshe spoke to the B’nei Yisrael, but they would not listen to Moshe because of [their] shortness of wind and hard labor” (Exodus 6:9; Metsudah Publications translation).

The Hebrew word translated by Metsudah as “wind” is “ruach,” which can also mean “breath” or “spirit;” Jewish mystical tradition teaches that ruach is the spiritual element connecting our physicality (“nefesh”) to our inner spark of G?dliness (“neshama”). Rabbi Jonathan Sacks translates our verse’s second half as “…but in the brokenness of their spirit and brutal labor they did not listen to him.”

It’s very hard for the continually (and generationally) traumatized to work toward, or even hope for, better days. Rabbi Sacks puts it like this: “If you want to improve people’s spiritual situation, you must first improve their physical situation. … Alleviating poverty, curing disease, ensuring the rule of law, and respecting human rights: these are spiritual tasks no less than prayer and Torah study. To be sure, the latter are higher, but the former are prior. People cannot hear G?d’s message if their spirit is broken and their labor harsh.”

Words to ponder as we all continue to hope for, and work toward, a better world.

Home (not) Alone

A d’var Torah – sermon – I delivered at our synagogue yesterday morning. If you’re not into hortatory Jewish fuzzies, better skip it.)

My dad was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, long enough ago for him to have cheered on the Dodgers at the legendary Ebbets Field. My dad’s also the world’s greatest baseball fan – at least the greatest I’ve ever met. He can quote statistics, games, and players like a seasoned sportswriter. I once asked him why the Brooklyn Dodgers’ native stadium had such allure for his ten-year-old self.

He thought for a moment, smiled, and said, “It’s holy ground … and it was my second home.”

The concept of home is important to us. Be it ever so humble, it’s where the heart is, where you hang your hat, and there’s no place like it. A real home is wherever we feel safe to be our best, and even sometimes worst, selves.

Our Torah portion, Shemot, the beginning of Exodus, describes a similar-but-different kind of safety. We find the baby Moses tucked into a basket among the bulrushes of the Nile, escaping Pharaoh’s cruel edict of death for all Jewish first-born males.

The Hebrew word translated here as “basket” is “teivah.” There’s only one other teivah in Torah. It’s found in Genesis, in parashat Noach. There, teivah is translated as “ark” – yes, the one with Noah’s family and all the paired animals. The Talmud calls this juxtaposition – an identical word or phrase occurring in different verses – “gezeirah shava,” Aramaic for “similar verdicts.” A gezeirah shava exists to reveal the word or phrase’s deeper meaning.

So let’s explore this puzzling and holy ark-basket.

Both teivahs are containers. That one is large and one small isn’t as important as their function. For Noah, his pitch-caulked ark carried the world’s wildlife population. In Moses’ case, his pitch-caulked basket carried the leader of a spiritual revolution. Two boxes of life, each floating amidst swirling chaos, each protecting the seeds of new beginnings.

Our world at present can be fairly described as a swirling chaos. Politics, economics, technology, civility, culture, climate – everything seems to be spiraling into some very strange and very scary places. But a teivah can protect us long enough to gather our strength, cope, and continue.

Sonoma has a long-established and vital teivah that does just that. And though small, it contains multitudes.

There’s a Hebrew school. Sisterhood. Men’s club. Book clubs. Adult education. Social action. Care for our physically and spiritually beset. Annual and life-cycle celebrations. Study groups devoted to our most sacred texts. Occasional cooking classes. The welcoming warmth of authentic, heimishe Yiddishkeit. And worship services like these, where we can come together twice-monthly to ritually affirm our religious peoplehood.

Our little Anatevka-among-the-vines offers each of us a little hard-won and welcome shelter from the surrounding storm. So my questions to you today, especially as we enter our 30th year, are, “What’s your Shir Shalom shelter story? How does our do-it-yourself teivah give you strength and support?”

[pass microphone]

Thank you everyone. And thank you for helping each other keep our heads above choppy water – as our people have done for the past 4,000 years and counting. Shabbat shalom.

Round About

“One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.” – Charles Fort

The first chapter of the Book of Exodus tells a grim tale: “A new king arose over Egypt … and he said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.’ So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them … (Exodus 1:8-10)

This may be the first recorded instance of antisemitism. Sadly, it’s a pattern that repeated itself throughout the ensuing 3,000 years: a period of Jewish prosperity, followed by a host country’s regime-change, followed by Jewish victimization. We can be forgiven for being fed up and tired of it; after all, how much suffering can one people take?

It’s tempting to measure this apparently endless circle at its lowest point. But thinking of oneself and/or one’s tribe as a perpetual victim is neither healthy nor sustainable. It’s a shaky foundation on which to build an identity, and it reduces our multi-millennial history to a dismal common denominator. It doesn’t leave room for Jewish pride, Jewish celebration, or Jewish joy.

My copilot the therapist cautions survivors not to define themselves by the worst thing that ever happened to them. That doesn’t mean ignoring the trauma – which would only make it worse – but rather balancing it with a decent appraisal of our many, many achievements.

The Torah verses quoted above continue: “… But the more [the Israelites] were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out.” As the Yiddish proverb goes, “Jews are like eggs. The more hot water they’re in, the tougher they get.” Let’s hope we retain our toughness while remaining tender enough to pass on the best part of ourselves, and our people, to the next generation.

Restful Strength

WITH THIS WEEK’S Torah portion of Vayechi, we bid farewell for another year to the Book of Genesis and the saga of the Jewish people’s ancestral and tribal beginnings.

Whenever Torah students finish the weekly reading of one of the Torah’s five books, it’s traditionally followed by a rousing shout of “Chazak! Chazak! V’nitchazek! (Strength! Strength! And may we be strengthened!)” The idea is that intense Torah study can be wearisome, and we thus need a boost to get back to ourselves. But as we actually always finish the books on Shabbat, perhaps it’s also a call to fully enjoy the revivifying rest that only Shabbat can bring.

So as you light candles tonight (or do whatever you do to mark this most frequent of Jewish holidays), and whether or not you yet study Torah, remember to take a deep breath or three – and slip into some grateful and strength-giving peace. Shabbat shalom.

“Cheap Astronomy”

NOT ALL AMATEUR STARGAZING can, or even should, be done with equipment.

Sometimes, you look up at the stars and wonder while taking out the trash. Or you might look up and wonder what that bright steady light is: a UFO/UAP? Hovering helicopter? Planet? Or you might even ponder that most mighty of imponderables: “Where did this all come from – and what’s out there anyway?”

Enter “Cheap Astronomy (Explore the Universe on a Shoestring),” a website (and state of mind) from our plucky Down Under astro-siblings. Written in typical dry-witted, no-nonsense Australian style, their articles and podcasts are listed under the following headings: “Naked Eye Astronomy,” “Fun with Binoculars,” “Cheap Telescopes,” “Too Cold Outside,” “Cheap Cosmology,” “Reader Contributions,” and others. Though mostly focused on observing from the Southern Hemisphere, even we Northerners can find ample material to marvel over and apply to our own hobby/lifestyle*.

Cheap Astronomy’s approach to skywatching may be mildly tongue-in-cheek, but truly, there’s much serious fun to explore here. So what’s keeping you? Check ’em out today – or tonight!

* That question – “Is amateur astronomy a mere hobby, or an all-consuming lifestyle?” – is an old and shifty one. Take a good look in your inner mirror before answering.

Rear Window

“Your spirituality is none of my business.” –Anon

How do we understand the Divine in our lives?

That’s the question answered by this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash (Genesis.44.18-47.27). Joseph is reunited with his brothers, and informs them that indirectly selling him into slavery was actually part of G?d’s plan. Without that act, he would not have risen to second-in-command of Egypt and been able to save his family from the seven years’ famine predicted by Pharaoh’s dream.

Torah is teaching us an important point: that spiritual hindsight is 20/20 vision. Only by seeing how events have unfolded can we discern the G?d of our understanding; as G?d is later to tell Moses, “You may see My back … [but] you cannot see My face, for no one may see Me and live.” It was up to Joseph to see G?d’s hand in matters, but as the Torah later tells us, his brothers never accepted that explanation.

When someone in our lives is struggling in any way, it may seem like a kindness to tell them that what they’re going through is “all part of G?d’s plan.” But we know that’s not appropriate. Pirkei Avot tells us not to comfort someone when their dead lies before them; comfort is in the heart of the beholder. Whatever we experience is not for others to interpret as to cause and effect.

After all, all we really know is the G?d of our understanding. And who’s to say we got It right?

Righteous Rage

THEY WANT US TO FEAR.

That’s not going to happen.

The 15 Jews martyred in Sydney are a cross-section of the Jewish world: Two rabbis. A Ukrainian survivor of the Holocaust. A pre-Bat Mitzvah girl. An Israeli. And ten others. All killed for the “crime” of being Jewish in public.

There are no words to express our shock, anger, and grief at this vicious and hateful turn of events, because you know them all anyway, because they’ve all been said before, again and again and again.

What I will say is this: We are not leaving. We are not cowering. We are not giving up our identity. We are who we are, as we’ve been for millennia, and will be – G?d willing – for millennia more.

We are an eternal people, and we will survive.

Deal with it.

Cat Whispering

IT’S NOT ACTUALLY hard to become a Cat Whisperer, if you just follow these field-tested and foolproof steps:

1. When you first behold the cat, sweet-talk it: e.g., “Who’s the nice cat?” or “Hey, beautiful boy/girl!” or simply, “KITTY!”

2. Let the cat approach you instead of vice-versa, lest it bolt. (The first Rule of Thumb in any feline encounter: NEVER MAKE A CAT AFRAID OF YOU.)

3. Present to the cat the back of your motionless hand, without trying to reach out for it. (See Rule of Thumb above.)

4. Should you be blessed by having the cat rub its face on your hand, keep your hand motionless and enjoy its warm attentions for the duration.

5. When the cat, sensing your good intentions, rubs its side against your hand, shift your hand to its rump to give a few experimental skritches. Let the cat’s tail slide (loosely!) between your thumb and forefinger as it passes.

6. If the cat turns and makes a beeline for your hand, repeat steps 3-6 until your new friend tires of these familiarities and leaves.

7. If, when you next see the cat, it runs to greet you, congratulations.

8. See?

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