Tag: people

Ones I have known, if even tangentially.

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.

The Handshake

THE UBER DRIVER’S HAND was warm and calloused, but its electric charge was unexpected.

It shouldn’t have been, though, since for the past forty-five minutes we had free-associated on topics that don’t lend themselves to easy or uncomplicated conversation: God, mind, the uselessness of AI, Self-realization (not a typo) and ego-death, gurus, the constancy of change, the Indian fashion-industry, meditation, capitalism, health and healing, life’s unpredictability, Hindu holyman Ramana Maharshi.

His car was a late-model Tesla – ironically, since we also agreed we shouldn’t colonize Mars – enroute to a faraway hospital, where my copilot was undergoing heart surgery. I told him this toward the end of the ride, and he reached back a ringed and metal-braceleted hand to take one of mine.

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

That was when something unexpected passed between us.

“For her,” he said with earnest intensity.

We conversed a bit more before pulling up to the hospital.

“Thank you,” I told him as I got out. “And thank you for your blessing.”

“Aw, man,” he said. “Blessings come from God.”

“Yes,” I replied. “But thank you for being the conduit.”

A few minutes later I stood next to my copilot’s bed. She had just come out of surgery, pale and weak-voiced and pained of expression. Her escape from the Beyond had been a close one, but her doctors were skilled. With a why-not-it-couldn’t-hurt shrug, I touched her leg with the hand the driver had grasped. Nothing unexpected this time, just a loving gesture of comfort.

Mind you, I am a skeptic in the original sense of the word: an open-minded soul who doesn’t chase after explanations of the inexplicable. And really, earnest handshakes are common enough. But over the next few hours, as she went from colorless and tentative to walking with me about the cardio unit, beaming a delighted smile at everything we passed, I wondered.

Perhaps that’s the way her sort of surgery is supposed to work. I like to think it does.

But on the other hand, every little bit helps.

Never Enough

AS A TEACHER of Jewish children and adults, it’s my job (and joy!) to soak up as much Torah as I can – in the broad sense of “Torah” as “the entire corpus of the Jewish textual tradition.”

Fortunately, there’s no end to it, which makes for some pretty challenging (and rewarding!) job security.

What dwells among those who study Torah together?

But Torah isn’t meant to be studied alone. As it happens, I am blessed (or, if you prefer, lucky) to be involved with a tightknit community of very learned and dedicated individuals, some of whom I’ve known for years, who continually teach me more than I can ever impart to them. Please allow me to introduce you.

The first group of Torah scholars hails from 2001, when my copilot had the great idea to study the weekly portion with our co-congregants on the Shabbat mornings that we weren’t studying with our rabbi once a month. We all met in our living room, and though many no longer walk this planet, others have taken their place, and the dozen-or-so of us now converse online (thank you, COVID) for ninety engrossing minutes every Saturday.

Around 2014, a handful of would-be learners commenced living-room meetings on Thursday mornings at the behest of RM, who wanted to study Mussar (Jewish ethical spirituality). Once again thanks to the pandemic, we shifted Zoomward for an hour on Wednesday mornings and collected a small number of fellow students. Though we’ve now worked our way back to Mussar, we’ve also tackled the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel, as well as the pithy rabbinical wisdom of Pirkei Avot.

Then there’s the hourly dive into various texts with two veterans of the preceding collectives: Thursday mornings with RT (a wise and humble night-owl with whom I’m now learning one of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks‘ Torah commentaries), and TR (a brilliant and outspoken mathematician-philosopher with a taste for Maimonides) on Monday afternoons. For nearly two years, it has also been my great pleasure to study by phone for fifteen minutes on Wednesday mornings with BE, a hyper-articulate professional writer, as part of the ongoing program Partners in Protection. And just this past Wednesday, my longtime convalescent friend RR and I took up the weekly Torah portion – partly to learn, and mostly to take her mind off her poor health.

Our rabbis tell us that whenever people speak words of Torah together, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) dwells among them. Whether or not that’s true, I do know what dwells among those who study together: joy. And isn’t that the same thing?

Wonder Standing

THREE YOUNG MEN relaxed inside an enormous paper-recycling bin circa 1980, musing over their preferred futures.

Youthful dreams don’t always come true. But …

“I want a huge apothecary and knowledge of all kinds of medicinal roots, herbs, and such so I could heal people,” said the short blonde one.

“I want my own piece of land, so nobody could tell me what to do,” said the tall Japanese one.

“I want the world’s biggest library, filled with books of great wisdom,” said the bearded Jewish one.

The first young man left his companions in 2002, mission largely accomplished; the second, last year and likewise. The third is still working on his (the library, not the leave-taking).

My buddy Sputnik’s apothecary existed in considerable and connected chunks strewn throughout his relatively brief life; not to romanticize it, but his curiosity-fueled meanderings (medical and spiritual) always seemed to end up benefitting everyone around him.

My buddy Ralfh took a dark turn. Kind and gentle, yet terribly, terribly lost, he did eventually get his land – and also some serious incarcerations, which he bore as marks of grim defiance.

My quest for “the world’s biggest library” resulted in inheriting the textual legacy of one of this planet’s oldest and most misunderstood peoples. I don’t know it all, by far, but I do know more than I did – though considerably less than there is to know.

Youthful dreams don’t always come true. But sometimes, their ripples may reach beyond imagination. Here’s to absent friends – and the open sea.

Cool Exchange

DESPITE ITS MANY FLAWS, I still use Facebook every day to keep in touch with good friends without which and from whom I would otherwise fall out of contact. As I seek to entertain and uplift, most of my usual posts are questions or tasks for my friends to play with (“Who was your first crush?” or “What local sights would you insist visitors see?” or even “Picture silence.”), Good Shabbos messages (many of which also appear on this blog) and other Judaeocentric-but-universally spiritual items, and the occasional random observation.

Today is the second anniversary of Paul Rubens’ death. His humor was and still is a big part of my life, and I have nothing but warm feelings for his most famous character, Pee-wee Herman. I was a never-miss viewer of his 1980s Saturday morning “kids” show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse; Pee-wee epitomized for me the importance of play, silliness, and innocent but subversive fun. As my longtime friends have roughly the same tastes I do, I posted the following this morning:

If I had a patron saint, it would be Pee-wee, whose second yahrzeit is today. May his memory continue to be for a blessing, and may his laughter never cease.

This prompted a friend of mine to say:

I recognize two secular saints,
St. George Carlin and
St. Frank Zappa.
(There is room for my pantheon to increase.)

To which I responded:

I respectfully beg to differ. Prophets don’t get to be saints; saints are universally loved, but prophets “comfort th’ afflicted and afflict th’ comfortable” (as newspaperman Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936) put it). Being a saint is easy – just do the right thing for the right people at the right time – but a prophet’s job is a much harder one: Bring The People The Truth. Most folks don’t want to hear that sort of talk; if they did, the world would be very different – and wouldn’t continually need prophets _or_ saints. MTC; YMMV.

Don’t get me wrong – I think this most interesting of all possible worlds needs both saints and prophets – but let’s be clear on who has what job, and why. Dig?

Talk Shop

DUE TO THE Hebrew calendar’s complexities, we sometimes double up on the weekly Torah readings. The first of this week’s two portions, Matot (Numbers 30:2-36:13), concerns the laws of vows. Words are supremely powerful in Judaism – after all, our Torah holds that G?d created the universe by speaking it into existence – and how we use them matters. Our words can hurt or heal, create or destroy, bring people closer or push them apart. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” May our words be truthful, kind, and uplifting, each and all when necessary – and don’t forget to add a little humor!

Reluctant Shepherds

OUR TORAH PORTION this week (Pinchas; Numbers 25:10-30:1) contains a powerful lesson in leadership dynamics. G?d reiterates to Moses that the mistake the prophet made a few chapters ago – smacking a rock instead of commanding it to produce water for the thirsty Israelites – will keep him out of the Land of Promise. But Moses doesn’t rationalize his mistake, complain about G?d’s unfairness, or otherwise try to change the divine verdict. Instead, Moses pleads for a successor (Numbers 27:16-17): “Let Adonai, Source of the breath of all flesh, appoint someone over the community who shall go out before them and come in before them … so that Adonai’s community may not be like sheep who have no shepherd.”

Leadership is a difficult thing for one who wields it. It can too easily become an ego-trip, and it can be challenging to put ego on hold and act for the greater good. Such ego-less leadership is a gift that few possess, and those who do possess it tend to use their precious gift as did Moses and his successor, Joshua. An unattributed saying can be applied here: “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” So let it be with leadership; so let it be with life.

Reverse Coarse

(Sermon delivered yesterday morning. Feel free to skip it if Jewish resilience isn’t your thing.)

HERE’S A QUESTION: Why are we still here?

The traditional opening of any Jewish morning prayer-service, and also what Jews say upon first entering the synagogue, is “Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mishkanotecha Yisrael.” The best-known translation is, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling-places, O Israel.”

After all, we’re called the “stiff-necked people” for a reason.

According to tradition, the reasoning behind this practice is nuanced. It expresses the awe and reverence we should feel on entering the Beit Tefilah, the house of prayer. And given its origin, which we’ll examine in a moment, Mah Tovu marks the notional connection between Jews and the outside world.

As we learned by what our Torah reader just chanted, Mah Tovu’s first line appears in this week’s Torah portion. The wizard Bilaam was hired by King Balak to curse the Jews – but every time he opened his mouth, out came blessings instead.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be great if the people who cursed us had a change of heart, or at least of tongue? Especially now, given our post- October 7th hellscape?

It takes great courage not to focus on the negative these days – to believe, as Jews have for millennia, that this world can and will be redeemed from oppression and darkness. To believe that if we work very, very hard for it, hate and fear will one day fade into memory. To believe that shalom – peace, harmony, and integrity – will eventually reign for all peoples everywhere.

We are too stubborn to give up this determined and well-ingrained optimism. After all, we’re called the “stiff-necked people” for a reason.

But times are scary and bad right now. That’s one reason why, instead of the traditional Mah Tovu, Shir Shalom’s services are beginning with, “Hinei mah tov uma naim, shevet achim gam yachad” – roughly translated as “How good it is, and how pleasant, for siblings to sit together.”

Because it is.

We’ve sat together during other scary and bad times: under the Egyptians, who enslaved us. The Babylonians, who destroyed our first Holy Temple. The Romans, who banned Torah study upon pain of death.

But I don’t want us to wallow in injustice and pain. I want to emphasize that despite the most unspeakable circumstances, we have always survived. More than that, we’ve thrived, serially outliving one oppressor after another, and another.

So my question is: What’s our secret? How is it that we continually overcome Jewish curses with Jewish blessings? Jewish misery with Jewish joy? Again: Why are we still here?

[pass the mic: the congregation’s dozen-or-so answers included “that we teach our children to be Jews,” “chutzpah,” “G?d’s love/covenant,” and “chicken soup.” One woman captured the general spirit by saying, “I am proud to be Jewish – and I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”]

Thank you, everyone. May we all have the strength to go forth and do likewise. Shabbat shalom.

Elder Weisenheimers

THERE IS MUCH VALUE IN friendships – even more so in those that are decades long.

In 1986, I began working at the Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire’s fencing booth. Dubbed the privateer ship “Cardiff Rose” (after the 1976 Roger McGuinn song/album of the same title), we taught people to swordfight using foils; we also staged exhibition bouts with epee, saber, shenai, main-gauche, and other martial implements. These shows drew in many guests, as did our hawkers (myself among them), and an unspeakably tightknit and rollicking good time was had by all – until our much beloved Black Point Forest site was sold to condo developers ’round 2000.

It’s important for Village Elders to know how to pass on what they know.

After that original RenFaire closed, some of us migrated en masse (swords included) to similar “living history” events, including The Great Dickens Christmas Fair. But we also see each other at annual picnics in an undisclosed East Bay park. My copilot (then coworker) and I met at RenFaire in 1988, and recently attended one such reunion. As we drove regretfully home (it’s hard to say goodbye to unique friends you’ve known for almost 40 years), the following discussion ensued, dutifully recorded elsenet (edited here for clarity):

Friends, Roses, countryfolk – lend me your brains.

It was so good to see, connect with, and learn from everyone, which is invariably the case whenever we gather. The thought occurred – and I’m still puzzling the why of it – that our longtime, lifetime Cardiff Rose association-web is good training for becoming Village Elders.

Stay with me here.

1. We are for the most part a generally and generously accepting group of people (we’re all misfits on some level, which helps), except when it comes to militant/willful stupidity. Village Elders may welcome the strange(r), but they also don’t take no guff.

2. The prefatory acronym AKICITR – “All Knowledge Is Contained In The Rose,” which we all use to pose online questions to activate our “hive mind” – is amusing, yes, but also true thanks to our vasty array of eclectic educations, singular experiences, and multiform talents. And what we don’t know, we know how to learn about. Village Elders must be, or at least be perceived to be, sources of wisdom.

3. Strictly as a collective, it would be fair to say that “we’ve seen it all” (see point #2), while mostly avoiding the discomfort of world-weariness by dint of a sardonic sense of humor. Village Elders without such a humor-sense are just crotchety old fussbudgets and get-off-my-lawn shouters.

4. Many of us have (or teach) younglings. It’s important for Village Elders to know how to pass on what they know.

Anyway, that’s the view from behind these eyeballs. What do you think?

This can’t at all capture our seamless friendships’ ineffable essence, but I hope it conveys some of the flavor; we would not be the people we are today without each other. Here’s to good (and sadly, some now-absent) friends – and to life! [clink]

We’re All Americans, Dammit

I’VE SAID THIS BEFORE, BUT it’s more important now than ever:

“I pledge allegiance to the Constitution
Of the United States of America
And to the ideal on which it stands:
One nation of individuals
Indivisibly intertwined
With liberty, justice, and peace for all.”

(So help me, G?d. And so help all of us.)

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