A story about Ron Thiemann my teacher

One of my favorite memories about Ron Thiemann goes like this:

I think I was in my senior year, maybe even my last semester of college.  I was a TA in Ron's Religion 102 class, the class where I had met him my freshman year.

He was looking for someone to drive him to the airport early one morning and was offering to pay.  I was happy to volunteer.

I think he picked me up at my house, in a white sports car.  I don't know what it was - probably not a Mazda Miata (remember them?) but maybe an old Triumph or something, stick shift.  We drove (he drove) to the airport on Cobbs Creek Parkway.  Maybe it was even a Saturday, or else it was just very early in the morning.  There was no traffic at all.

Then the best part - I got to drive this sports car back to his house!

And for this he paid me $10!!!

And then, because this was the kind of guy he was, I think he even wrote about it on a recommendation for me, about how helpful I was, or else he took the trouble to write me a note of thanks. 

So let's see - I got like 30 minutes alone with my advisor, whom I greatly admired.  I got $10.  And I got to drive a cool white sports car.  And then I got an additional thank you!

What I love about this memory is how different things seem when you are 20 and when you are 36 or so (that was his age then) and when you are 50.  Those little joys like driving a car that mean so much when you don't own one.  What $10 meant to me then and what it means to me now.  And the joy of driving down an empty, beautiful road, where I had never been before. 

Who Made Me the Teacher I am?

This is my undergraduate advisor, Ron Thiemann, z"l, as I knew him 30 years ago.  He passed away on November 29, 2012, at the age of 66.  His passing reminds me of that quote that goes around - people will forget what you say and forget what you do, but they won't forget how you made them feel.

It's hard for me to believe that Ron has died without my having a chance to say goodbye to him.  I would like to think that I told him enough times how much he meant to me, but of course we never tell anyone that enough. 

Ron was a very charismatic teacher.  He was energetic, so smart, and pushed us all the time to think.  My friend Bill from college wrote that Ron taught him to think, to analyze, to really understand someone else's argument before disagreeing.  His classroom was charged, full of excitement and of the joy of learning.  He was tough on us - quick to tell me on my papers when he thought I'd missed the mark or failed to understand the material.  A 3.7 from him meant something.  A 4.0 was an extremely happy day - one I did not see frequently!

I took my first class with him in the spring of 1979.  It was not an easy semester for me - a lot fell apart for me then - but in his class I felt whole and happy.  He cared about us and he cared about what he was teaching.  I fell in love - with a TA, with the material we were learning, with learning itself.  And somehow that love stayed with me beyond that semester and into my religion major.

I took my questions and my challenges to Ron.  He was never diminished by a student's challenges.  He supported me through my learning and through the years that followed.  We stayed in touch.  I don't know if he recommended me for rabbinical school but I know he knew I was there, and later in my congregation, and later here in Israel. 

He had a turbulent career at Harvard and some challenges.  He and my mother became Deans in the same year - 1986.  I remember going out to lunch with him somewhere and talking about it - he was in orbit, as my mother says, very busy, very challenged.  I'm not sure if I saw him after that, but we talked in 1990 I'm sure, and later when I was here in Israel. 

I got from him that wonderful teachers love what they are learning, love their students and love seeing students grow.  I got from him that religion matters, greatly, in our world. 

One of the courses I never took from him was one he always taught - Religion and the Third Reich.  He was a big fan of Dietrich Bonhoffer, and he deeply believed that what we think and how we live matters. 

I'm so grateful that at age 17-20 I had such a caring, committed teacher.  If you are reading this, thank one of your teachers!